The plumbing was not finished and it’s difficult to work out. The contract specified first and second fix plumbing. But unterminated pipes were left abandoned all over the place.
I approached several plumbers. Some came and had a good look, and declined to do any work. Because it was so awful, they decided it was full of problems. One company would do limited work, ie to install something new like a tank, but not work on the general system, and the price was quite high, like 1,600 to install a new storage tank (which is just a tank of water with a floating valve and some connections) or similar to replace the immersion tank.
I talked to a plumber that the electrician recommended, but talking to him, he was unlikely to quote based on what he said about the problems. I talked to Dublin Plumbing Services but they only quoted for a storage tank and not the pipework beyond it. And several others. I concluded I needed to do the pipework myself. I tried Dundrum Plumbing Services. I contacted Morgan Hegarty. I tried Alatn at D8 Plumbing. I tried George at dublinplumber24hrs.ie, who was not available but didn’t like the existing pipework. I tried A Aaran, who may look at it after several weeks. Dun Laoghaire Plumbing – no response. Dave at DDV Ltd wasn’t interested. Kenneth Murphy did not quote but said it all needed re-doing. Cabinteely Plumbing – not available. Parsons Plumbing, two juniors called out and looked at it for an hour but the boss did not want to do the work. Asked another plumber, Pat. Ciaran at Ateam, not his area. Dublin Plumbing Services and Co-op. But no one wanted to do it.
The extension involved a new kitchen sink and new shower room with shower, sink, and toilet. Water serves taps etc in the house as mains water (eg kitchen tap, garden tap, ?toilet, immersion tank top up for central heating system), gravity tank water (cold to other taps/showers, ?toilet), or hot water (from immersion tank to hot water taps/showers). And these water sources need to be considered between new and old parts of the house, because the immersion tank location and the kitchen sink was changed, so the old bathroom tap which is not getting cold water should not have been changed and should be an open system with cold gravity water to the new bathroom taps (which do work). So the pipe from the attic tank to the old cold taps must have been cut somewhere. Pipes which I thought had been going from the attic to the old kitchen and immersion tank location were in fact curled up and terminated in the attic. I had concluded that one of these could be an expansion pipe from the immersion tank and one could be a cold water feed from the gravity tank. Another 1/2 inch terminated pipe in the attic was the mains water to the old kitchen.
Monday 8th April 2024 – Last week, I did an experiment. There was an unterminated 4th pipe under the kitchen sink – one is for the hot tap, one for the cold, one for the washing machine and the other? Given there was no hot water to the bathroom hot tap, I wondered, rather than plumbing a new pipe from the immersion, whether this unterminated pipe could be connected to the hot kitchen supply. Indeed, I found that the two pipes were linked, and a few messy leaks later the hot from the kitchen feeds the hot to the bathroom – it should really come more via a more rational route from the immersion. This is how Seamus Hampson/Clearson Holdings Ltd (t/a Clearson Contracts and Developments) abandoned the plumbing years after starting the job, which was supposed to be completed in 8 weeks.
