Hi people,
I'm trying to get my head around the building regulations, and what is actually safe and practical to do when it comes to drilling/notching floor joists.
I've read that you can notch the joists, but only up to 0.15 of the joist depth (is this correct?) and only within the distance of 0.1-0.2 span of the joist (in this case 3m....30cm-60cm - is that correct?). Given the joists are around 90x50cm (not exact, measuring on my tippy toes from the floor below), I make that 13.5cm I can safely notch out, or not enough for 15mm copper pipe.
If my reading of the regs is correct, I could get a bigger space for my pipework by drilling the centre of the joist, but can only do this within an area of 0.25 - 0.40 of the span ( or 75cm-1.2m from the edge in my case). It's going to be tricky to get to this part of the joist without ripping up the entire floor, which is not really practical at this time.
In another room (of similar span), the joist appears to be have been drilled (during original construction in the 90's I'd guess) around 35-40cm from the wall, in two places 10cm apart.
My question is, could/should I drill closer to the end of the joist, or do you think it would save a whole world of pain (maybe literally lol) if I just notched the joists, soldered on reducers to the original 15mm pipe and used 10mm pipe instead? (it's for two radiators btw).
My apologies if this is a daft question, my enthusiasm plus speed reading of the regs (and probably not reading them correctly) results in much head scratching lol.
I'm trying to get my head around the building regulations, and what is actually safe and practical to do when it comes to drilling/notching floor joists.
I've read that you can notch the joists, but only up to 0.15 of the joist depth (is this correct?) and only within the distance of 0.1-0.2 span of the joist (in this case 3m....30cm-60cm - is that correct?). Given the joists are around 90x50cm (not exact, measuring on my tippy toes from the floor below), I make that 13.5cm I can safely notch out, or not enough for 15mm copper pipe.
If my reading of the regs is correct, I could get a bigger space for my pipework by drilling the centre of the joist, but can only do this within an area of 0.25 - 0.40 of the span ( or 75cm-1.2m from the edge in my case). It's going to be tricky to get to this part of the joist without ripping up the entire floor, which is not really practical at this time.
In another room (of similar span), the joist appears to be have been drilled (during original construction in the 90's I'd guess) around 35-40cm from the wall, in two places 10cm apart.
My question is, could/should I drill closer to the end of the joist, or do you think it would save a whole world of pain (maybe literally lol) if I just notched the joists, soldered on reducers to the original 15mm pipe and used 10mm pipe instead? (it's for two radiators btw).
My apologies if this is a daft question, my enthusiasm plus speed reading of the regs (and probably not reading them correctly) results in much head scratching lol.
