Macerators

You were the only one!

I’ve just been proofreading the manual – bit late now but what the hell – and noticed that I completely failed to mention macerators.

When you fit a new bathroom getting the hot and cold water into the new room is usually pretty straight forward. What can be far more complicated is getting the waste water out again. This shouldn’t be a surprise but it often is.

The problem of course is straightforward; the hot and cold water comes into the room under pressure, so you can take the pipework pretty much any route you feel like. The waste, on the other hand, leaves the room via the wonder of gravity and as such has pretty limited options, all revolving around the word “downhill”. If you’re trying to convert a basement room into a bathroom this can make the entire project a non starter... or does it?

Well you could opt to pump the waste away via what is generally referred to as a “macerator”. This is effectively a blender linked to a pump. The waste runs down from the toilet, washbasin, shower or kitchen sink into the macerator. Here it is ‘blended’ in a fashion that is best not looked into too closely and then pumped via much smaller pipework (Usually 22mm) up to the main waste system. Most macerators can lift the waste about 5m high, which is usually more than enough to connect to the main waste stack and let gravity take over once again.

So what are the downsides of this? Well the main one is that all macerators rely on everyone in the household being vaguely sensible and as such they don’t work well around children. From the moment they’re born they cause trouble, many mothers can’t fight the urge to dispose of baby wipes down the toilet, an act that will bugger up the best of macerators within a few short weeks, and once the child can walk they find the toilet a magical place where things just disappear in an exciting roar of water; bracelets, scarves, Tigger, Postman Pat, the list is endless. Granted most children can block the most robust of toilets if they set their mind to it but the poor old macerator generally doesn’t stand a chance. This rule, of course, also applies to the kitchen sink; you have to be very carefully with what you flush down the plug hole.

All that said, if you are careful they will work perfectly for years and if your child is hell bent on flushing away the family jewels you can at least retrieve them from a macerator - although they may be a little damaged and you might not be that keen on wearing them around your neck for a while at least.

The only other downsides are that they make a bit of a noise when they operate, although they are getting quieter all the time, and, as you can imagine, they are not the most pleasant things to repair if and when things do go wrong.

A number of different companies do macerators but the leader in the field is Saniflo and you can find out more about them at their website.

The Plumb Tub

Plumb Tub

The aptly named Plumb Tub is, in case you hadn’t already guessed, a tub for plumbing. It’s not the sort of product that’s going to revolutionise the plumbing world but it is the sort of cheap, durable and easy to use knick-knack that is well worth having in your arsenal of plumbing tools.

It’s just a nice little bowl of soft, rubberised plastic that can fit neatly under a radiator. At each corner is a hole that is cunning sized to accept the sort of pipework that you’ll normally come across in a domestic plumbing system, namely 10,15 and 22mm. Just ease the appropriate corner of rubberised plastic around the pipe and relax as any wayward drips and leaks are directed into the bowl.

Ok, the bowl isn’t the biggest so you might want to have a water vacuum pump nearby just in case the leak proves to be bigger than expected. It also doesn’t do 8mm pipework, or at least it’s not mentioned in the literature, which is a shame as a worrying amount of CH systems were plumbed in using 8mm pipework. That said, it's a perfectly handy pot for putting all your bits and bobs in after the job and it only costs a few quid, so why not give it a try anyway.

Errors

I'm rather hoping that this will be a very short blog posting. Alas, there are bound to be some errors in the manual and as I find those that aren't just grammatical I'll list them here. These will all be fixed in the manual in subsequent editions.

If you find any errors yourself feel free to let me know either by adding a comment to this post or by sending me an email to andy@a1perfectplumbing.co.uk

Page 20 Thermal store

The diagram on this page shows two cylinders, a standard vented cylinder on the left and a thermal store on the right. Sadly the title of the "Standard Vented cylinder" actual reads "Standard Unvented cylinder". Oops!

Omissions

There are bound to be things that I either forgot to mention in the manual or just didn’t have the time and space to talk about in any detail. As I spot them I’ll mention them here in this single blog posting. 

If you find any yourself feel free to write a comment here or email me and I’ll write up something to cover that topic.

Page 19 “Unvented hot-water cylinder”

The combination valve

I talk here about finding the tap that turns off just your high pressure hot water. What I didn’t mention is that this tap often turns off some or all your cold water as well.

Why would it do that? Well mixer showers, for example, work best if the hot and cold water enter the shower valve at exactly the same pressure. In a high pressure system this is usually the case anyway but it isn’t guaranteed. For example, the maximum pressure of the hot water is restricted - usually to 3 bar – whilst the cold water is left to roam wide and free to hit whatever pressure it feels like. It's unlikely that your cold water would routinely be over 3 bar, but it’s not unheard of and in this situation your mixer showers would start to act up as they try to deal with hot and cold water at different pressures.

To prevent this happening the cold water for all the showers is often taken off from the combination valve attached to your hot water cylinder. This valve is where the pressure reduction of the hot water takes place and as such now ensures that both hot and cold water are at exactly the same pressure.

From a homeowners point of view this is no big deal but the fact that I didn’t mention this might cause some confusion.

Page 76 "Replacing the washer on the stop tap"
In step 5 you need to be supporting the stop tap with either a set of pump pliers or an adjustable spanner before you start trying to loosen off the head otherwise you risk damaging the pipework entering and leaving the tap. I guess this is common sense really, but worth while mentioning just in case common sense isn't all that common after all :)

The Kopex Pipesight

So Mr Bond...

Very occasionally a new plumbing tool comes out and you think “Wow! Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that?” Slightly more often a new tool comes out and you think “Well... Maybe...Not bad, I guess!” and then there are the tools for which the only real response is “Eh?”

I’m still not sure what category I’d put the Pipesight into. It’s role in life is to let you accurately drill holes for radiator pipework. The idea is that you fit your new radiator and attach the Pipesight to the base of the radiator valves. As if by magic, a laser light now bursts forth and illuminates the floorboards below, showing you exactly where you need to drill the holes in order to connect up your pipework.

Do you really need a laser to tell you this? Personally, I use a short piece of copper cut so that it just fits into the valve and touches the floorboard. I then draw around the base of the copper pipe and drill accordingly. It’s all very dull and very low-tech but it also has the virtues of being effect and cheap... but it’s not a laser!

And maybe that’s the point? I suspect that the people who will buy this tool will buy it just because it does have the high tech, hint of the James Bond about it. They will be the kind of people who, when confronted by Mr Bond, will scorn the idea of just shooting the bugger and will instead opt for tying him to a bench, aiming a high powered laser at his privates and then departing the scene with a clever witticism. Sadly we all know that this doesn’t work; James Bond will escape, shag the baddies missus and then, when they inevitably meet again, forgo the clever stuff and just shoot the baddie in the head.

Is there a moral in this tale? Well if there is I can’t see it. If you like the high tech stuff give the Pipesight a try, after all it is quick and easy to use and the cost isn’t going to break the bank. The laser doesn’t actually burn through the floorboard - which is a crying shame as I’d definitely buy one if it did - but the mark it gives you is going to be more accurate than drawing around a piece of pipe.

Pump your mains cold water

Boost your mains cold water with a Homeboost

One of the golden rules of plumbing is “thou shalt not pump mains cold water”. I’ll grant you that it’s not the most exciting of rules but it’s an important one... or at least it was.

So what’s happened to consign this rule to the history books? Well Salamander have just brought out the “Homeboost”, a pump specifically designed to overcome poor mains water pressure.

So how come this can work on the mains? Well the water regs never actually said you couldn’t pumps mains water, they just added enough caveats to ensure they always put people off the idea. For instance, the pump would have to ensure that it never delivered more than 12 litres of water a minute, regardless of the mains water pressure. It also had to ensure that there could be no backflow of water back into the mains. For some reason it’s taken until now for someone to design a pump that meets these criteria.

So why would I want to boost my mains water pressure? Well, if you find yourself asking that question the answer is that you almost certainly don’t need to boost your mains cold water. Most homes in the UK tend to get water entering the house at between 2-3 bar pressure. However, the water supply companies only have to guarantee water to your property boundary at 1bar, which is about 10 litres of water per minute. If the pipe taking this water from your boundary into your home is old and knackered you may well experience water pressure far below this nominal 1 bar.

Here in Lincolnshire poor water pressure can be a real problem. Whilst we do have towns and the occasional city the vast majority of Lincolnshire is composed of villages. Some of these could be described as residing in ‘The sticks’, some are most certainly in “The back of beyond” and a few are very much beyond the back of beyond, turn right, cross the ford and take the path signposted ‘Godknowswhere’. News takes its time reaching these places, water can take an absolute age, and by the time is does arrive it’s often under as much pressure as a stoned Hippy lying on a tropical beach.

Ordinarily you get around this by pumping stored water but this requires large storage tanks, which isn’t always feasible and won’t help at all if the homeowner wants a nice new shiny combi boiler. And it’s combi boilers that will probably benefit from this new pump the most.

So what are the downsides? Well it’s not a cheap pump, with an RRP of £358.80 inc VAT! Apparently it makes less noise than a boiling kettle (46dB) but do you want to hear a kettle boiling all day? And of course it’s going to be using electricity the whole time, so you’ll see an increase in those bills.

That said it’s probably still cheaper than the alternatives, which were either large storage tanks and whole-house pumps – more expensive, just as noisy and still using electricity – or digging up your water supply pipe and replacing it with a bigger diameter pipe and hoping that that sorted the problem, which can be very expensive and often doesn’t really work.

To be honest if I had low water pressure my only concern would be Salamander themselves. We always found them to make great pumps at a great price but, in our experience, they have a terrible customer support team  - we had one customer told she’d have to accompany the Salamander engineer to the ATM so she could pay him, as he wasn’t leaving without payment! Which was bad enough but the bloody pump he’d been called out to look at was faulty. Sadly he was either too incompetent to work this out for himself or under a lot of corporate pressure to earn his keep.... Either way, we ended up with a very upset customer and so we avoid Salamander these days - although we might be tempted to give this pump a try.

La-Co Cool Gel

To my mind “proper” plumbing uses copper tube. I’ve nothing against plastic pipework - it’s terrific stuff for quickly laying the backbone of CH systems - but it’s best hidden from view where the white, floppy, pipework and the large, knobbly, fittings can’t offend the eye.

Of course there are a few rather large problems with the alternative, copper tubing. Most of these revolve around the fact that it’s best soldered, which in turn requires a modicum of skill and risks burning down your home. Reducing your home to smouldering rubble is known within the plumbing trade as “a bad thing”... and so the heat mat was invented.

In the bad old days I suspect that heat mats were made of asbestos and lasted a life time – partly because they killed you early. These days they may be safer but they have the life expectancy of a Mayfly with a chesty cough, mainly because they can’t cope with direct heat. 

This is a real same because more often than not the time you really need a heat mat is when you have no choice but to aim your blowtorch directly at a flammable surface.

However there is an alternative to the heat mat, which is a spray on gel called “La-Co Cool Gel” which I’m fairly certain I failed to mention in the book - It’s only writing this up now  that I’ve realised it’s not called LL Cool Gel. Which is a shame as that is what I always ask for.

Cool Gel is known as a heat barrier spray and from what I can make out it’s basically water made firm by holding it in gel form.. and it’s superb! I wouldn’t spray into on carpets and the like – although it would probably work - but, aside from that it can be used everywhere else you might want to use a heat mat.

It’s also very handy if you have to heat up a pipe that is very close to a valve. The valves themselves often contain rubber washers which melt or deform when heated. To prevent this just spray the pipe with the cool gel between the valve and where you’re heating. The heat now travels as far at the gel where it is miraculously stopped in its tracks, preserving the valve whilst you solder your joint.

Alas, it’s not cheap but it is well worth the investment as it’s still considerably cheaper than a new home.