1970's cloakroom refurb - would like to bury H&C pipes.

[braychurchmouse]

Hi, just started a refurb of our 1970's downstairs cloakroom (anybody want an Avacado basin and the top bit of an avocado loo - had to smash the bottom! I'm in Maidenhead if anybody interested).

Traced the H&C supply up into the space between ceiling and upstairs bedroom...successfully fitted service valves (with a temp end stop on the downstream end of each to be doubly sure). Very pleased with myself as no leaks. So the downstram pipes are now empty and temporarily disconnected where they now come through the ceiling into the cloakroom.

Now to my question. The pipes were positioned as you can see in the photos, but if possible and sensible I'd like to chase them in so they are buried in the wall. I'm happy doing the chasing as I've done that for electric cables before but wondered what the pros would recommend as far as securing the pipes, padding with felt, and surface finishing etc. I'd just like to bury the ones coming down vertically as I'm happy to have the horizontal lead offs to the basin clipped external to the wall. Also the cold water feed to the loo at 6" from floor can be clipped as well.

I had the thought that basically I could chase out a groove and then reuse the existing pipe and just move it into the groove. I managed to pick up a piece of galvanised steel strip about 5 cms wide I was thinking about using to hold the pipes in, but of course I'd have to insulate that from contact with the copper to prevent galvanic corrosion. Do you use felt or something? The pipes have a couple of sound soldered joins in midway. Obvously the new bowl would be connected with hoses rather than the fixed piping from the 70's!! Also any tips on making good the surface filling? Actually the bottom part up to 1m will be tiled so I don't have to worry too much about surface finish for that part

I'll go pretty cautiously with the chasing because as you can see in the photos there's a buried pair of microbore central heating pipes to contend with.

I've got to resolve the problem of the new rad too at some stage (connecting 15mm to 8mm microbore!!!) but that will probably be in another separate thread.

Any advice and tips would be most appreciated. Off to bed now as am knakkered from the days activities but will respond tomorrow.

Cheers

Untitled

• braychurchmouse
• 28 Aug 2012
• 1

Untitled

• braychurchmouse
• 28 Aug 2012
• 1

 

[PrenticeBoyofDerry]

Be aware that copper pipes corrode when in contact with lime, which could be in the mortars of your walling. Also there are regulation on chase depths, no deeper than:
1/3rd of wall skin/leaf for vertical chases and 1/6th for horizontal ones.

 

[RigidRaider]

I've hidden pipes for rads in walls and have simply done it by cutting two parallel slots with the angle grinder (makes a hell of a lot of dust) then chiselling out. I wrapped the pipe in masking tape and then in places where there was a lot of filling to do I packed in a papier mache made from newspaper and PVA then when that was dry, plastered over. Dunno if this was the recommended way but it worked fine and in 7 years nothing has happened.

In one place I buried a pipe horizontally and realised afterwards that that's bad practice; I think hidden pipes and cables should be vertical where possible.

When it comes to mixing 15mm and micro bore there are some smashing little reducers that replace the 15mm olive very neatly.