Plumber / Plumbers / Plumbing - Show us your pipes

Thanks a lot, not sure how I failed to find that.

It’s been a long evening

Fitted my own hot water tap this evening, had a lot of weeping, mostly from me. Hard to know how hard to crank a nut and if values should look nice...

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Did you apply thread tape or similar to the cones/ threads??

https://www.screwfix.com/p/ptfe-tape-12m-x-12mm/76841

Is the right hand side cross threaded? Might be lens distortion.

Hello pipesmen and pipeswomen,

What is going on here? Looks like 10mm pushfit on to 15mm pushfit onto an isolator elbow onto the 1/2 inch inlet.

The elbow is leaking. Am I best to replace that like for like?

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Wall-mounted bathroom sinks... Are the mounting holes the same width apart on all sinks? I have a cracked sink and hope to just get a new sink and bolt it up. Is that optimistic? If I need to drill new holes then it's a bit more of a pain and I might just put a pedestal one in.

The pedestals don't really support the basin, they are secondary support but the sink is usually fixed to the wall still.

I don't know about the spacing but it's often possible to get a detailed drawing of the item you're buying unless it's so cheap that you should maybe steer clear of it.

Discovered our garden tap had a built in flow restrictor

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Afternoon plumbing people
Need a bodge (sorry, sorry) to stop a slight but annoying leak as shown?
Have run out of money to have it done properly (will get around to it as so many other things need attention:(
Tried that buntyl(?) tape, totally useless
No idea if I can avoid replacing the whole bit?

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You and @aggi are in the same boat
@dbr recommends Loctite 55

Actually it probably just needs PTFE tape around the olive before assembly.

Ah, thanks all, will give all the things a go

around the olive

Umm, had to look that up as well
Bikes I can mostly fix
Pipes, not so much

Replacing the whole part won't be super expensive if you can, A. Find a good independent plumbers merchant and B. Fit it yourself.

If you're doing some DIY plumbing you need LSX. Available from Screwfix etc, will end your plumbing woes.

So, tried tightened the nut
Sorry compression thingummy-whatever
Leak 95% stopped
Always check your nuts
Just saying

If you've taped the olive and its not super fucked, once tightened it should be ok.

Regular rant about cost of tap things. The lever for our bath filler has broken. £30 for a new one!

https://superbath.co.uk/hansgrohe-shower-head-holder-exafill-s-finishing-set-sliding-10/11-21095

Clearly the knob business is a good one to be in

Had a temp limit knob break on Hans Grohe shower, emailed them and they sent me 2 replacements.

Too late, already ordered from their parts store. I shall try and use it to plead poverty in my end of year review at work.

Most boring fucking question in the world, but I need a good quality y piece for appliances. Just had one from screwfix explode and dump water all over me and the kitchen (after replacing the last one I bought two years ago which had developed a leak). Are there actually better quality ones, or am I really unlucky/user error?

this is probably the ticket, eh? https://www.toolstation.com/washing-machine-brass-y-piece/p57733

Brass, + GasFitters (thicker) ptfe tape always preferable to a plastic 'Y'-piece.

My boiler is in the attic. Getting into the attic involves a ladder, which is a pain.

Over the winter, the pressure in my heating system slowly drops (God knows why, but I am told that this is quite normal?). This ultimately causes a low pressure failure and the boiler turns off.

The first I know of this is that the heating gets colder and then we have no hot water. And then I have to go up into the attic and repreasurise the system. Or worse, as happened last week, I am away and my ladder-averse other half has to suffer without heating or hot water until I get back.

So, my question is, is it possible to install a pressure guage and repreassurisation loop (like this one) somewhere else in the system, in a more convenient location?

I'd rather get a sense check if the idea here, before calling a plumber to do it...

I had the same thing on our old system. I bought some little sticky dots that turn red when they get wet - like they put inside phones etc to show water damage. Stuck em on each rad pipe below the valve - found the leak and fixed it. It was small and would dry out instantly due to the heat so almost impossible to find otherwise.

Better to find the cause than treat the symptom. Heating systems should not regularly loose pressure to the point of failure.

Oooh, that's a good idea.

I'll get on it.