Plumbing done 15 years ago at an over €400K

rolion

Hello,

Doing some upgrades in the house and i was unlucky to uncover the plasterboard in the ceilling in a single room,second room from the overall planned work.
One reason was that when central heating came on,pipes starting to make a strange noise and rattling / bangsin the walls.

What i found is a disgrace to plumbing trade,a disgrace to the plumber that did the job years ago,with no responsability and any awareness of consequences,down the time frame.

What options do i have now,please,apart of using the paper to ease the situation !?

Thanks.

The look I gave your joints was similar to the looks I would get from the lady's after I enquired if they were dancing? but like myself, after a good scrub your joints will look much better.

The green stuff is the flux residue which should be wiped off after the joint is blown, if you clean it up it should be fine, bloody ugly but fine.

As for the noise issue a bit of pipe insulation may help and if feasible a few clips for the pipes as well.

Sleeper12

Did you really pay 4000,000 euro for the plumbing alone??? I should have moved to Cork during the boom.

gctest50

rolion wrote: »

......
What options do i have now,please,......

Either rip down the ceilings or lift the floorboards,

and don't forget all the pipework under the ground floor

then hoover it all nice and clean and find a plumber

Dtp1979

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Did you really pay 4000,000 euro for the plumbing alone??? I should have moved to Cork during the boom.

Ye the average price in the Midlands is a cool half mil.

rolion

Thanks to all for reply.
The cost was for the house not only the plumbing,but reflects the quality and the greed of our "d€v€lop€rs" working today for NAMA.

Stripped along the ceilling and the pipe doesnt look damaged or affected by the weight of the top pipes:



Then,to my surprise,maybe to compensate for the shock,found a lab / class material on "how to" install piping properly:



After the break,i will ned to call a plumber to double check the installation,even if i have to strip down the ceillings:

Dtp1979

rolion wrote: »

Thanks to all for reply.
The cost was for the house not only the plumbing,but reflects the quality and the greed of our "d€v€lop€rs" working today for NAMA.

Stripped along the ceilling and the pipe doesnt look damaged or affected by the weight of the top pipes:



Then,to my surprise,maybe to compensate for the shock,found a lab / class material on "how to" install piping properly:



After the break,i will ned to call a plumber to double check the installation,even if i have to strip down the ceillings:

What exactly is the problem you're addressing? Is it that the pipes aren't fully lagged?

anthonyos

You need to get a grip

ted1

if it ain't broken...

Wearb

Keep looking, you will always find problems. Have you any cracks in the plaster, any water standing in the yard, any cracks in the celling?

Point that I am making is that you seem to be dead bent on finding faults. You will drive yourself crazy, if you haven't already.

RainyDay

rolion wrote: »

What i found is a disgrace to plumbing trade,a disgrace to the plumber that did the job years ago,with no responsability and any awareness of consequences,down the time frame.

Who was project managing, or surveying or otherwise approving the work done, all those years ago? Who approved the work done by the plumber?

Sleeper12

Who & why did they put the holes in the ceiling?

What exactly do you think IS wrong with the plumbing?

duckcfc

If you are stripping your ceilings just to check if there's no lagging on your pipes, you sir need your heed seen to. Yes there's should have been lagging over all pipes but IMO there's no need to be doing what your at just to lag the pipes.
Regs state that all pipes should be lagged but if a few aren't that are inside your main house that's insulated then you'll be ok IMO. If there where in your attic where there's no insulation I could understand but then again, you'd be able to access them to cover with the lagging. Every single house in this country has faults, no need to go finding them and costing yourself money to rectify unless they are structal

Hitchens

if you think that's problematic, you'd faint if you saw some of the things I've seen! :eek:

Sleeper12

I haven't done heating in years so not familiar with the regs. When I served my time in the early 80s you only ever lagged under ground floor or attic.Never lagged under the floor upstairs as the heat was staying in the building. My how times have changed.

duckcfc

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I haven't done heating in years so not familiar with the regs. When I served my time in the early 80s you only ever lagged under ground floor or attic.Never lagged under the floor upstairs as the heat was staying in the building. My how times have changed.

This is how my new build was done in 2006!

Sleeper12

duckcfc wrote:

This is how my new build was done in 2006!

I don't know what the building regulations are but if I was building my own house I wouldn't insulate heating pipes under floor upstairs.

murphaph

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I don't know what the building regulations are but if I was building my own house I wouldn't insulate heating pipes under floor upstairs.

I think Irish houses are basically very poorly designed and built. We're in the middle of a build here in Germany and even before a brick is laid, we have to calculate the heat demand for every individual room based on the required temps for each room (eg living room is standard 20°C and shower room is standard 24°C).

This total heat demand is then used to size the heat source (in our case a heat pump) but also to enable the plumbing firm to design the under floor heating loops and size the radiators (we have UFH on ground and first floors and low temp radiators in the cellar) so they have the proper gap for the expected flow temp and so on. Here they also always lag every single pipe to minimise heat leaking into zones in an unplanned manner. Unlike in the OP's pictures, the first floor is fully insulated here to thermally isolate it from the ground floor. Each interior wall is also insulated so the zones remain laterally isolated. This all makes sense to me: a zoned heating system can't be expected to work if heat can easily pass from one zone to another.

Dtp1979

murphaph wrote: »

I think Irish houses are basically very poorly designed and built. We're in the middle of a build here in Germany and even before a brick is laid, we have to calculate the heat demand for every individual room based on the required temps for each room (eg living room is standard 20°C and shower room is standard 24°C).

This total heat demand is then used to size the heat source (in our case a heat pump) but also to enable the plumbing firm to design the under floor heating loops and size the radiators (we have UFH on ground and first floors and low temp radiators in the cellar) so they have the proper gap for the expected flow temp and so on. Here they also always lag every single pipe to minimise heat leaking into zones in an unplanned manner. Unlike in the OP's pictures, the first floor is fully insulated here to thermally isolate it from the ground floor. Each interior wall is also insulated so the zones remain laterally isolated. This all makes sense to me: a zoned heating system can't be expected to work if heat can easily pass from one zone to another.

What happens when you open a door?

murphaph

Dtp1979 wrote: »

What happens when you open a door?

You close it after you. It's a momentary action. A bit of heat transfer occurs and then each zone returns to desired temp (if different).

NIMAN

Good luck getting the kids to close all the doors after themselves.

murphaph

NIMAN wrote: »

Good luck getting the kids to close all the doors after themselves.

It's customary here. Kid's are brought up to close doors after themselves. If the little ones in Ireland can't then door closing mechanisms are inexpensive I suppose.

We all open the front door to our houses to get in and out. Nobody would dream of not insulating the external walls just because of this momentary loss of energy though. The internal wall insulation here also serves as acoustic insulation by the way, to reduce lateral sound transmission between rooms.

Dtp1979

murphaph wrote: »

It's customary here. Kid's are brought up to close doors after themselves. If the little ones in Ireland can't then door closing mechanisms are inexpensive I suppose.

We all open the front door to our houses to get in and out. Nobody would dream of not insulating the external walls just because of this momentary loss of energy though. The internal wall insulation here also serves as acoustic insulation by the way, to reduce lateral sound transmission between rooms.

I always thought the Germans didn't really go for zoned heating and would always treat the house as one large zone

Taking in to account the amount of non-plumbers fitting heating systems badly and architects designing heating system that don't work right, I would happily take German over engineering any day.

murphaph

Dtp1979 wrote: »

I always thought the Germans didn't really go for zoned heating and would always treat the house as one large zone

I think there are 2 schools of thought on that here. I read a lot of forums like this and some folks dismiss zoned heating, especially with underfloor, as bad practice, saying room thermostats are bad and everything should be done through hydraulic balancing. I see advantages and disadvantages in both.

@Gary...it's not perfect here either I'm afraid but with our house at least the architect outsourced the heating system design to a heating company. They in turn outsourced the calculations to an engineering company who gave them the figures back based on building schematics and provided u values. The heating firm then used proprietary software to design the loops for the UFH and determine optimum flow temp. The rads in the cellar are more straightforward but still need to be right.

We know for example that our bathroom UFH will have a shortfall of a couple of hundred watts, which we'll need to provide through a towel warmer or infrared wall heater, to get us up to 24°C without jacking up the flow temperature so much that the heat pump is costing a fortune to run.

I've read an awful lot about this stuff and feel I have a good grasp of how things are done here now. You read of mistakes being made all the same where the calculations neglect something important like windows or dormer roofs and the poor sod ends up with a heat pump that's too big, which is a disaster with a heat pump as it will cycle far too often. Still, at least you have some comeback as you have your figures and can hold the engineer responsible for his mistakes if any are made.

duckcfc

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I don't know what the building regulations are but if I was building my own house I wouldn't insulate heating pipes under floor upstairs.

If I were to do it now,I'd lag all pipes but back then it wasn't a main thing to do.

dathi

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I don't know what the building regulations are but if I was building my own house I wouldn't insulate heating pipes under floor upstairs.

from the building regs
1.4.4 Insulation of hot water storage
vessels, pipes and ducts
1.4.4.1 All hot water storage vessels, pipes
and ducts associated with the provision of
heating and hot water in a dwelling should be
insulated to prevent heat loss. Hot water
pipes and ducts within the normally heated
area of the dwelling that contribute to the
heat requirement of the dwelling do not
require insulation (except those referred to in
paragraph 1.4.4.4). Pipes and ducts which
are incorporated into wall, floor or roof
construction should be insulated.