Speedfit pipe for main supply - mistake?

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17 Feb 2013
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Wiltshire
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United Kingdom
Hello good people,

I have a leaking water service pipe between the pavement stoptap and the very back of my house, approximately 20m distance and all under concrete/wooden floors that I don't want to disturb. It’s an ordinary Victorian terraced house, I think it’s an iron pipe and it started leaking after the recent thaw.

Anyway, I think it’s not feasible to replace it using the same route by moling or whatever so I’ve run a new pipe inside the house using the ground floor ceiling space (under the floorboards upstairs) down to the front of the house where a Thames Water approved plumber will connect a new blue pipe and stoptap onto it this week.

Well I went to my local Plumbcentre for the materials and unfortunately the chap behind the counter didn't seem to know anything at all about plumbing. Fortunately a friendly customer gave me some advice about what I should use and I ended up with a big roll of 15mm Speedfit barrier pipe and a handful of fittings.

I spent the day wrecking the house yesterday and managed to run the entire pipe through continuously without a single joint, apart from the ends of course, so much easier than copper. For now it's not connected in to the system and the fittings are all ready.

And therein lies the problem - the fittings...

I'm teeing into a 15mm copper pipe which is quite ok for the speedfit joints apparently and I was also instructed to use inserts on the plastic pipe joint ends. No problem I thought and bought some spares but when I actually examined the inserts I was taken aback at how much the bore is reduced by these things.

The internal diameter of the pipe is only 11mm but the inserts reduce this down further to around 8mm!. That would mean my entire house water supply is feeding from an 8mm aperture - have I made a big mistake choosing this system?

I might as well have done it in microbore!
:cry:

Thanks in advance for any advice, you may have guessed I'm not a plumber.
 
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Yes it's a rather old conventional system, gravity fed and the pressure where I live has always been pretty good. That was something the friendly customer asked as well.

That's put my mind at rest a bit - thanks Nige
 

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