Shower feed pipes buried in cement

[JIHK]

Hi all. Need some DIY Plumbing advice.

I am in the process of retiling around bath and for quality of finish on bath edge I want to tile over existing tiles but this needs extending the shower feed pipes to a surface mounted mixer by the depth of the new tiles and adhesive.

Awkward job so I decided to remove original tiles but have discovered the shower feedpipes are sunk in the wall and have been simply bent into the chased wall and then run up to a 90deg soldered elbow and out for shower with cement mix then slapped all over.

Reading this forum it suggest pipes buried in walls should be encased with special tape or in a plastic or 22mm tube for protection from cement and plaster.

So I have a quandry.

Simple job is to remove tiles and then retile and put shower back on exactly as it is now. Job done

Proper job is to chase out the existing shower feed pipes right down behind bath into confined space and then remake all pipes and encase in 22mm and repipe from existing isolation valves. It's a confined space and will be hard work. Originally I bet most of it was done without the bath in place.

I can't decide whether I am worrying too much about the copper buried in wall or not as have little experience and I bet most plumbers I call out would just reuse the existing setup for an easy life anyway.

Has any one any opinions - would you take the easy route or do the job properly from scratch if it was a job you came across ?

Thanks for opinions in advance.

 

[Hugh Jaleak]

I think it would depend on what the customer wanted to pay. Ideally the pipes need redoing, as they will eventually corrode and start to leak if encased in cement. If the customer just wanted an easy fix, then the pipes could be extended, with the warning there is a possibility of a leak in the future.

If you are retiling, then the sensible thing is to redo the pipes. Should they start to leak, then there's your nice new tiles gone when you have to rip it out to fix the leaks..... Just make sure you protect the bath adequately whilst doing the work.