Looking for advice where an installer has used 15mm for main heating feeds

[DaveWebb]

Hi folks,

me and my other half are puzzling over how to deal with a situation left to us by our boiler installer. The installer removed the boiler from our kitchen and moved it to the storage off our bathroom on the first floor, but he used 15mm plastic pipe to connect the new boiler with the old 22m feeds to the ground and first floor of the house, thus creating a bottleneck. I'll attach some photos of the work. My dad since replaced this with 15mm copper. We have since put in a new, insulated kitchen floor on top of the bottleneck and a £3k limestone floor on top of that, after which there is a brand new kitchen.

The heating works, but obviously this is not at all what should have been done and there may be performance issues. The installer has offered to come back and install a magnaclean (which he should have done in the first place) and put 28mm copper in from the boiler in the area that is accessible (about two foot).

So my question is, how can i verify the scale of effect on my system? If the small pipe work is having a big effect on performance and durability of the boiler then we would be more inclined to challenge hard than if the effect is more tolerable.

Thanks in advance,

Dave

PS the pictures show: a photo of the kitchen (pipes come down from the new boiler directly above the back of the cooker). A pic of where the 15mm plastic pipes swooped down under the floor to eventually meet the old 22mm. Under the floor where you can see these now in copper at same spec. There is a 5m stretch of 15mm between the boiler hitting the old 22m feeds to the ground and first floor of the house basically.

 

[terryplumb]

If the system works ,what exactly are you worried about ?

 

[DaveWebb]

We've had new plumbers round insistent that it will put pressure on the boiler to drive everything round through subspec piping and the low flow will mean burning gas for longer, so a lot lower efficiency.

 

[endecotp]

I see that none of the pipes are insulated.

 

[DaveWebb]

They were all insulated before the floor went down

 

[Nige F]

was the installer gas safe ?

 

[Madrab]

No Picture of the boiler and the flow and return as it currently stands? Was the 15mm plastic directly connected to the boiler or were there copper pipes at that point? How many rads and average sizes as this will dictate how the system may perform under full load as the 15mm pipe can only carry so much heat, at a standard system water velocity. Your new plumber aren't wrong TBF.

If 22mm is an absolute requirement then the only alternative, without lifting the floor, would be to run the pipework above the floor line to a point where it can be connected to the existing 22mm backbone.

I get the feeling that you may be looking for someone to say - It's the installers fault, they should have run it in 22mm from the start and therefore it's for them to put it right regardless. That's a whole different discussion. Was there any agreement in writing before the work started?

 

[Mister Banks]

Is there a reason why when your dad replaced the 15mm plastic with copper that he didn’t just use 22mm copper which presumably would have fixed the issue?

 

[DaveWebb]

Hi Madrab, your questions feel like the right ones. I was really trying to work out whether i needed to pull up my floor and lay 22mm or could live with it. My dad's not a heating engineer but he can burn pipes ok so he just replaced like for like aiming for a better, longer term job in copper (precisely because the area is hard to reach). The original plumber ran copper pipe work under the boiler to a distance of literally 30cm then plastic pipework (15mm) from there on until the point of the previous boiler where it connects to 22.

I think i've worked out what i will have to do, which is open the floorboards in the hall adjacent to the kitchen, do the same in the lobby, which is the room opposite on the other side of the kitchen and then find a way to feet lagged 22mm plastic pipe between the two, then take a kitchen cupboard out, open the floor and find a way to trail it up the wall and through the ceiling to where the boiler is.

There are 10 radiators the other side of the 15mm bottleneck and four of them are very beefy, plus i was planning a loft conversion.

All in all a hell of a lot of work, expense and aggravation to make up for a cowboy shortcut.

 

[DaveWebb]

*feed

 

[DaveWebb]

A couple of pictures for anyone interested. The first one shows the wall the pipes will need to run down and the second one the entry points either side of the cavity underneath the floor.

 

[ATTQ]

And another thread confirming why i just DIY things first time round rather than paying someone to do it wrong first.

Its the ID of plastic pipe once the insert is in that I was surprised about recently. Assuming it wasn't push fit. But now its copper 15mm. In case its of use to compare, my house had 8 rads over 2 floors and a hot water storage heating coil all from one 15mm feed. Drafty old 150m2 Victorian with sash windows and high ceilings and the boiler is an old mid range Vokera non-condensing around 25 years old and running perfect (after renewing a £5 pump capacitor.) It worked and doesn't seem to have harmed anything. A new pump head every 10 years or so is cheaper than getting that floor up, so if it seems to get hot enough around the house, it balances ok and its not really loud and no one else will be paying to redo this, might be best to leave it.

I'm under the floors so will change to 22mm until the point of splitting for the 2 levels but i wouldn't have changed it otherwise

 

[DaveWebb]

OK thanks ATTQ that's useful experience to know about.

 

[DaveWebb]

Obvs if i'd been doing it myself i would have researched it and got it right. Only problem is the law says get a gassafe and then they do this.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Only problem is the law says get a gassafe and then they do this.

Gas Safe boiler installers, are not necessarily heating engineers.