In this episode, we show you how we sorted out another leak. Watch till the end to see the result of our leak fix.
The Issue
We show you in the video the original water pipe that came into the unit. That went to the kitchen sink and the toilet and the shower and everything. It’s quite a small pipe. And you can see the two panels of the wall that are just pushed together. They’re the concrete panels and they’ve just sort of pushed the joint down in here.
Now, being a plumber and all, Ben noticed that there would be expansion and contraction while the pipe is not sleeved and quite small. Now with the new renovation happening, we would have a disabled toilet, shower, a kitchen, and another toilet. So we would need a bigger water main. So we thought we wouldn’t use this pipe.
We show you outside the original water main that came up to a tap. So we put a new tap on and a tee in to go up to a new supply. We’ve got an isolation valve and that goes up into the unit. So inside, you can see the new water main. It’s a large 20mm and that’s in the roof space, or the ceiling space, between the upstairs mezzanine and the downstairs. The new C-channel will go on there and the floor joist will go in there.This can run through the ceiling to go all the way over to the new disabled. So that’s why we stuck in that there.
All starting new and we’re glad we did because we noticed the other day. We could hear something and the original pipe started leaking water. You can see it’s all pouring out, filling up with all the water and everything. So you can imagine in a few months time when the office is all finished and we go away for the weekend or something and come back, then all this would be soaking wet. We’d have to knock out the flooring, then try and redo this pipe. So a bit of prep beforehand, like putting a new water main in just to start afresh is a good idea. Because eventually the copper’s going to wear down.
Now we’ve got to try and find if it goes all the way down and out and try cap it off. So we’re not dealing with this anymore and then we can just continue on with the new one once the thing’s finished. Good to do a bit of forward planning and stuff like. It’s so much easier to do that now than to stuff around trying to hope for the best later on.
The Leaking Pipe
You can see the water pipe goes off on a bit of an angle. You can see it’s already leaking there. And again, no insulation or anything on it. We show you outside how the neighbour’s pipe and our pipe are rubbing together. It’ll probably leak soon too. And that goes all the way down. It’s going to be quite hard to cap off with the crimping tool, so might have to just cut it somehow, bend it out a little bit and then just have to solder up the end of it and cap it off there. And hope for the best.
Capping Off
We use the sanding paper just to clean it up. It’s pretty easy to do it now. Especially that bit there now, put some bit of decent pressure on it. Clean it all up.
The water meter doesn’t turn off exactly right. We don’t have a re-seater for the larger pipe. So we’ve cut the pipe off so it’s ready to go now. It’s got a lot of water in it. So what we’re going to do is get the air compressor and blow, compress there, down into that copper there. And that’ll come all the way out here and we’ll leave this tap open so it’ll clear that whole main. That whole water main will just be cleared out with air.
Once we get it all out, then straight away we can heat it up, crimp it, weld it, solder it shut, and then she’s all good. And then we can turn the water back on. This will be the one that will isolate for the unit, once all the new bathrooms are done.
Result
So we’ve blasted the line with air compressor to ensure the water is all blown out. Then we solder and weld the pipe and crimp it up. And then we turn the water back on to make sure it’s all good. It all seems all right. In the future it’ll only be a leak under there and if any water comes up, at least we’ll know where it is. So now, that whole pipe there is deleted, so that’ll stop leaking. We can just remove that now because we won’t require it anymore.
