Fixing a District Pipe?

ninjaBob

I have a 20m District pipe (125mm flow & return with foam insulation).

My builder cut the pipe 3 meters from the house and 1 meter from the garage. He then connected it to standard 1" calpex pipe and lagged it using cheap lagging.

I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to how I can fix this?

I have dug back where he joined the 1" pipe and the district pipe. Re lagged with armourflex lagging, cut a 125mm pipe in half and put that around the pipes. I have then filled this with insulation foam. I have then put 1200 gauge polythene under the pipe and put around 300 litres of chimney insulation on top of the pipe and sealed the polythene.

My big fear is that I will still lose a majority of heat through this make shift solution. So I am definitely open to other solutions, if I can afford it I will run another district pipe to the house and not cut it.

Any suggestions or alternatives would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

reilig

Personally I would not waste time or money doing anything else with it. Have you seen a cross section of a district heating pipe??? It does not contain any armaflex - just foam. What you have done with the armaflex, foam and chimney insulation should be as good as the €50 per meter district pipe.

When plumbing my own house, my plumber was dead set against me buying the district heating pipe. We manufactured 30 meters from qualpex, ducting, armaflex and expanding foam. It cost €200 in total as opposed to the €1600 I was quoted for the district pipe. Its been running 6 months now and there have been no problems with it.

ninjaBob wrote: »

I have a 20m District pipe (125mm flow & return with foam insulation).

My builder cut the pipe 3 meters from the house and 1 meter from the garage. He then connected it to standard 1" calpex pipe and lagged it using cheap lagging.

I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to how I can fix this?

I have dug back where he joined the 1" pipe and the district pipe. Re lagged with armourflex lagging, cut a 125mm pipe in half and put that around the pipes. I have then filled this with insulation foam. I have then put 1200 gauge polythene under the pipe and put around 300 litres of chimney insulation on top of the pipe and sealed the polythene.

My big fear is that I will still lose a majority of heat through this make shift solution. So I am definitely open to other solutions, if I can afford it I will run another district pipe to the house and not cut it.

Any suggestions or alternatives would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

ninjaBob

I saw the bits he cut away and the insulation looked more dense than that of expandable foam.

I just wanted to make sure I do everything I can to reduce heat loss before I fill back in these holes.

clint_eastman

Why did the builder do this? I don't know what stage you are at, but there are standard house entry elbows that should be put in place at sub-floor stage for this type of pipe, although at €200 a pop (x2) I didn't use them and my plumber managed to bring them in anyway (long radius bend).
I don't know if you can do much more than you've already done, unless some higher density foam is available.
My plumber insisted that I put in this insulated duo-pipe, so I guess each plumber has there preferred method, seemingly it only loses 1 degree/100m, so I thought it a good purchase. Although, as Reilig stated his is working fine so perhaps you're good to go at this stage. My only concern is the "unknown" factor of the fabbed up insulated pipe in that you'll find it difficult to understand or quantify what/where/how much heat losses are happening. Is it possible to reconnect the district pipes to extra purchased to make up for the part the builder removed, at least that would save you buying a whole new lenght.

clint_eastman

Why did the builder do this? I don't know what stage you are at, but there are standard house entry elbows that should be put in place at sub-floor stage for this type of pipe, although at €200 a pop (x2) I didn't use them and my plumber managed to bring them in anyway (long radius bend).
I don't know if you can do much more than you've already done, unless some higher density foam is available.
My plumber insisted that I put in this insulated duo-pipe, so I guess each plumber has there preferred method, seemingly it only loses 1 degree/100m, so I thought it a good purchase. Although, as Reilig stated his is working fine so perhaps you're good to go at this stage. My only concern is the "unknown" factor of the fabbed up insulated pipe in that you'll find it difficult to understand or quantify what/where/how much heat losses are happening.

Is it possible to reconnect the district pipes to extra purchased to make up for the part the builder removed, at least that would save you buying a whole new length.

ninjaBob

There is a lot of things the builder did that didn't make sense. There was the correct way to do things and then there was his way, unfortunately for me I had to find this out 2 weeks before we reached a builders finish, just what he had been doing.

I had pipes put in at all chimney breasts for potential use with boilers, so there is a possibility we could pull up the pipe (or buy a new one) and bring it in at the chimney breast.

I could alternatively buy 4 meters of district pipe and connect them again (provided I can get it into the house). Underfloor, screed are already in place so it could be tough.

Just wondering if my make shift solution would suffice.

recedite

Just backfill it now and stop worrying. I guarantee you that in two years time there will still be unfinished stuff around the house but once you are living there a while, the perfectionist urge diminishes.