"Gordon Henderson" wrote in message

Another daft question, (thanks for all the screwfix shop replies - works
a treat!), but the incoming mains to our house is a black semi-flexible
pipe of about an inch in external diameter. This has what looks like an
odd coupling that looks like some sort of compression joint to 15mm pipe
where I fitted a stop cock some years back... (works fine).

Our water pressure is high (8 bar), but flow rate low (under 10 litres
a minute) I think due to some external restriction in the pipe work -
which I'm not prepared to dig up at this point in time.

I'd like to remove the join to the 15mm pipe, fit a coupler to 22mm pipe,
a quarter turn full-bore "stop cock" to make it fool-proof for wifey,
then fit a pressure reducer to 3.5 bar, and then run 22mm pipe from
there - hoping to get a better flow rate at a pressure that'll reduce
the possibility of burst pipes (not a plesant sight round here when it
happens - as it did to our neighbours recently)

Googling finds various names for plastic pipe - mostly seem to refer to
blue alcathene or MDPE pipe, but I'm not sure that's what I have. It's
black!

So can some kind soul tell me the name/official size of the pipe and
suggest a coupling device?

Thanks,

Gordon


Is the pipe plastic, or are you looking at an old lead pipe? Lead can feel,
look and act like plastic in some cases, and the coupling you talk about
could be a lead to copper fitting which was used when the solder wipe joint
was outlawed back in the eighties, early ninties.

So look at the black pipe again and gently scrape the outside of it with a
small blade to make absolutely sure that it is what you think it is.

...