Plumbing-Basic
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If you accidentally
drive a nail through a copper pipe under the floor, you may not even notice for
a while. The only indication is a faint hissing until, eventually, a damp patch
appears on the ceiling in the room below.
If your floors are to be carpeted or covered with sheet vinyl,
paint the lines of hidden plumbing across the floorboards to avoid nailing into
pipes in the future.
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Step: 1 Identify the system which is supplying
the pipe.
Water is supplied to a house under relatively high mains pressure.
In most houses it is directed via the rising main pipe to a cold water storage
cistern in the loft. A pipe connected to the rising main feeds drinking water
directly to the kitchen sink. All other taps and fittings, including the hot
water storage cylinder, are supplied indirectly by a low pressure gravity fed
system from the storage cistern.
Step: 2 Drain
the system and uncover the pipe.
To drain the cold water
kitchen tap and pipe:
• 1 Close the stopcock on the rising
main.
• 2 Open the tap to empty
the short length of pipe.
To drain cold water taps in
the bathroom/to drain the cistern:
• 1 Shut off the cold feed valve from the storage
cistern in the loft.
• 2 Run the bathroom taps.
or:
• 1 If there is no isolating valve, shut off the
supply of water to the cistern by tying the arm
of the float valve to a batten placed across the
top.
• 2 Run the taps to drain
the cistern. Use this method if you ever need to
work on the cistern itself.
To drain a toilet
cistern:
• 1 Tie up the
float-valve arm.
• 2 Flush the
toilet.
If you need to work on the supply
pipe to the cistern, shut off the water supply from the storage cistern in the
loft (see above).
To drain hot water
taps:
• 1 Turn off the
immersion heater and the central heating
boiler.
• 2 Shut off the supply of water from the storage
cistern in the loft to the hot water
cylinder.
• 3 Run off the water
from the hot taps.
To drain the hot water
cylinder:
Attach a hose to the draincock at the base of the cylinder.
If the cylinder contains a heat exchanger fed from the boiler, this can only be
emptied through the boiler draincock.
Step: 3 Cut
out the damaged section with either a fine toothed hacksaw or a tube cutter, if
you have one to hand.
The pipe must first be cut perfectly square.
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To cut a pipe, lightly clamp
the cutter on the pipe, with the cutting wheel on the cut line. Rotate the
cutter around the pipe, tightening it a little after each revolution, until the
pipe is severed.
Remove burrs from inside the cut
end, using the pointed reamer on the cutting tool or use a small half-round
file.
Step: 4 Fit a
straight compression joint in the pipe run.
To join copper pipes with a
compression fitting, first remove the cap nut and slide it over the end of the
pipe. Then slip the brass ring, known as an olive, onto the pipe.
Push the pipe into the body of
the fitting, slide the olive up to the fitting and hand tighten the nut. Now
tighten the nut fully with a pair of spanners, one to hold the body of the
fitting, and the other the nut. Assemble the other half of the fitting in the
same way.
• If you cannot
move the pipe sufficiently to fit a conventional fitting, use a slip coupling
that can be slid along the pipe.
• In an emergency, seal a
punctured pipe temporarily with a short length of garden hose slit lengthwise
and held in place with hose clips.
You can also make a serviceable repair using an epoxy putty repair
kit:
• 1 Clean the metal locally with wire
wool.
• 2 Mix the two-part
putty, following the manufacturer's instructions,
and press it into the hole.
• 3 Build up the putty to form a collar around the
pipe, about 6mm (1/4in) thick and 50mm (2in) on
either side of the hole.
• 4 Smooth the putty with a damp soapy
cloth.
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