Cowboy builders - what would you do ?

dodzy

Bear with me please.

Hi lads, was in a house yesterday of a pal from the local just to have a quick look for anything obvious which was causing a periodic 'low flow' trip on a Triton Safeguard T1000. This is located in a ground floor new build (approx 3yrs old) small extension at the rear of a terraced 3 bed.

Shower head clean. Isolated power and removed casing. Turned off supply valves in hot press. 3/4" lever as opposed to gate which is always nice to see. Ran shower for a few secs to clear remaining water.

Removed filter cartridge to inspect and clean. Only slightly dirty. Refitted loosely and turned back on water. No flow to shower with filter removed. WTF. Also, no hot in the WHB or fill to toilet. So I disconnected the shower completely as the grouting finish behind the shower enclosure was piss-poor so I decided to clean it up while working the problem. Shower off, leaving only a 315 fitting protruding from the tiled wall.

Only working water at this point was from the cold tap on WHB. Now I'm confused so went digging. Into the kitchen press, I traced 2 x 1/2" qualpex piped teed off both the mains cold tap supply and the hot supply (immersion tank upstairs in hot press). It was obvious that the builders had not ran a dedicated cold water supply to the shower from the attic tank, otherwise I'd have water at the 315. And they had not ran it from the mains in the kitchen, otherwise I would have had water also, but the shower would likely have caved by now from mains pressure . They ran it from the kitchen hot supply, gobsh1tes.

To add to this, I figured that they ran the cistern supply from the hot tee also. Asked the owner had he ever notice the cistern being warm. He had. Question answered.

So to summarise:

Shower fed from hot supply in kitchen, running from ground level supply in kitchen, up 8 ft, across 15ft of ceiling and then down to the hot tap on WHB, and cistern.

WHB cold fed from mains cold supply, same route for pipework.

So, I had a bloody airlock which I cleared by loosening the tectite tee in kitchen press bringing us back to where we had started. What would you do in this case ?

Only options I can see bar digging out pipework and correcting would be to:

a) leave as is

b) swapping out shower to mains fed and teeing off the cold side in kitchen. This would correct the cistern issue also, but lose hot supply at WHB.

I forced the low flow trip by running the shower, then running the hot tap in the kitchen and flushing the toilet at the same time (thus reducing pressure to the shower beyond its low point threshold) to demonstrate the issue to the owner so I just instructed them to ensure that nobody is to run any hot outlets while shower is in use.

Obviously, in winter months, the shower might well be an issue as being fed from immersion tank, there will be no option to cool the water !

So, what would you do ?

Sleeper12

I would run. I have health issues with Afib & back pain. I gave up getting involved in messes like this.

Only two options I see are running dedicated pipe from attic tank or dedicated pipe from mains & replacing the shower. Leaving it as it is runs the risk of scalding someone. With you already removing it from the wall & then putting it back again would make you liable if someone does get scalded imo.

I assume there is no way to get original builder back? Small claims court allows claims up to six years after the fact & he can claim €2000. There is an EU small claims court for up to €5000 but I'm not sure how long he can make a claim from date of purchase

embracingLife

Dodzy I know it's few days since you posted but why did you remove the shower off the wall before you identified the source of water supply for the shower? As Sleeper12 said you have exposed yourself to liability now by doing that.

Newbie mistake to make and the sort of thing an enthusiastic apprentice would do who's doing a nixer and looking for extra work! Not the sort of thing a self employed person would do or are you working for someone else? Well hope the home owner is a pal that he's not going to sue you!

Btw did you sort out the shower supply for him by now? The obvious thing was to run a new pipe from the attic tank and join it to the pipe going into the back of the shower somewhere without digging out the walls.

You do know if you were to join the shower feed pipe to the mains pipe in the kitchen you'd have to install a mains fed electric shower. What do you think the home owner would say when you tell him he has to get a new shower instead of running another pipe through the house?

Next time don't be too enthusiastic about the job - going to regrout the tiles around the shower, a bit too much perfection/fussiness can land you in deeper stuff than you had originally anticipated- until you get the basics sorted.

Anyway you learn something new every day.