Repairs: plumbing and heating
Problem 2: Lead pipework
When carrying out extension and alteration projects, look out for old lead plumbing under floors or sometimes buried within the fabric of the walls beneath the plaster.
This could be 100 years old, and you can expect the lead pipework to be ready to fail, if it has not already done so. It is a false economy to retain it and there are potential health risks.
Check also for earth bond continuity. It was not uncommon for the lead plumbing to be used to pick up earth bonding to the electrical system. If the pipes are removed, new earth bonding will be needed.
Solution
It is usually fairly straightforward to cut off these pipes, but they will need draining.
When carrying out extension works also watch out for galvanic corrosion risk from mixed materials.
|
Simple solutions save time and money A particularly good pipework example was a restaurant being fitted out in Brighton. The building had an extremely narrow frontage but had considerable depth from front to rear. It was a comparatively simple matter to use a continuous pipe run (pulled off a cable reel to draw the pipes through holes in the timber floor joists), taking the pipe runs from front to rear. If a conventional 15mm copper capillary jointed pipe had been used, there would have been a significant amount of soldering and sweating of joints involved. This would influence the addition on the contract sum. |