Withington Co-operative Eco-house - plumbing

Turning the heating on

Robert — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 22:49:36 +0000

Today we got the boiler fired up, and the heating running on the first and second floors. There's still more to do on the plumbing, but it felt like a major milestone to actually heat the place up! I intend to give it a longer run tomorrow to see how the building envelope performs in terms of heat retention.

A fuller write-up of the heating system eventually used to follow in the next few days. For now I'll summarise - we've used a Worcester Bosch "system" boiler with floor-by-floor programming of heating times and temperatures, and an external weather compensation controller, together with a Navitron 250 litre cylinder which will supply hot water in conjunction with the solar thermal collector (this part still to be done). Here's a recent photo showing the boiler install in progress:

Other trades have also been progressing - second fix electrical and joinery, etc.

Spacetherm internal wall insulation (and a general update)

Robert — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 18:32:11 +0000

A while since the last entry... we've now taken delivery of £4,500-worth of Spacetherm, for internally insulating the front wall (see article for a more detailed description). As the delivery was on an 18-tonne truck, we had to decant it into my 3.5-tonne van in order to get as close as possible to the house. The contractors are using their joiner to fit the Spacetherm: a slightly curious choice, but makes sense given that there's some difficult angles around the bay windows, and cutting the stuff neatly will be half the battle.

The walls have been prepared now, and the actual fixing is due to get underway next week.

The plumbing is ongoing, with domestic hot and cold water and most of the waste pipes in now, we're moving on to the rainwater system and radiator circuits next week. Although the on-site work is progressing slowly, the bigger difficulty is that I've had to pretty much abandon the original idea of using a Baxi Ecogen MicroCHP unit in conjunction with a thermal store/buffer vessel. Although it's great in theory, the reality is that Baxi don't have a wide enough installer network for a one-off installation like ours to be achieved cost-effectively. So I am, reluctantly, looking at a condensing boiler system instead - will write more on this next week.

The plaster is pretty much dried out; the builders have fitted the new lintel over the front door, and the new kitchen door was delivered today; will be fitted next week.

United Utilities have promised us that they will be gone from outside the house by 2 October. Fingers crossed!

1st fix plumbing - pros and cons of plastic pipe

Robert — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 22:22:58 +0000

This week has seen the (belated) start of 1st fix plumbing. The main contract includes all "domestic" plumbing, and the main contractors have subcontracted this to a guy they described as plumber, but who doesn't appear to be anything of the sort. Between them they've decided to use a plastic pipe system called Polypipe - and here I learnt a valuable lesson: next time, I'll specify in the tender documents that I expect plumbing to be done with copper pipe and solder fittings. As the contract doesn't specify any such thing, I now have to accept their chosen method, or be prepared to pay extra.

I ended up spending about half of today actually working on-site alongside the plumber, as this was the only practical way the work was going to get done to my satisfaction, in terms of pipe routes etc. I'm keen to minimise run lengths from the hot water cylinder to the wash basins and showers, in order to reduce water wastage due to people running off the standing water. Having worked with the Polypipe system myself, I can see it has its advantages: principally convenience, especially for a non-plumber who isn't fully tooled-up with blowtorch and pipe-bending machines; the pipe is flexible enough (even up to 22mm) to be fed through centre-drilled joist holes (something you could never do with copper, apart from 10mm); and it's cheaper than copper too.

The plumber seemed somewhat surprised, upon meeting me as the client, that I actually care about pipe routes and diameters. Presumably all his other domestic customers just want their kitchens and bathrooms to look nice and shiny, and don't ask any questions as long as the water comes out of the taps. Here's an example of his "spaghetti plumbing" (within the ceiling void above the ground-lloor bathroom):

Withington Co-operative Eco-house - plumbing

Turning the heating on

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Spacetherm internal wall insulation (and a general update)

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1st fix plumbing - pros and cons of plastic pipe

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