"Jon" wrote in message
...
Having done some plumbing work in my bathroom over the weekend, I'm now
faced with a problem of confidence... how long should I give it before I
can
be confident that I can go to work and not come home to a house full of
water? The stuff I did was a mixture of soldered joints (everywhere I
could)
and compression fittings (for isolation valves, connection to existing
pipe
which appeared to be a very slightly different diameter and in one place
where I thought waving a blowtorch around could result in setting my hair
on
fire). Has anybody got any opinions on this?

It's really the compression fittings I'm unsure of - the soldered joints
all
seem fine, a couple of the compression ones dripped slightly after turning
back on which in one case was solved by tightening it up (!) and the other
by taking it apart and bunging more jointing compound in there.

In a slightly separate issue, is it possible to use isolation valves to
reduce the flow of water to a fitting? All the taps in my bathroom come
off
the rising main which results in a large imbalance between hot and cold
pressures - fine for the sink mixer but I had some problems with the old
bath mixer. If I can't do this with the isolation valve, is there anything
else I can use for this?

Thanks,
Jon


================
Just one minor thing to watch. You said that one of the pipes seemed to be a
different size. You might have a mix of old 1/2" pipe with new 15mm pipe. If
the joint which required extra jointing compound begins to leak again do a
quick check on your pipe sizes and if necessary re-make the joint with the
correct size of olive.

Cic.