Hot water repipe and secondary circuit in Guidepost
This is a massive old house in Sheepwash, and the customer had no hot water at any of the downstairs taps. The cause was a hot water run leaking under the concrete ground floor, so much that there was barely any pressure coming out of the taps at all. Rather than break up the floor, I cut off the downstairs circuit and repiped the whole ground floor from the floor above.
- Job
- Hot water repipe, secondary circuit
- Time on site
- One week
- Included
- New copper runs, isolation valves, secondary circuit
- Outcome
- Instant hot water at every tap
The problem
The house had lost hot water to every downstairs tap. Tracing it back, the hot water pipework running under the concrete ground floor was leaking badly, so much water was escaping into the floor that there was no pressure left at the taps.
Digging up a concrete floor through a finished house would have meant days of mess and making good, so I looked for a better route.
Repiping from the floor above
Instead of breaking out the concrete, I cut off and abandoned the buried downstairs pipework and ran new copper from the floor above, dropping feeds down to each room. Floors came up in sections along the landing and bedrooms so the new runs could be clipped, insulated and crossed between joists properly.
Working this way meant I could get the whole ground floor sorted without any plastering. We had thought a wall might need chasing out, but careful routing avoided it completely.
A secondary hot water circuit
A house this size has long pipe runs, so even with new pipework you would be waiting ages for hot water to reach the far taps. I put in a secondary hot water circuit, the same setup hotels use, which keeps hot water moving around the house.
The result is noticeably better pressure and instant hot water when you run a tap, whichever room you are in. All of the new valves are accessible and labelled so the system is easy to isolate in future.
Need a price?
Tell me what you need and I will come and look at it. You get the price before I start.