I’ve been undertaking a bit of plumbing work for the first time in my life in a house we just moved in to. So far i’ve replaced the shower, the tap in the bathroom and am now trying to replace the tap in the kitchen.

The fact that it is an old house (maybe 100 yr old) helps as it means the plumbing system is simple in that there is only a pump (water supplied from a well), a hot water tank leading to a single tap in the kitchen and then a hot and cold leading to the bathroom and splitting to supply the three things in there. The fact that it is an old house also means it is a pain in the arse as things are bizarre sizes.

I’ve managed to connect the cold water supply for the kitchen tap as for some reason that has a nice 3/4” fitting to connect in to however the hot water pipe seems to be some size in between 3/4” and 1”. I had a 3/4” inch fitting i tried and didn’t fit as it was too small, assumed it must be a 1” pipe, went to the shop, bought that and no luck, it was too big! Looking online I can’t seem to find any obvious answer as to what it might be.

Does anyone have any idea what it might be, which adapter I might need to convert it to a 1/2″ thread (what my tap fitting is) or if i would have to do something else all together.

Some photos below to show what I am talking about. As you can see there is a large nut which threads on to the pipe, this then has smaller threads so you can screw in a smaller piece (the piece you see to the left of the old thread locker stuff) however this is also a weird size!

Any help appreciated.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/YhSAuZ]IMG-20170907-WA0000[/url] by Willy Gibson, on Flickr

[url=https://flic.kr/p/XUn2YW]IMG_20170907_203626[/url] by Willy Gibson, on Flickr

between 3/4” and 1”

5/8″ ?

As someone who lives in a 120 year old house and has 20 years experience of refurbishing old buildings I’ll throw in this nugget of advice.

Replace all of it with new as soon as you can.

^^^^ What he says.

Been there, seen it, done it !

You will come across all sort of different size fittings and diameter of pipe that are completely non-standard. Where possible just run new lengths of pipe back as far as possible.
Lots of new products like plastic or plastic coated metal are much cheaper than copper and a lot easier to work with and joint etc.

5/8″ ? 7/8″ must try harder pp

As someone who lives in a 120 year old house and has 20 years experience of refurbishing old buildings I’ll throw in this nugget of advice.

Replace all of it with new as soon as you can

5/8″ is smaller than 3/4″. 7/8″ is the next size up. It might have been properly bodged* and that’s a metric fitting, in which case I’d try 22mm.
If you want to end up at 1/2″, you’re after a reducer fitting. Seem to be listed on the plumbing websites as diameter #1 x diameter #2, e.g. 22mm x 1/2″

*which it seems to have been, given you can see thread tape either side of the nut on the bottom picture 😯

Disclaimer: IANAP

7/8″ must try harder pp

‘s what I meant. 😳

Been a long day.

What perchy said.

Kind of OK if you’re all on 1/2 and 3/4 stuff, merchants will carry adapters, but anything else, strip and replace.

Thanks for the replies, turns out it was a 22mm so 7/8” of an inch? Got it all sorted now!

I kind of did as you explained, taken it back as far as i could but given that the house is old and there is not a huge amount of plumbing means that taking it back as far as i could was not far. The whole plumbing system for the house is – In pipe from well -> new pump to pressurise system from 1bar – 3bar -> directly to cold tap in kitchen and cold supply in bathroom (splits into three in bathroom for toilet, shower and tap), and directly into hot water tank (big old constantly on type beast, nice and inefficient) -> from hot water tank to kitchen tap and also to hot tap and shower in the bathroom. And that is the whole system, it is only the things around the hot water tank that seem to be weird sizes, or maybe it isn’t that weird and i just didn’t realise that there were pipe sizes in mm instead of inches, all the bathroom stuff and the cold water tap seem to be nice new inch sizes.

The reason we are changing everything is that we have just moved into a new rented property which is supplied via a well (+stream into the well) which apparently dries out sometimes when there is little rain. So as part of the rental agreement the plan is to fix the issue (to the landlords cost 🙂 ), first thing is to change everything to more efficient and water saving appliances in the house and then we are going to move on to expanding the well or looking at rain water harvesting to increase the water storage size. So expect some threads about rain water harvesting in the future!

So far i’ve managed to swap the shower, the kitchen tap and bathroom tap and now we’re gonna tackle changing the toilet today after having never done any plumbing in my life before! Just learning as we go which is kind of fun/sometimes frustrating.

Why would new stuff be in inches? Britain has been talking Metric since 1965! Most common plumbing sizes these days are all metric 6,8,10,15,22 etc. Some are close to the old imperial stuff 15mm = 1/2″. 22mm is close to 3/4″ but not compatible unless you swap olives.

The confusion sometimes arises as people talk pipe size normally, but you might be talking BSP thread sizes?

Either way, glad you’re sorted.