Is this a bodge?

[Winston]

Fitting a new thermostic shower today and was a pain Anyway got one o/d 25mm olive on chrome pipe at one end with loads of grief plumbing grease and pliers. But the other olive couldnt get on spent ages but no joy. Went to the merchant didnt have one either So as it was in the shower cubicle area and not high risk area ie in loftspace. I made a olive up with a smear of LSX some hemp hair and then more lsx and a few wraps of ptfe. Felt good and leak free

 

[helpsy]

I think in the WRAS guide it says you can't use hemp or gaskin in contact with water.I may be wrong though.I stand corrected if I am!

 

[NickH]

Not really a bodge, more of a lash up. You will only have yourself to blame when it all goes **** up, as it surely will.

 

[Plouasne]

I despair, in a few years time, if not before UK plumbing will be worse than a third world country, if this sort of thing is common practise now

 

[Winston]

Sorry gents but the olive is disformed in some way and the shower manufactuer has gone bust will have to try and find a olive o/d 25mm, any ideas where to source one. I genuinelly only want to do good work I shall now go back to sitting on the naughty chair

 

[helpsy]

Hi Winston
I'm new to the trade and if this is a problem you have come across it would be interesting to know the outcome as others may come across a similar scenario,if this is out of the ordinary.
Keep us posted and good luck

 

[Plouasne]

Sorry gents but the olive is disformed in some way and the shower manufactuer has gone bust will have to try and find a olive o/d 25mm, any ideas where to source one. I genuinelly only want to do good work I shall now go back to sitting on the naughty chair

This is where expanding socket forming tools come in handy, and by the way 25mm O/D is a size I have never heard of, in all the time I have been in the game

 

[Puddle]

I have no idea what a bodge is anymore
Todays bodge is tomorrows industry standard
I remember plumbers I learnt from saying a hose pipe with jubilee clips was a bodge
Out came the saunia duvial 620 boiler with a bit of hose pipe and jubilee clips to attach pipework to heat exchanger,when I first saw it thought someone had bodged it up,but no that was the design,now you buy diy kits for outside taps with same set ups
Now I find from another thread you can get super glue to make copper joints,surely a bodge,but no,its out there and in a few years,it will probably be all the rage
Push fit,to me,what a bodge but all the rage,I do not use them,if I use plastic pipework for long runs.I use compesion at end and revert to copper with soldered fitting to connect up to instalations,old hat I know,but there is no way these plastic fittings,especially hot pipework are going to last fourty or fifty years without a problem,may seem like a long time but not really in house building
In thirty years I have not seen many floods until a few years ago,have seen three houses destroyed,with ceilings down,carpets sodden by push fit fittings giving way
you say not fitted correctly all I can say is when checked,inserts fitted,pipe end marks show placed in fitting enough....
We had a thread about soldering a olive over a pipe to repair,what ever was said ,I would be happier with that repair than the industry allowed milli put and plastic padding
If you make an olive up by rapping a few reels of ptfe tape and lsx round the pipe and compressing it between a fitting and backing nut,is it any different from a plastic olive,it will probably hold up better under a pressure test
Some of the waste fittings you get at the diy stores,you could not design better bodge up fittings if you tried
As stated third world plumbing seems just around the corner for the UK
unless the plumbing industry gets a grip of the siduation

 

[Plouasne]

The real downfall of what was once a great industry to be in was the introduction of plastic, and the manufactures pushing it to get sales, without really understanding the plumbing side of the material first off, the older ones of us will remember the first Marley pan pieces which involved a rubber ring and a heat shrink socket, which leaked more often than not

If you go to this forum the france forum • View topic - Pushfit fittings for copper and Plastic , in the second posting there is a nice little photo of a failed plastic fitting, I think that the "Tee" was referred to as a Wavin made fitting, the brass holding ring suffered from what looks like a stress fracture, so god know how many more are like that out in the field, just waiting to go POP, and 99% of the time it will be the plumber that gets the blame not the manufacture

I remember, in the late '60's Jimmy Haig (I think) of the Registered Plumbers, writing in the magazine, about the new Jumbo jet as it was called then, and how to save weight the galley's were equipped with this wonder material called plastic

Aircraft are designed for a relative short lifetime, measured in tens of years, whereas a building's lifetime is measured in scores of years if not hundreds of years

And just a little side note, because my partner was a stewardess for a couple of airlines including BA, I have followed some of the problems with aircraft, there has been a couple of near misses with 747's because the plastic pipes failed on the galley wastes, one a QUANTAS plane had all its electrics knocked out because water from the waste pipe dripped onto the main electrical "busbars", it managed to land in South East Asia with less than 20 minutes left in the battery back up system

 

[Winston]

The o/d 25mm olive is to be used on the chrome riser, so I did try taking some of the chrome of to see if this would have helped get the olive on. I will however endeavor to try and sourse one.

I am new to the industry guys and that is why I asked and have joined a forum of this nature so I can learn from you all that have so much experience. This is the thing that is overlooked with the fast track because you have a bit of paper we have not got the experience of the ts nor to we have them to hand on the job.

Sorry if I have offended any of you in anyway, and it would never be my intention to put the industry in to disrepute.

 

[bobpape]

Hey Winston
Everything that has been said in responce to your mail is true but I would add
that your "bodge" using jointing compound and a hemp grommet in the circumstances
is not really a bodge and I would give you top marks for it.
The reason the olive would not fit is because the chromed copper pipe was too fat, the chrome was too thick,
You really need to add a Vernier to your tool kit that way you could establish what item was at fault,

 

[david williams]

winston did what most of us have had to do at times,try to get over manufactors bad design and poorly thought out products,he knew it was not right but he has sought to rectify said situation by seeking advice.this shows he cares about the standerd of his work,over the last year i have carried out several plumbing inspections for insurence companies,and have on occasion spoken to the plumbers who carried out the work most had the qualifications but very limited experience and did not seem to care much.from his posts it would appear winston does care

 

[Bernie2]

Hi! Winston,

No your not putting the industry into disrepute. You came on and told us of your concerns, that is not putting industries into disrepute.

Its looking for answers which is good.

Probably none of us know everything and so at some point would be a newbie to the area, its important that you can ask questions and be told possible answers its one of the ways we learn things.

I am retired but still learning.

I learn from guys who try new things, I have probably never heard of.

So its a mutual flow of information backwards and forwards, which would seem to benefit us all.

 

[Winston]

Thanks guys really not good though have fitted the shower and really dissapointed with the performance. It running to hot as if not enough cold is getting through at a loss really.

Its in a bungalow and I think there isnt enough head, I have tried to explain to the customer but I have a nasty feeling I am not going to get paid. My suggestion has been that a pump is installed or that I connect the cold shower feed to the main supply with a PRV to try to balance the two feeds.

Trouble is this customer wants everything cheap I allowed myself two days for this as also plumbed in wc and basin all chrome pipe my best bends and offsets looks fab.

But I keep saying to the customer how things are to be done as was shocked that he had built his platform to accomdate the tray with 2x1 blocks and mdf after I told him needs to be 3/4 ply.

And I couldnt believe it, me up in the loft repostioning the cold feed lower on the tank and I find the customer trying to clamp the basin up tight to the wall I left a 3mm gap for sealant which I had done earlier now his finger prints all over it

I am at a loss.

 

[bobpape]

Winston
You are on a very steep learning curve the only good news is most plumbers have also been there,

I would be interested in reading the outcome.

 

[Winston]

Yer going to go back tommrow going to see if its a air lock in the cold cant see how but who knows. I have suggested also instead of tank fed connect to the main with a non return and then a prv to balance and see if this imprves matters. It funny really there neighbour asked if I could sort there shower out as they have the same problem.

 

[bobpape]

If it were me I would simply fit a cheap Wickes double ended pump on the hot a cold
supplies hopefully situated in the airing cupboard, There are two issues with doing it
One: is the noise when the pump is running,
Two: the pump may only last for a few years,

 

[Bernie2]

Hi Winston

Done loads of jobs that I have felt I was digging myself into deeper and deeper problems, it comes with the job.

You get to a point where your nearly afraid to say anything to anybody, n case its misunderstood. The thing is, people seem not to listen to what your saying at times.

I sympathies with you, it ain't easy.

 

[secret squirrel]

What I find quite frustrating with this industry is most customers want cheap cheap and don't seem to listen to common sense.

An example yesterday, explained to a customer that there 3 port valve was broken, explained the cost of the part alone and I got a look that said "your joking, how much" I explained the cost of the rads working throughout the summer was costing a lot more to be told "yeah, but its winter now"......

Repaired a triton shower (thermo cartridge) the customer was in the shower cubicle with me, watching me take it out. If was seized in but needed some breathing space, I made an excuse went to my van went back in and the customer was wrenching it out with my tools, there was a spring and bits all over the place. Unfortunately, these bits didn't need to come out!

Plumbing would be easier without the customers.................

 

[Plouasne]

That's why I liked site work nobody up your jacksy all the time, and if it was big stuff, anything over 4" C I drain/water main, the crane did the work

 

[Phil]

Secret squirrel

What a totally bizzare situation to be in!!!

I've have customers literally breathing down my neck and customers going round turning rads off a quick as I'm going round turning them back on but I've never been squashed into a tiny and cramped shower enclosure with one in my face and on my back!!

What size was the cubicle 760x760?

 

[stevetheplumber]

Secret squirrel

What a totally bizzare situation to be in!!!

I've have customers literally breathing down my neck and customers going round turning rads off a quick as I'm going round turning them back on but I've never been squashed into a tiny and cramped shower enclosure with one in my face and on my back!!

What size was the cubicle 760x760?

i find waving a lit blowlamp around gets them of your back

 

[Winston]

Blow torch it is then Today I am going to get this blasted shower sorted! I am going to get cold water through that blasted shower if it kills me I am positive

 

[Alanka]

I have to agree with Plouasne on this one - you can use an expander tool to very slightly increase the internal diameter of the olive to allow it to slide onto the pipe. One of the stated uses of these expanders (certainly the REMS one, which I have) is to shape up malformed pipes, and I have used them several times to do this on pipe-ends that have got bashed.

They're expensive (I'm talking about the lever ones, not the hammer-bashing ones), but how much is your time worth trying to source an odd-sized component?

 

[HTB]

Winston a quick thought for you. The "repair" you created at the start of this thread is obviously holding under existing head`of pressure, if you put a shower pump on the system, will it stand up to the increased flow and pressure??. Good luck mate.

 

[newbie1]

wouldnt mind them in the shower with me if they were 24 fit and most important female and naked

 

[quality]

wouldnt mind them in the shower with me if they were 24 fit and most important female and naked

olive was 25mm and did not fit

 

[Winston]

Well oh well the customer not a happy bunny But I have been paid, after a brief discussion which is something wont go to the pump to costly. So agreed on the tee in to the main but without the PRV

Why is it that you explain the pressure has to be balanced they wont listen? Anyway did as he asked and now a cold shower So now will look at finding a cheap PRV off the net

The funny thing was guys you were right my olive did not cope with the mains pressure, but have found the shower manufactuer who is sending me 5 new ones so I will go back to sort.

I have hated having the discussion the customer, and I had but I have gone out of my way to accomodate and not quibble moaned all this for £400. But once again I feel that there are a few that want everything for nothing, and because he was successfull at installing a shower at his home from mains pressure and tank fed hot he thinks that all there is to install showers.

 

[bobpape]

Winston
When you mentioned that the olive did not fit the chrome pipe I assumed the chrome
pipe was the one that lead up to the shower head, the shower riser, which as long as
the head was not completely blocked the pipe would never reach mains pressure.

 

[Winston]

Hi bob the shower I installed if you can imagine the letter F The top horizontal for the hot the second horizontal for the cold immediatley after wards the mixer/valve with one off the olives, clamped to the chrome riser. Then near the bottom of the vertical where the controls the user would use is the need for the other olive. where it wouldnt fit.

I am not sure I have explained it well but hope that sort of helps.

 

[Plouasne]

Whilst still a "bodge" in my eyes, perhaps I was a little "liverish" in my remarks, but don't any of you carry an assortment of different rubber "O" rings, in your tool kit, it could have helped Winston out if he had carried a set around with him

 

[REDSAW]

Whilst still a "bodge" in my eyes, perhaps I was a little "liverish" in my remarks, but don't any of you carry an assortment of different rubber "O" rings, in your tool kit, it could have helped Winston out if he had carried a set around with him

my opologies next time i shall pop around with my box of2,000 'o' rings and give i'm an and?

(funny tho i can never find the right size especially for taps

 

[quality]

my opologies next time i shall pop around with my box of2,000 'o' rings and give i'm an and?

(funny tho i can never find the right size especially for taps

BSL (yes that a mechanical supplier) do sell Imperial and metric kits each containing around 250 "O" ring in a storage case for about £ 20 takes up no room in the van well worth having.

Not to sure if it would have helped winston though even if he had one

 

[Phil]

My van is stocked up like a plumbers merchant, I have a big box of different pan connectors including most of the special Mcalpine ones, 2 big boxes of traps including anti-syphon, telescopic, bottle, P shaped, running traps etc, a massive box of waste pipe fittings in all sizes and colours, box of end feed, box of brass connectors, box of stopcocks and isolators, pressure equalising valve, pressure reducing valve, box of syphons, box of flush valves, box of flexi's for tight spaces, box of push fit, box of tap valves, box of assorted goodies like cc brackets, overflow stand pipes, wastes, box of different bath and basin taps, box of washing machine hoses and waste pipes, flush handles, flush pipes, fixing brackets, screws, plugs and loads of other stuff.

I carry probably too much weight as my clutch is begining to slip.

 

[Winston]

Its all very well carrying stock but you have to be aware of the likelyhod of damage, cashflow, theft. I have found though that I increase my stock month on month, by adding new items. But I have only got a escort van and its cramped.