Do professionals insulate Central heating pipes?

[motorbiking]

I'm having an extension built on my house and due to a large number of walls being removed, a lot of the radiators are being replaced. I did 90% of the plumbing in the house originally myself, using copper pipe, insulated and electrically earth bonded etc. The plumber, ha replaced with pushfit plastic pipe.

I had to lift a floor board to run some coms cable and noticed that none of the underfloor pipes (new pipes) have been insulated, the house has an uninsulated ventilated floor void due to age. I queried this with the builder who said they never do this and building control wont care, so he wasn't going to. His contract is to build in accordance with building regulations etc.

I found this: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...mestic_building_services_compliance_guide.pdf

Page 22 is pretty clear, that they have to be insulated. Given the small cost to add insulation (~£40) I lifted as many boards as I could and insulated some 20-25m of radiator pipes with 25mm walled insulation.

I did some rough calcs and reckon this is at least 1kw of heat loss, which would have cost me about £90 a year in fuel bills

Before pic
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7512/27271798812_358be36616_z.jpg
After pic
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7069/27271798662_443ff3f62f_z.jpg

Have I missed something or is this bad work?

 

[denso13]

They should be insulated and what you have done looks fine. The builder should have seen to this though.

Part L schedule 1 of the Building Regs.

 

[Agile]

The simple answer is that none of those I ever see insulate pipes under floors.

Where I am working at the moment, the builders have insulated none of the pipes under the floor.

Some of the pipework has been fitted by me. I have insulated the 22 mm pipes but not the 15 mm pipes.

But I always insulate 100% of the hot water supply pipes as that gives such a huge improvement in comfort by not needing to run off cold water when the outlet has been used fairly recently.

Page 22 relates to warm air ducting.

It is page 20 for CH pipes and that does say they should be insulated.

Its such a pity that the general standard of building work nowadays does not bother to insulate pipes under floors.

Tony

 

[Steelmasons]

Tony , what type insulation do you use when pipework is running through notched joists?
Why is it the builders responsibility to insulate pipework? ...do you install the pipework and expect the builders to insulate??

 

[motorbiking]

Thanks for the replies - Yes its (its table 5) I'm referring to (p20, pdf p22). Thanks Denso13 for the building regs reference.

 

[motorbiking]

Tony , what type insulation do you use when pipework is running through notched joists?
Why is it the builders responsibility to insulate pipework? ...do you install the pipework and expect the builders to insulate??

edit - re-read and realised you weren;t asking me

As a general comment - to me it makes more sense to insulate the central heating pipes than the hot water pipe. My ~20m of pipe will lose approx 2,800kw of energy a year, where as the same length of hot water pipe would lose about 100kw a year.

 

[Agile]

CH pipes should be insulated to reduce wasted heat. But not all the heat is wasted, much gets into the house.

The reason I always insulate HW pipes is because of the annoying ( to me ) wait to get hot water at the taps. Not only is heat wasted but also water!

In my experience builders, and most plumbers, don't insulate ANY pipes!

Until about 20 years ago it was normal to use brown felt insulation which is often very flammable and creates an extra hazard if any soldering is being done. Fiddly to fit as needs to be wrapped around the pipes. Then when the foam plastic became the norm hardly any have used it.

Tony

 

[Steelmasons]

Not all felt insulation is wrapped , celafelt being one.
20 years ago wasn't the "norm" for using felt , many were using Armaflex/rockwool..etc....were you not working for the BBC 20 years ago???...I'm not sure why you make these sweeping statements?...absolute twaddle as usual..

 

[Agile]

It should have been obvious, but I look at existing installations and if/how they were insulated at the time they were fitted.

I did not need to be fitting them myself!

I am sure that working at BBC Engineering was more rewarding for me than installing heating systems would have been.

Even so, whilst employed by the BBC, I installed three full domestic heating systems and three replacement boilers. I was also CORGI registered when it was voluntary in the 1980s.

Tony

 

[mcmoby69]

professional merely means someone who gets paid to do a job, whether they do it right is another question. all my heating pipes are insulated as far as practically possibly, so are any existing pipes that have been installed before,so long as i can get to them.