19 Feb 2024
Status:
– electricity – house uncertified;
– boiler – to be moved (but boiler man off work);
– cold water – should work, but route from attic to kitchen not known, also garage tap not working[? why];
– hot water – not working – to connect once boiler done; pipework to finish from immersion tank;
– radiators – pending boiler, to check for leaks.
26 February2024
Electricity – waiting for electrician.
Boiler installer was injured and delayed 6-8 weeks, he is to re-locate and certify boiler. New hole required in roof (which has been re-clad).
Plumbing – mains water to toilet cistern – required because Grohe cistern requires over 1 bar of pressure and it was installed from attic tank which has, at most, 0.5 bar pressure (0.1 bar per meter above).
Plumbing in attic – some of pipework has been sorted out. Legacy pipes from old immersion location – which should have been moved by builder; removing old obsolete pipes in attic. Noted overflow from storage tank has an open end, to be terminated, and the route of that pipe to downstairs to be discovered, as overflow needs to go into waste system rather than unterminated. Plumbing – Piping via attic pump for hot and cold, required (in attic), for new shower.
Legal – Appearance to summonses from Clearson Holdings Limited and Seamus Hampson, requesting details of claim.
27 and 28 February 2024
Mains pipe – looking for this from attic.
For some reason the [mains?] water tap at front of garage stopped working. Is it related to anything? Mains source is in attic. Tracing mains source down from attic over lintel above entrance to new shower room, which was edge of old house. Made hole in plasterboard, discovered that *the stack pipe and the *extract fan exit to the space outside old roof and under extension roof – quite a small area and not sure if sufficiently ventilated. The stack pipe should surely go above the roof?
1st and 2nd March 2024
Working on above, and flooding of front after snow. Problem is builder did concreting at front but did not profile it away from the house, and also the drain he put is blocked (always was?), also it takes all the roof water from around the house and is only meters away from the first drain (which does work). Hence flooding, damage to front wall of the house (paint is peeling on the inside of the room), the drain is blocked needs clearing. Elsewhere the plastic gutters are sagging. They were replaced by the builder, and builder should have recognised the existing downpipe in the garage, but they sailed the new plastic gutters right over it.
Monday 4th March 2024
Going now out to the house to see about the water mains, hot water – why does water not appear in kitchen tap now that it is linked to the shower’s hot pipe, which comes from the the immersion tank, if the system is open? Also, today, to try to unblock the drain at the front with new Karcher.
Tuesday 5th March 2024
Well, the good news is that the drain unblocked, at the cost of a Karcher (e200) and drain cleaner (e80) and my labour. The blockage was from fine silt made into a problem by lots of rubble.
The bad/good news is that I found the reason there is no hot water in the kitchen tap. The pipe to the tap is not linked to the immersion tank, as previously stated and understood. But neither was it linked to the pipework for hot water. So, I connected the shower’s hot pipe to the pipe coming from the ground – which suggested it was connected to all the hot pipes in the house, in particular the kitchen. When I opened the valve to pressurise water, I hear a stream of water in the kitchen, but it’s not from the tap. It’s from an open pipe unterminated ending under the corner of the worktop unit, well hidden from sight. Below, shows the pipe and water on wall and ground, where it would flow under the laminate.
The pipe under the cabinet base on the left is the supposed hot water pipe to the hot tap for the kitchen sink. But it is dry, no idea what it is connected to. Meanwhile, the hot water in the pipes generally – taking a feed from the pipe to the hot side of the shower – is connected to an unterminated pipe which is very difficult to see coming from the wall on the right and the end is hidden under the corner unit, below a quartz worktop and cabinets. When linked in, the water flooded from that pipe. Solution: connect that pipe to the hot tap of the kitchen, then wonder where the existing hot pipe below left comes from.
Wednesday 6th March 2024
Today, I attached the rogue unterminated pipe left under the corner kitchen unit, to the input for the hot tap of the kitchen sink. It works, but pressure is low. This is the pipe that is connected by a T joint to the pipe from the immersion tank to the shower. The lack of pressure may be due to the narrow flexible pipe to the kitchen tap itself.
That is the hot to the kitchen sink. What about the cold? And the old bathroom cold is not working, nor the garage tap. I realised that in putting the new attic tank, we had only plumbed in the pipe from the attic tank to the immersion tank, whereas there are cold taps still fed from a pipe going from the attic (and the old storage tank) to the general direction of the old kitchen and old immersion tank location. I had assumed that these two pipes from the attic to the old immersion tank were obsolete, but only one was [Note from future: this assumption turned out to be wrong. When I painfully squeezed myself close to the eves under the old roof, I found that both pipes from attic to old kitchen had been terminated in the attic, curled under the narrow end of the eves. I guess early during the building works for the extension, they were pulled up and terminated in the attic but not re-connected for new arrangement, but also disconnecting the old gravity water supply to the old part of the house, eg old bathroom and garage.] One pipe was probably the expansion from the hot water of the immersion tank in the old location, the other being the cold gravity fed water coming from the attic tank to the downstairs taps – those which were supplied by the attic tank. So in cutting this off, I [thought I] had also cut off the supply to the old bathroom tap and the garage. I will connect up tomorrow that old pipe [so I thought] to the new storage tank, with a T connector to a pipe that goes from the storage tank to the pump in the attic. I abandoned the job today, after a few visits to the plumbing shop, because I had forgotten to get the pipe inserts for the 3/4 inch pipe (for qual-pex PVC pipes).
That should sort out the cold water gravity supply, apart from the pump issue for the shower. Some more work this week should clarify if the system is OK.
13 March 2024
I am in London this fortnight. The last thing on the house is that the ‘old gravity water’ ie the water from the gravity tank to the old taps (not included in the extension) is not working/connected [as stated above because the feed pipe I thought was connecting from the attic tank to the gravity fed taps was not actually connected but terminated in the attic – very difficult to see]. This includes the old bathroom sink cold tap and the garage tap. The old shower is specifically fed from the gravity water, but [even if the pipes from attic to old kitchen which I have connected to the storage tank were connected to below] the gravity water to the taps in old bathroom sink and garage come from a join that I cannot see in the attic [the reason the water was not coming through below was that it was not connected above, but if I knew where was the feed to the gravity fed taps in old bathroom and garage, I would have some chance.]. It is likely that the feed to these taps is underground [but I don’t know how to connect to the upstairs storage tank.]. [As previewed above,] The feed from the storage tank in the attic going downstairs to the [old bathroom and garage] taps, I thought I had found it but on closer inspection the pipes were terminated in the attic. Now there is a small stub of pipe upstairs that might lead downstairs to the taps in the old bathroom and garage, but I doubt it. There is also a pipe coming from the ground under the kitchen sink which is not producing water, although there was water in it, so somewhere at some time it had water. Another thing I need to check when back is whether the overflow from the attic storage tank is going anywhere. It seems to be going to the side of the old house, it should go into a drain in the ground. At the moment, there is a tee off from it that is unterminated upstairs, but that is easy enough to terminate.
Based on the above explanation, it’s my opinion that Seamus Hampson/Clearson Holdings Limited (trading as Clearson Contracts and Developments) knew that the plumbing was a complete mess, unfinished, dangerous with unterminated live pipes going God knows where. But instead of just saying, look there is a problem here but it can be sorted out, they just delayed for a few years – yes, years – with promises of finishing it, and then left – no apology, no compensation, no repayment for work undone (apart from the work badly done). I believe it is in the public interest that this should be known, as otherwise they will do the same to others and set a bad example for business in Ireland generally.
