Best fitting and supplier

[darrena]

Hi
I am a keen DIY'er and currently fitting a wetroom in our ensuite.
I need to move all the central heating and hot and cold water supply by about a foot so need to try my skills at pipework, now this is pretty new to me with only haveing soldered a few pipes many years back and most other work recently being the odd compression joint.

My question relates to the best fittings for a novice, I do have a blow torch but wondered if any of the pre soldered joints are any good, if so which suppliers are best, is there any benifits in purchasin in bulk online?

Any help woild be appreciated, all floor boards so i'm ready to get the work done now!

Cheers
Darren

 

[GQuigley67]

plastic/copper pipe, push fit fittings and compression joints will be the easiest for you, as if you solder a joint wrongly then turn water on and it leaks it is a nightmare to fix with water in the pipe, keep all the hidden pipework plastic and the visual ones copper with compression fittings, maybe even chrome with chrome fittings depends on your choice really if you are going for chrome towel rail with chrome valves then chrome pipe would look the part.

 

[dontknowitall]

If you know how to solder (cleaning, flux, etc) then yorkshire (pre-soldered) fittings are fine and quite easy - that's how I started anyway! It's as cheap to go to your local plumbing merchant for a few of these things than spend ages looking on the internet and paying postage, etc.

 

[plumbandplumber]

Screwfix are cheap for Yorkshire/solder ring fittings

 

[darrena]

Cheers guys,

How many people use plastic fitting these days I have heard mixed feedback and to be honest would worry about the longevity, is it now standard practice to fit them?

 

[Blake]

well most new builds are plastic it seems from recent work I've done. Soldering is the best method, but if you choose to use plastic, I would use there push fit fittings rather than compression myself.

 

[FD Powerflow]

Darren to be honest with you Im all for amateurs giving things a go (I make a lot of money from putting things right). However in this case I would whole heartedly advise you against doing a wetroom, I have a good friend of mine who installs wetrooms professionally and his liability insurance is almost as expensive as mine due to the nature of getting a wetroom wrong being extremely easy. If you dont get the tanking right or the former isnt quite level you will quite likely take your entire ceiling with you and in fairness your home insurance might not pay out due to it being a DIY blunder.

By all means have a go at an 800mm quadrant tray but trust me on the wetrooms.

 

[darrena]

Hi FD Powerflow, I appreciate what you are saying but I do have some experience at hand from my fatheringlaw who did a large wet room about 6 months so an really using his experience. I actually got him coming over Sunday to give me a hand with pipework.
Believe me I have researched the drainage and tanking in much depth and I appreciate the risks of not getting the job right. I am also looking at getting a professional tiler in to do the floor in the wet room and I will probably do the walls.