Unfitgeezer I doubt they’d pay for the removal and reinstatement of my floor, stairs, kitchen floor and units.

I know that, I meant having your original pipes changed to a plastic one and getting rid of all your old and possibly lead pipes maybe the cheaper option in the long run.

They run the hose under the floor which is usually fairly straight forward (not in all cases)

If you’re not going to shift it, then fit a sure stop with a remote control

Unfitgeezer I doubt they’d pay for the removal and reinstatement of my floor, stairs, kitchen floor and units.

They wouldn’t need to. The new pipe wouldn’t need to follow the same route as the old one.

It just needs to start in the same place and finish somewhere in your kitchen. Preferably somewhere more sensible than it does now.

nealglover – Member

Unfitgeezer I doubt they’d pay for the removal and reinstatement of my floor, stairs, kitchen floor and units.

They wouldn’t need to. The new pipe wouldn’t need to follow the same route as the old one.

It just needs to start in the same place and finish somewhere in your kitchen. Preferably somewhere more sensible than it does now.

This is what I meant well said that man !

Why does it have to finish in the kitchen if there’s already an internal stopcock upstairs? Couldn’t a new feed pipe be routed directly to there (if it was easier/less disruption)?

Here’s a better pic of said join. Re the above, I’ve no idea how they’d route a pipe 20m from one end of the house to the other without obstruction or removing some floor, but I guess thats why I’m not in the trade.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/Dj4e4G]image[/url]

Btw, I can’t reach nor have an implement long enough to scratch the pipe before the cupboard is removed, but I’m guessing as its survived 110 years of british winters its lead. Advice all over t’internet is – run a sinkful of water before consumption first thing in the morning – we have showers before breakfast anyway – and that if we are in a hard water area, which we are then we may be better protected by limescale deposits.

However, there’s 50% our London Borough with Victorian builds, the others approx 1930’s or 1970’s builds, so we won’t be the only one’s affected.

Re the upstairs stopcock – its also similarly sunk into the wall inside some boxing in, with a hatch to access by hand.

Our property’s were one up/one down flats in the 70’s so I guess whomever converted ours back to a house didn’t think about leaking stopcock glans.

Why does it have to finish in the kitchen

It doesn’t, but that’s where the copper starts so it makes sense.
And it’s also a pretty sensible place to have a stopcock too, under the kitchen sink is a fairly standard place to start, for anyone that doesn’t know for sure where it is.

Hmmm. This image would have me believe is iron:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/De9LrB]pipes4[/url]

Guess I’ll find out in March when I have a scratch. Certainly the builders thought it was Iron.

What is the floor construction?
As you’re have a new kitchen, whilst the rooms empty, and if a new plastic pipe can’t happen. Get a plumber to lift the floor boards, cut the lead/iron/platinum pipe below the floor, joint it to new pipe work there and then bring up under the new sink to a new stopcock. From there it can be run behind the new cabinets etc to wherever it needs to go to joint the pipe work going to th attic.
As above, you know that the stopcock is in a bedroom behind a hatch in an emergency, but everyone else would look under a sink?

You can also use an insuduct to bring a new blue pipe into the house at a sensible location without having to breach the foundation/floor.

INSUduct

Hi Kryton, defiantly iron, you don’t have a thread on lead. l misunderstood your original description , thought the iron was straight into the stopcock.
The setup you have is easy to modify, just undo the top compression nut where the copper starts and start again with new 15 mm copper or plastic pipe( John guest/hep2o) leaving the stopcock out.
Don’t undo the whole brass fitting, just the top nut which you can reuse with a new olive.
Hope this helps, Paul.

singlesman thats great, thanks.

So, in order to explore any potential element of doom, it was turning the stop cock that cause it to leak.

So lets assume I remove this one and replace with pipe therefore saving the oven/units from a potential soaking, should the one on the floor above need turning off and it leaks, that’d also be a problem as a part of the wall would need tearing away for spanner access.

So for my sanity, how quickly do stop cock glans wear out?

Just as an aside there’s a third stopcock in the pipe as it traverse across the loft to the boiler location, I tried turning that once but it wouldnt budge despite no signs of corrosion so I didn’t force it. But why 3 stopcocks each about 3-4m apart?

Depends on what they are isolating. There may be a rising main to the bathroom coming off between the two valves.

Don’t think you can second guess how long the packing around the spindle will last, 1 year /50 years, no one can tell.
They are really easy to re- pack though, as long as you have access you don’t even need the water turned off. When your new oven unit goes in won’t there be a storage cupboard above the oven housing? If so couldn’t you relocate the stopcock higher up and have a access panel there?

We could. There’s also a 2ft gap between the top of the unit and the ceiling, so it could be located there removing the issue of not have working space from within the cupboard unit.

Stoner may be right – between this and the stopcock in the above floor could be pipes to the bathroom, so I think I should not remove it.

gland is easy to repack. Wind in the stop cock, remove the handle and undo the gland to repack it. Once repacked and left untouched it should last years and probably less risk than disturbing all the compression joints to remove the stopcock which could end up leaking.

That above, my stopcock is some ancient thing that came from the 1960s local authority store containing everything you could imagine that doesn’t align with any modern standard. With that in mind, it doesn’t move though I would like to turn it 90 degrees axially, the last time it was fiddled with it leaked for a while so I’m rather reluctant.