I'm making some serious alterations to my kitchen. The rising main
needed moving three feet to the left, and the stopcock was seized. We
have a recently-installed water meter at the front of our property, so
shutting off the water outside was not a problem.

What concerns me is that I've dug down over a foot around the rising
main in the kitchen, and it appears to be copper coming out of the
bare ground. This seems less than ideal to me. Anyway, we cut off the
old, stuck stopcock, fitted a Speedfit elbow and took some plastic
pipe to a new stopcock. Possibly not ideal either, but there was
insufficient room to solder.

Some bits of polystyrene sheet had been packed around the copper pipe,
where it comes up through a fairly flimsy dpm (which I've largely
shredded in digging up the flooe along the edge of the kitchen). I
can't dig down any further without taking up a substantial part of the
kitchen floor, and removing the concrete threshold and the floor
outside it (once outside the house, now a utility room). The rising
main is right at the back of the house, and the meter and water
company's stopcock are right at the front of the property - which is a
detached chalet bungalow built in 1963.

Anyway, does the team think I should be worried about the copper pipe
in the ground, or indeed the Speedfit elbow that will be reburied
under the floor? I was thinking of insulating the whole lot with
squirty foam, but I guess that's not waterproof so won't be any help
against corrosion - and in any case, the copper disappears into the
ground for a unknown distance.

Worst case- the copper corrodes through, or my Speedfit leaks, and the
first I know about it is a hefty bill after gallons of metered water
have leaked out under the kitchen..


Regards
Richard