Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 22:49:00 on Sat,
2 May 2020, Roger Hayter remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 08:19:24 on Thu, 30 Apr 2020,
Roland Perry remarked:
House has old lead pipe water main. This needs extending (with polypipe)
to new position within kitchen extension.

Plumber says this is difficult if the old pipe isn't circular enough to
attach the connector he has in mind.

Isn't there a connector which could be soldered to the lead pipe side,
somewhat irrespective of its exact profile?

[My preference is to polypipe all the way to the water meter in the
pavement, but that involves digging up (and reinstating) rather a lot of
concrete path. As well as presumably getting the Water Company
involved.]

ps The water company previously tested the potable supply for lead, and
declared it so low it probably wasn't a lead pipe anyway. Ho Hum.

I value all the comments made so far. Here's a photo (now I've started
to take apart the kitchen unit with the old stopcock in it).

http://www.perry.co.uk/images/stopcock.jpg

Points to note:

When buying the house the only visibility of the pipe was above the
unit's chipboard floor, about 1cm, which everyone declared to be black
polypipe (despite my misgivings).

There's a lead-to-copper connector whose body is almost spherical.

Above that is a copper reducer before the stopcock itself.

The floor is concrete and Marley tiles, and the stopcock needs moving
about two feet towards the camera, with the floor in the area below the
stopcock eventually being in the open air and level.

My solution so far has been to install a polypipe from roughly where the
camera is, to outside where the lead pipe starts heading for the street.

Didn't want to be doing any of this, but as the contractors have fled
because of lockdown, I would like to get them up to speed as quickly as
possible when they do eventually return.

How are you planning to bury the MDPE under the floor so that it is at
least 2' deep where it passes through the wall? Doesn't this involve
digging up the kitchen floor?

The groundworks chap has already done that. Of course, it won't *be* a
wall eventually, because it is being demolished to make one large room.
There's already an RSJ fitted above (2 o'clock to 8 o'clock in the photo
if that makes sense). But lockdown happened the day before the stub of
that wall was scheduled to come out. (The main thing it's doing useful
at the moment is keeping the old stopcock upright).

Is there no way you can extend copper in place of the existing stopcock
and box it in?

No, because the old stopcock will be bang in the middle of the floor of
the 'corridor' around the new central island in the kitchen/diner.

The only way to re-use the lead piping internally, would be to dig
around it (rather restricted space and the floor tiles are as tough as
old boots) down sufficiently far to be able to fit a right-angle bend to
the left, and away to where the new sink will be.

If you are going to be digging up the floor and a 2' hole outside

The floor where the sink is being repositioned to has been dug up
already, as has the whole area on the "outside" of the wall (which is
"inside" the new side extension). It was when digging that up that they
discovered the lead water main, which is along the side of the house and
then right angle turn into the old kitchen under the original wall.

I'd strongly recommend replacing the whole of the lead pipe to the
stopcock.

See my original posting. That's plan B, but arranging that during
lockdown is going to be difficult. It also means digging up (and
reinstating) 20m of concrete path (also difficult in lockdown, as well
as a fairly major project.).

When I did mine (only about 7m) I dug a person sized (18' to 2') trench
but with modern equipment they can do it only about 120mm wide, even if
you can't do it with a mole.




In a previous house where I did a very similar project (new
kitchen/diner extension at the rear) they polypiped it off the old lead
main under the floorboards just inside the front door. And very little
drama.

If you're going to have the join outside I'd recommend an (insulated
above) inspection chamber.



If by any chance you've got retricted flow it may help this, as well as
avoid the worry of a buried adaptor with two compression joints.

I'm probably as worried about spending another six weeks with no kitchen
to speak of (we've effectively got a standpipe where the old sink was,
and a 3" hole in the floor as a drain).

It doesn't, BTW, sound as though your plumber knows very much about
plumbing, which is a bit worrying. Make sure he remembers pipe inserts,
the best of us can forget those in the heat of the moment.


--

Roger Hayter