Hep2O underground

[ColinJacobson]

My cousin has just had a 25mm cold water main pipe run to his house across his front garden and up the side of the house. The existing pipe was a small bore black Alkaline pipe, that looked like 12mm internal bore. The alkaline pipe went into the house through what looks like a 4 or 6 inch plastic duct elbow. This is an elbow not a swept bend. The new harder and thicker blue 25mm pipe could not go around the elbow so the installers connected the blue 25mm pipe to the small bore black pipe as it enters the house.

The internal pipes, after the stop valve are all 22mm. It seems a pity not to have a large bore pipe all though as this short section of black pipe would restrict flow and pressure. This 2 or 3 foot section of small bore black pipe will create a restriction. Is it possible to use the softer, non-barrier, 22mm Hep2O pipe under the ground for a maximum of no more than a foot and through the duct elbow? It should easily negotiate around the elbow. It could be wrapped in denzo tape to protect it. I can't see why not if the Hep2o pipe is fully protected.

Another point is the internal water meter. This has a 15mm brass casing, which again will restrict flow. The meter can be taken out and easily screwed into the stop valve in the box in the pavement. The men who fitted the 25mm blue pipe showed us how to. It takes a minute or so by removing a large plastic plug. He wants the meter in the house, as if there is a leak under the garden he does not pay. Are these brass water meter housings available in 22mm? If so where are they bought? Thanks in advance.

 

[crockett]

Can you not chop this bend out, so you can continue to run your 25mm MDPE pipe into the house with a smoother bend ? If so, then do it, then you can fit one of these

http://www.google.co.uk/products?rl...esult_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CDgQrQQwAg

using 25mm Philmac fittings with adaptors to connect to copper. I wouldn't use Hep pipe if it will be buried, as it isn't as sturdy as MDPE, and doesn't comply with water regs, as suitable for supply underground.

 

[ColinJacobson]

Can you not chop this bend out, so you can continue to run your 25mm MDPE pipe into the house with a smoother bend ? If so, then do it, then you can fit one of these

http://www.google.co.uk/products?rl...esult_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CDgQrQQwAg

using 25mm Philmac fittings with adaptors to connect to copper. I wouldn't use Hep pipe if it will be buried, as it isn't as sturdy as MDPE, and doesn't comply with water regs, as suitable for supply underground.

Thanks.

The link is for complete water meters. We only need the brass base housing, to lift the meter out and into a larger 22mm or 3/4" housing. That is all they do when fitting one in the stop valve box.

Taking out the sleeve elbow is not an option. Our intention was to wrap the Hp2O pipe in denzo. I can't see the problem if the whole length of Hep2O is protected. Or even running the Hep2O and a long length of 25mm blue in an underground quality outer sleeve and denzoing the underground end.

 

[mickyg]

I dont see why your bothering to replace the pipe if your gonna leave some in or bodge it together. It needs doing properly. If it cant go that way then re-route it another way so you can have one full length of 25mm mdpe all the way into the property. . Hep pipe is too soft and flimsy and will probably over time get crushed. Joints buried under ground should be avoided at all costs.
Your lash up will be a damn sight worse than what was already there and if the water company clap eyes on it they won't connect to it.

 

[muggles]

You should be able to get your 25mm MDPE through a 4" duct, it won't necessarily be easy but that's not the same as impossible. Get some thick rope and drop that down the ducting from inside, secure it to the MDPE then pull hard. Have someone outside helping things along as well. Should work. Failing that you could try pre-bending it to give it some extra encouragement.

Using Hep2o is a no-no. You won't get a secure enough fitting on it (underground fittings should be flared and you can't flare Hep2o) and non-barrier is even less suitable than barrier pipe. Struggle a bit and do it properly.

 

[johnheritage]

We had an old lead mains in ours.

As part of the replacement scheme, we got a massively discounted rate on having some guys in to swap it to the 25mm blue. I remember being stunned at the price when I saw there were four guys digging trenches in the cold and running moles through, before realizing it was subsidized to get rid of the lead.

I ended up keeping the lead, and the lead from the roof, and melting it down to make castings. There's a lot of it there. You can do it in an old counter top oven from the tip. Fun!

ANYWAY!

It comes into the house from out in the garden. There is a 110mm pipe coming up and in that the 25mm blue runs in through with the 110mm being used to protect it from getting kicked or knocked around.

It is tricky to get it round the bend and an elbow won't fit in there either (from what I remember), but there is a trick to all this plastic stuff that I hardly EVER see plumbers using, even all the 'pro' guys. In fact, I haven't seen ANYONE mention it or use it.

The pipe gets soft when it gets warm. ALL of it, brand and polymer technology aside.

The answer is, cut a rough length needed to get it inside and to a stop valve, buy a cap or blank for the end (the rolls usually have a yellow plastic cap on them to prevent them coming with spiders living in the bore) and then pour a kettle of boiling water in and wait.

The blue rod will start turning into a slippery snake and become far more flexible.

Push it through and empty the water.

It will cool quite quickly and become rigid again once inside. The boiling water isn't a problem, because the pipe isn't under pressure and it doesn't ruin the walls or polymer either. You're warming the plastic up, not melting it. Kettles of boiling water cool from 100C very quickly to something closer to normal DHW temperatures, and it cools even faster when it goes into the cold pipe. PEX pipe is also rated for very high temporary excursions in temperature under pressure, so some warm water from the kettle into that won't hurt it at all. I use PEX over PB because guys in the US ended up suing people making PB because it was bursting too easily when the polymer became brittle in the cold. The PEX was way cheaper when I bought it as well.

You can use exactly the same trick when doing other plastic plumbing.

I bet tons of you get annoyed bending the spools over knees and looking like the iron man as you straighten it, and then it still ends up looking wonky. The blue stuff is terrible for it, because it gets extremely stiff in the UK cold and has thick walls.

Run your clips onto the wall using the brick lines or a spirit level to get them straight, clip the wonky pipe in, cap one end, hot water, wait. Straighten it out and get it tidy, drain. Done.

Works a dream.

And I agree with the others, if you're going to start messing around, go for gold and get it fixed for good.

I have used the same idea with the 25mm blue (running it instead of 22mm). The garage is brand new, a lean-to, and the roof ends at about the height of the taps in the bath. Actually every single wet fitting is encompassed in the wall area covered by the garage.

Rather than run 22mm white all through the house, I simply shifted every single bit of pipe I could to the wall inside the garage and ran it in 25mm blue, where the odd fittings and industrial look blend in. As it gets near to where the wet fitting is inside, I use 25mm to copper or 25mm universal adaptors to swap to 22 or 15mm white as it pierces the wall. There are also BSP adaptors for the 25mm blue, so you can run flexitails and other similar things outside where ever the blue is (e.g. outside sinks, washing machines, taps, sprinkler systems, automatic syphon feeders....). Toolstation sells all of it.

The spools are HALF the price of 22mm, and the pipe is slightly wider.

I would recommend that anyway else doing this looks at using the JG push fits for the 25mm blue. I've used the screw togethers since they're a bit cheaper, but they're also a pain in the ass and you can expect a few teething problems at first. The push fits would also make it look neater.

When I first saw the pushfits in 25mm though, I think they were lacking a release ring AND couldn't be unscrewed, meaning it was a one shot affair. Because they were originally for undergound work, a release ring was not a good idea. Don't know if that's still the same or if they've added some form of release (e.g. with a tool). If they're demountable and only £1-2 more each, go for the pushfits.

Toolstation.com carries all of the major plastics. JG, pipelife, polyplumb and the blue. In blue, they have screw togethers and the pushfits for 25mm fittings. Last time I checked a 50m spool was about £5 cheaper at toolstation than it was at screwfix, and the price of the pushfits has dropped quite a bit since I did the riser.

Toolstation also do free next day delivery on any order over £10, whereas the screwfix limit is £50.

If you live somewhere cold, where winter means three months of sub-zero and ice (yorkshire / scoooootland), insulate the duct in case the pipe pops. Here in the North West, the heat from our warm hearted, temperate slapper's radioactive orange fake tans means I've never actually seen a burst resulting from ice.

The duct needs insulating because the freeze over occurs at ground level, not at the mains depth. So the pipe will freeze as it comes up through the surface. You can pack the duct with Styrofoam beads, a wool some description or, if you're confident you've got it sorted and you don't have any connections in there (just the sweep), squirty foam it to get a conforming PU layer.

The mains rises directly underneath that soil pipe (which isn't actually connected to the soil, or anything else, don't worry!). There is no fitting inside there, just the blue MDPE coming up and sweeping in. I know.... it should have risen INSIDE the garage, but (for reasons not quite known), the builders didn't include a riser despite digging down before laying the foundations. Whatever though, they did a nice job on everything else. The mess around the grid is from cleaning the gutter (which was clogged to overflowing). That area is due to get some paving over it.

Directly behind that riser on the other side of the wall. The flexi-tail is for a garden tap. There is a stopcock for the entire house just to the right of this picture. I've been removing quite a lot of isolators recently. After fitting the stopcock in such an easy to reach place, they seem fairly pointless. I can get the pipes workable within about 30 seconds by closing it off and opening a few taps. I spent all of my teens without a decent shower and had to constantly get baths. I'm not having a new mains run in, new boiler fitted and ANOTHER new shower put in to have it w**k on the flow rates. I remember watching them rip out the cylinders saying "OH! You don't need THESE anymore!". Yes... we do. "This SUPER DUPER combi will sort ya!" Nah... it won't. What do we have now? ANOTHER new boiler, this time with a tank in it. What an expensive and pointless circle.

Can't help much with the water meter, never really been near one much. I'm a "water waster" (we live on an island, where it rains most of the time). After 12h of sweating, getting covered in soot from chimneys, concrete, glue, saw dust, foam, insulation, bits of inexplicable wire sticking out of my underpants, I have some basic demands that must be met. Getting clean again, quickly and without worrying anymore, is only second to a beer. Saving 1p on the water bill per shower is not on the agenda.

Things to look at when working at the riser end
A 'stop switch'. They sell these things that are basically an isolator, but that look like a light switch. Even getting mates to spot and work out the complexities of turning the water off with a stopcock is hard enough. "NO! TURN IT OFF AND OPEN A TAP" as I balance on something with a fitting in my hand.

I bet a lot of consumers would like the idea of having a light switch for the water.

And, on Toolmonger, they mentioned flow sensing stops, that will shut the water supply off if the flow rate / overall volume rockets. That may be handy. I've had to dart out in the middle of something many times and wished someone was there to watch for a loose connection in the first 12h. That would be my spare pair of eyes.

I have two tools for doing this. The one on the left is a ratcheting wheel cutter for copper. I think this one was about £14-15 from toolstation.com. It's great because it will fit behind pipes easily and you can rotate the blade when your hand would usually be trapped in a small space. The Rothenberg from B&Q is something like £40, and it's for diameters you won't find in a domestic setting. AND, it's the normal none ratcheting kind and BIG, so you'll have to bend pipes off the walls and struggle to even get the thing to turn. I have watched 'pro' plumbers doing that, having a tantrum as they fight to get their 'pro' cutter to even fit round the pipe. The ratcheting one, you simple push it over the pipe, do the screw up and click the handle like you would for a socket set. The head rotates within the top and clicks round behind the pipe as you ratchet. So, you just click away and the pipe falls open with a clean, smooth edge (it bevels it inwards slightly as well, so there's no need to file / deburr, give it a wipe with a scouring pad / wire wool, 30s, it's done and clean to a push-fit standard. GO!). The one on the right is also from toolstation.com and is for the plastic. It'll do from 10mm up to the solvent weld waste pipes. You simply squeeze away and ratchet the blade through. The ratcheting makes it easier to make very accurate and neat cuts, particularly on the waste pipes where you'll need more force. It goes through the 15, 22 and 25mm plastic like butter. You can't over ratchet it and damage the blade, because the ratchet gets knocked off when the stop is reached (before the blade breaks it's self). There is a button on the handle you press to release the lock, and the blade shoots back to open for another cut. There is ALSO a switch on the top, which lets you lock the blade at either wide or 22mm settings, so there's less ratcheting needed when doing lots of cuts on internal pressure pipes. The plastic cutter is made by Silverline, which usually means it's completely crap and is designed to fill in for one job, cheaply. But this.... this odd exception, is REALLY good. The body is die cast aluminium, the blade is very sharp... no problems and thumbs up. You can use saws for all this, but you will get far nicer results and fewer leaks with these two, and far quicker.

 

[johnheritage]

I was just down at B&Q. Please don't spit on me, I know I have wronged.

25mm Blue pipe

TWENTY FIVE meter spool £20.78

Screwfix - FIFTY meter spool £29.99 NO FREE DELIVERY

Toolstation - FIFTY meter spool £24.97 FREE NEXT DAY

So the B&Q price is around double the TS price. Believe it or not, that's decent for B&Q. I routinely find items in there that are triple or quadruple the TS prices.

E.g. check the prices on the T&E spools, and the disposable foam rollers.

£10 for 10m in B&Q, £15 for 25m at TS (or it may have even been 50). £2 for 10 foam rollers TS, £8-9 for the same in B&Q. The T&E is really bad, since that's a standardized product, like the MDPE.

To make it even funnier, as I was looking at the spool thinking... "I'll check this for the DIYnot guys", the B&Q price promise came on over the speakers, about their low, low prices. Har... har...

The plastic covers that are supposed to come free on the roll where £3... EACH!

If you shop at B&Q and are in a trade, you're an absolute nunce. And that's why you're getting wiped out by other guys on the prices you can quote. They're not cowboys, they're just quicker thinking.

 

[newbuildinstaller]

not a fan of the outside tap!! Directly into the mains with no double check valve?!? also before the stop tap and no isolating valve and a flexi!!! Guessing wasnt done by a plumber. At least not one from the UK

 

[newbuildinstaller]

also is that PTFE tape on the nut and ring of the flexi? Now thats a can of worms!!!!! sorry for going off topic by the way

 

[johnheritage]

You can buy garden taps with the none return built into the tap it's self.

I have a key for the cock out in the road, the house won't be for sale for a loooooong time and freeze bursts aren't a problem here (it's never really gets cold enough).

The flexi is behind a door, so it's blocked from normal traffic - as it would be under a sink.

What's the problem with PTFE? It's on the BSP adapter, not the nut of the flexi. It's thread sealant, that's a thread, I have sealed the thread with the thread sealant. Seriously though, I've only ever had problems NOT putting the PTFE on.

I'm sorry for my pro bashing. I know there are GOOD plumbers and I don't mean to offend them. It's because the last guy in the house wouldn't shut up about how 'pro' he was, prior to bailing out leaving the soil stack emptying into the house. Now, whenever I hear the world 'professional plumber', his face flashes into my mind, and the lumps of poo plopping out onto the floor. The only thing he needed to do to fix that was push an end cap in.

He also didn't bother to connect any of the overpressure vents to the new boiler, saying "Well, it'll make it easier to see when something goes wrong". That is on a pressurized cylinder boiler.

He'd been suggested by a neighbour we've known for around 30 years, and who is very good at practical work. So assumed he'd be fine.

If I can find the digital camera, I'll upload the picture of his version of a flexi tail. If the PTFE got to you, this will give you a seizure.

 

[johnheritage]

OFF TOPIC - FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF NEWGASFITTER

Hopefully this'll make you understand my anger and that it's not directed at the guys who try to help and care. I'm not an expert and listen to advice, and like hearing it, but this is my experience of a 'pro' job.

Keep in mind that he did this work for my mum, who's over 60, has just retired, isn't on a full pension, her husband died ten to twenty years ago after having cancer for ten years before that and she has had four kids.

There was more of this elsewhere, these are just the only pictures I can dig out of the memory card. E.g. 22mm pipes popping out of their clips, hanging a foot off the wall, 4m up (overhead), two meters long and full of hot water from a pressurized tank.

There were so many examples in fact, I'd forgotten some of them and had a laugh when I remembered them. And they were just as bad. If you think this is long, it'd be an essay before I got close to them all.

Yes... he touched the gas, and things got worse than just the money and quality of the job. E.g. he started trying to rope me into growing cannabis with him. Read... FOR him. And then ended up saying how he would "beat the ****" out of me if I mentioned it to anyone, once he had his mate present because he didn't have the balls to do it himself. Had to have his mate, and mention his "other mates". Surprised he didn't start with "his dad" and "his dog". And then how he was "going to murder" one of the other builders for suggesting to me that tile cutters usually have water in them to deal with the ceramic dust. He kept going on about it, and cannabis, way too much. The other guys just shut up, got on with it and did a great job. But everyday was 'pro' and 'skunk' or 'murder' with this guy, the wannabe pro and wannabe gangster.

His wife has left him, he's been kicked out of the house and he's declared bankruptcy after receiving a heavy bill from a supplier (means he's not worth suing since he has nothing to take). I suspect he's tried to do a credit job on them. Or just been outsmarted by his 'co-worker' who got him to put his details on the account. And what he was attempting to do with cannabis and going on about it to me.

He wouldn't come back to the house and left his tools here, which were then moved to the porch and he was told they were waiting for him to pick them up. He lives in the same road. He wouldn't pick them up. And started talking **** about me not bringing them back to him. Like I'm his personal tool caddy.

His tools were a fk'ing disgrace. I'm all for a bit of dirt, but a tile cutter from the tip with no water bath, drill bits that are brown from rust... He'd leave them out in the ****ing rain.

That aside, I hope you understand I'm trying to help my mum and appreciate you helping back, this just drove me nuts to watch and hear the word 'pro', and it's annoying me, a lot, just looking at the pictures now.
-------------------------------------------------------

Clips are falling out of their holes, because he used any drill bit or screw he had. Flux hasn't been cleaned off the copper. That pipe coming off the T really IS, that bent, because he couldn't think far enough ahead to negotiate the soil pipe.

On to the plastic. That elbow at the bottom is clipped too far back, and is under a lot of stress - in the real world, not just theoretically. The MDPE hasn't been straightened and is bending the joints & it's self out of the clips. Note the branch from the blue T has actually unclipped it's self, as have many others around here and despite the clips needing a screwdriver to open.

The T is under so much strain, he had to use a pipe wrench on the hand grips to do it up. It barely stopped leaking with enough force on the grips it has mauled the surface. I seem to remember him fitting the plastic, then firing up the blowtorch to do the copper beside it.

Using the blue pipe to save money and increase flow wasn't his idea. It was because I'd already bought a spool and said that's what I wanted to do.

He's used an MDPE to copper pushfit, when a universal adaptor would have replaced one of the screws on the T and done it all in one.

It's normal to leave T&E fairly loose in cavities so spare wire can be brought down, but this is 2.5 hanging off the walls, in the garage and next to the copper and water. EVERYTHING connected to the water in the house could then go live - like someone lying in the bath if it gets yanked out of it's screw terminals by say... a bike being pushed in.

Look at the grip on the bottom of the blue T, you can see the marks where the wrench has been used on something that normally only needs hand tightening.

I don't think I need to say much about this, except, that good ole compression fitting, minus any tape, is leaking (you can see the drip on the nut). And my garden tap, along with every other connection I've ever made, isn't.

Same thing, different angle, for more horror porn pleasure. Going into the mortar line hardly ever works, especially when the mortar is almost 100 years old.

This seems ridiculous to even include on the list but, no pipe collar, no silicon.

This had to go on IMMEDIATELY, for reasons you can imagine. It was 'finished' with a cloth poked into the end. That cap was about £2 or something, and took me less than 10s to push in.

Oh and er... that plastic container there, that's to catch the water when the 170l pressurized, scalding hot tank pops. Or when you need to drain down the CH.

The water was 'scalding' hot, because he also didn't turn the storage temperature down on the display, yet is using plastic close to the boiler. One of the other builders walked past it, having never read the manual or called himself a pro, and turned it down without even mentioning it.

Old soil pipe left open and feeding in behind the boards inside, for a cool ventilation system.

Note the copper pipe hanging off the back and into the container. I wasn't bs'ing. The brickwork the tank is standing on is wonky enough I can see it tapering by eye without any effort, it's off by an inch or more. Also note, there is a gully about 6ft to the right, where the vents on the boiler should be going.

Let's move inside and take a look at his internal efforts, as he did claim, many times, to be an absolute 'pro' when it came to finishing.

Erm yea... not joking about the 2" nail heads. Or being able to fit my finger under the trim.

The door was supposed to open inwards, which'd be an impressive feat with it the way it is in the picture. I could pull this apart with my hand, without even snapping the architrave. A solid wood door would have no chance, even if never used.

CANNOT COMPUTE< SYSTEM OVERLOADZ!!!!

"Fk this... I'm gettin' out of ere!"

 

[doorBell]

Is it just me, or can anyone else see Jesus on the white floor?

Call the church.....

 

[johnheritage]

Is it just me, or can anyone else see Jesus on the white floor?

Call the church.....

Damn!

If you mean in that black bit of muck near the container, I see that also.

I'm kind of scared now to be in the house knowing that's down there, watching...

One thank you for cheering me up!

 

[GaytonTonner]

Some nice informative posts backed up by photos by johnheritage. Just a few questions from me. Does 25mm pipe really become highly bendable when boiling water is poured in? It is very rigid and looks like it would never get around a 90 degree bend. The 25mm pipe is designed for cold water. Will this boiling water affect the pipes integrity?
Are 25mm full bore stoptaps available? I have only ever see the screw down types. The reason I ask is that a neighbour had water supply problems to his combi and other cold water taps at peak times. He put in full bore stoptaps everywhere and 22mm pipe from the main stoptap to the combi and other water outlets. It solved the problem. I assume it was that water takes the line of least resistance. He has now larger more free flowing pipes so water will go to him rather than the pipes in other houses in the road when the water pressure and flow is low at peak times.

Just one point that has been picked upon, I would never have any tap before the main stoptap.