Clearly the emails below show my struggles with the plumbing and other matters after the builders above left the job incomplete, with no apology or compensation paid. The current plumbing position is that I have:
1. got the toilet cistern to stop overflowing by plumbing it to the mains water;
2. got the hot water to taps working by connecting the immersion tank to the new shower and tee-ing off that feed to the general hot water in other taps.
3. rationalised the pipework under the kitchen sink, so it has hot water as per 2. above (connected from new shower feed from immersion tank, but also I had to connect an unterminated pipe that was overflowing under the kitchen cabinet which turned out to be the hot feed). Pressure is low.
4. kitchen cold water is mains (I believe this always worked from the building works – pipe from attic comes down in wall and passes under floor).
5. but there is another feed pipe under kitchen sink which is of unknown purpose.
Remaining to be done:
1. connect the new shower hot and cold to the pump and immersion;
2. connect the new shower mixer bar (that’s another story);
3. connect the garage tap and cold in the old bathroom to the cold, either, as was before, the attic tank water, or perhaps the mains if easier. (I suppose the argument for using the attic tank for non-potable water where possible is that it increases the through-flow of water through the storage tank to keep it fresh, but the pressure suffers.) I am not clear on how to connect the cold in the old bathroom. I would prefer to find the pipe in the attic which feeds it.
4. Verify that the overflow pipe from the attic tank does drain into the underground manhole/drain. (I suspect this will be difficult to prove, but it is unlikely to be a regular issue, as it only arises when the storage tank overflows into the pipe, which should not happen. The overflow pipe probably goes down behind the now-tiled wall of the shower to the manhole area, which is below the immersion tank in the shower room.) Also, to verify that the overflow pipe open end has been stopped.
——– Forwarded Message ——–
| Subject: | Re: Hot water taps at [the house] |
|---|---|
| Date: | Mon, 4 Mar 2024 10:25:42 +0000 |
| From: | [my name] <email@email.com> |
| To: | Clearson Holdings <clearsonholdings@gmail.com> |
| CC: | Tom Loomes <TomLoomes@TomLoomes.ie> |
Just so you know, the current position with the house, which is still not habitable.
Electricity – not yet certified. Waiting on completion of boiler. Boiler man is off sick.
Cold mains water
– the toilet cistern is a Grohe, which requires mains water pressure of at least 1 bar. You installed water to it from the storage tank, which is at most 0.5 bar. Thus the cistern, when it was turned on, constantly overflowed – which was probably why it was not turned on. It was so apparently dishonest to ‘cover up’ things, when just highlighting the issue could have resolved it much earlier. It did not help that Tony completely enclosed the area in tiles, which had to be broken for access to the pipework.
– the mains water goes from the attic to the kitchen tap – which is good – (I do not know the route of mains into the attic) and from the kitchen along the floor to the garden tap. However, it is unclear what route it takes from the attic to the kitchen. Do you know? I ask this as, for some reason, the garage tap is not working and I thought that was mains water.
Hot water
– the hot water has to come from the immersion tank to the house. As noted, the pipework you left went from the hot of the immersion tank to an unterminated pipe underground (again, apparently dishonestly hidden from view). The hot pipe from the immersion tank can go straight to the shower, about 2 feet away through the partition. I have done that now. To get the hot water to the kitchen – how do I do that? You left a hot pipe to the shower (which would never have worked because it was not connected to the immersion tank). I tried on Saturday to tee off that connection to the shower back into the general system of hot water in the house. I expected to see hot water come through in the kitchen hot tap, but it did not come through. I am trying to trace, but the hot pipe to the new shower, which you left, goes into the floor and then emerges in the kitchen, presumably, so it is under the laid concrete floor somewhere. It would be helpful if you could explain what you did here, otherwise I have to start digging, or perhaps make new surface level pipework from the immersion tank, behind the sink and toilet cistern, through the wall to the kitchen corner, and along to the kitchen sink.
– for pressure through the pump in the attic to the new shower, I plan that the hot water through the expansion pipe in the attic gets tee’d off to the hot water input of the pump and the cold water already comes from the mains in the attic. The output of the pump already goes to the old shower but needs to tee off also to the new shower, which means taking two new 1/2 inch pipes from the attic pump down to the new shower, instead of going straight from the immersion tank (for hot)/your cold water feed (from storage tank) to the new shower.
Other pipe work
I have removed some of the old pipes – in particular, you should have removed the old pipes coming from the old location of the immersion tank and fixed them to the immersion tank in its new location.
Soil stack and extract fan from shower room
In researching, I note that the soil stack which used to be in the old kitchenette and going above the roof, now terminates in a small space between the old tiled roof and the lower extension roof. I am pretty sure it should terminate above the roof so that smells do not re-enter the house. You have just hidden it – once again. The extract fan also terminates in this space – which may be Ok in a large attic with ventilation, but this is quite a small space.
Front driveway
The front driveway finish was never very pretty, with steaks etc. But worse is the fact that it is not profiled correctly – so the water flows towards the front bedroom wall, and the paint is peeling off on the inside. Also, the drain you installed on that side is blocked, and I don’t think it ever worked, but the recent snow has made things clear. The water just sits there. I will try to clear it with a new Karcher kit, otherwise I will need to get someone to clear it. I have tried once but it did not budge. Also, you did the gutters, but you sailed them over the downpipe in the garage. Thus the water to your new downpipe (to the blocked drain) comes from all around the house. The only gutter and drain working is the original one, only 2 meters away from yours. You could have made a rill in the concrete and at least surplus water from the blocked gutter would flow into the working one.
As stated before:
– the roof material was always wrong and not agreed to – you put torch-on felt rather than any type of metal. The front dormer was done in grey tiles, not green. There are quite a few broken tiles, and the underlay is not properly layered over the torch-on at the edges.
– the sump pump for the back never worked, and I believe you knew this, as you told me but I assumed you got a working one – not so. I have got a new one.
– the garage door was never installed.
– the kitchen was not finished – for instance, the hob, the kickboard, the plumbing. The washing machine plumbing – the taps you have are the wrong side of the cabinet partition.
This was the front of the house at the weekend. The concrete needs to be re-profiled to flow away from the house, as well as fixing the drain and the gutters.
John Dillon
On Thu 01/02/2024 19:16, John Dillon wrote:
I am writing to keep you updated on [the house] and give you options to repair or compensate.
I have tried without success to engage a plumber to fix the internal plumbing. The problem is that the boiler installer and electrician need the internal plumbing completed in order to complete their work, meanwhile the house is practically uninhabitable – there is no hot water to taps, the heating system leaks water and the gas is not certified, and the electric is not certified or completed. These are things which you were paid to do as first and second fix as included in the first quote in 2021.
The internal plumbing includes the hot water pipes to radiators, and the hot water to taps. When I have approached several plumbers and companies, they refuse to quote for the work on the basis that they cannot be responsible for what is clearly a bad job. The most I have succeeded in is to get a quote for a replacement storage tank, but even then the plumbers will not do any work on the connections beyond that.
So there are two problems, the radiators and the taps. The connections for the rads are generally loose, so they leak, and even a small leak affects pressure. As mentioned, I engaged the specialised leak detection company, Ateam, to identify any leak, and they found a nail in a pipe in the porch, which they fixed. This cost a day of their work for over euro1,000. But there are still other leaks in the pipe connections around the immersion tank, as the joints have only been hand tightened. I would also say that the work has been done falls short of the statutory test of ‘skill and care’ under the supply of services legislation. But the main problem now is the taps.
Unbelieveably, the hot water exit pipe at the top of the immersion tank is piped through the block wall, then via a 4 meter pex pipe (which hangs in mid-air) into a hole in the ground of the garage and in the direction of the hallway under the house. Upon pulling this pipe out, I have just realised it is connected to nothing. If the system were commissioned, the hot water under pressure from the gravity tank would flow out under the house.
Thus the hot water supply pipes under the kitchen sink, and the pipes for the hot water to the 2 showers and the sink in the toilet, all these are not connected to the hot water supply, which is the immersion tank. So if I pump water from a working tap into the supply pipes under the sinks, where do they go? Currently, I am faced with the situation that I need to back-trace these pipes from under the sinks and showers to a location where I can connect the supply. I guess these pipes could go under the floor, under the tiled area in the bathroom or anywhere in the floor. Expert tracers would not be able to locate these pipes – they might find them in a field but unlikely in a house. In other words, unless you reveal where you buried the pipes, I will have to dig up the floor or else ignore the pipework and lay new pipes where possible.
So would you please reveal where you laid the pipes for the hot water taps.
John Dillon
