Hey friends,

We're moving on from the bathroom this week but I have a couple of points to wrap up first.

The bathroom project started with figuring out the best way to get a shower with decent pressure and I settled on a shower pump to work with our existing tank and cylinder system.

Below is our Stuart Turner twin 3 bar universal pump. What does that mean?

Twin - Pumps both hot and cold water. If you had decent pressure from the mains you could just hook up a single and pump the hot. We needed both so we went with a twin with the cold water coming from the tank.

3 bar - This is the pressure. The price of these pumps goes up drastically with the pressure they deliver but I thought 3 bar was the sweet spot. Do check what pressure your shower valve and taps can take. Ours can handle up to 5 bar.

Universal - Also known as negative head. This is usually for where your shower head is above your water tank as a positive head pump (cheaper) starts and stops with the flow of water thanks to gravity - good for showers below the tank. With our shower head only 30cm or so below the tank (known as 'the head') I didn't want to risk it so opted for a universal pump which gives the impellers? a kick-start.

Stuart Turner is well regarded and was recommended to us by our plumber. This one can also power up to 3 showers which could come in handy.

It does make some noise though. Nothing too bad but to dampen the vibrations you can get overpriced noise reduction mats. Instead, Steve gave me an off-cut of his acoustic flooring underlay which is doing a decent job.

Better yet would have been to attach the pump to the brick wall adjacent or put a slab of granite under the mat to stop vibrations, like you might for speakers. I can also do some soundproofing to the cupboard doors in future if the noise bothers us.

This pump fills up the bath quickly and creates a stupidly powerful jet out of the hand shower but it was a little lacking in the overhead shower. So I unscrewed it and removed the plastic limiter which was holding the water back.

Ahhh.

Notice my highly technical solution to the niches getting wet! At 300 x 300mm wide it's not designed to be super powerful, more a feeling of rain. But it's pretty strong. We could always go smaller if we fancied but when you aren't fully surrounded by shower screen that keeps in the steam, like you might be in a walk-in shower, a wide shower head is nice to keep you warm.

The last thing was the loo. I ordered the missing part because I couldn't be bothered waiting 3 weeks for Grohe to import it from Germany. Yet this wasn't my only problem. The fixings that go in the loo and attach it to the wall are flimsy plastic with one little metal grub screw - and they broke.

Grohe sent me the one replacement they had in the office and I did in the end manage to get it attached. It does feel solid. The point of them is to fix it from underneath so you don't have indentations on the side but I think something like this would be a more practical option:

Does look neat though:

Not wanting to drill into my nice new tiles, I went with a loo roll holder that has sticky pads to keep it on. Working well so far.

Back to the toilet - the flushplate that came with the cistern/loo package is chrome. Well, it's mirrored plastic that shows up finger prints. I want a matt black one which can be gotten but only through a 3rd party at great expense because Grohe don't sell them in the UK 😕. So I looked around and many of the concealed cistern companies sell a very limited range of flushplate colours. There's got to be side-hustle potential for someone with a 3D printer I reckon.

Good. I can draw a line under this project now. Sometimes it can feel like a battle, I won this round. The house is soon to bite back though...

🧸 Boy's Bedroom

This was going to be 'the nursery project' but he's not a baby anymore. In fact, at this point in the year I'd hoped it would be done and I'd have the shell of a workshop complete but 'twas not to be.

This project started at the end of last year when I insulated the external wall and while the floor is up I installed downlights in the kitchen ceiling below. I stopped work there because the next task was moving one of the walls which I couldn't do because the bathroom was there and I couldn't take that out until the new bathroom was up and running.

Let's look at some floor-plans. I've knocked out the wall between Bedroom 3 and the WC and created a new bathroom.

Now I want to remove the walls of the old bathroom and move the wall between Bedroom 2 and the landing in line with the door to make the bedroom bigger. Blue dot - new bannister. Orange dot - passageway to future side extension.

I've also shown the Other Option which is what my neighbour has done. This layout does make sense but I couldn't see what else I could get out of the extra space in the bathroom and we'd rather have a larger Bedroom 2 and smaller landing.

So I need to move some walls. I've been tapping away at them, Basil Fawlty fashion, and here's what I think they are made from. The green are all stud walls but there's a curious brick section (red).

Once I removed the false ceiling in the bathroom it revealed what looks like an RSJ going from the brick wall of the airing cupboard to the brick section (red bit above) of the old bathroom wall.

Going up into the loft confirmed this. It also has joists meeting over it. i.e. holding them up.

The second blue arrow (2 pics up) shows a stepping in the ceiling which is a timber lintel (it doesn't line up with the RSJ). That should really be above the door to Bedroom 2, I'm not sure why it isn't.

To make matters more complex the water tank is above this area too. What we can deduce from this is there is no way I can remove these walls without first removing the entire lathe and plaster ceiling and replacing the joists one by one to meet on the new wall to be built between Bedroom 2 and the landing. It's going to be messy.

It would have been nice to open up the landing now but it's not the objective. The only thing I need to do is move one wall. The good news is the ceiling joists that run from the front of the house extend beyond the existing wall and beyond where I want the new wall. The new wall will support them and while I'll be increasing the span, it's still less of a span than in Bedroom 1 and that's held up well enough for the last century.

My biggest doubt is that the current wall is almost directly above the wall of the kitchen below so could be transferring the load of the ceiling joists down through that. It can't be original though because the plaster is new and the bottom plate is sitting on top of a floorboard - which I've read is bad practice. Technically it should sit directly on the joists.

Sooo, I've removed the sink and some of the tiles and I think I'll next remove the tiles above the bath and open the wall up on the bathroom side and remove the bath (cast iron so that should be fun!). Things should be clearer then and I'll consult a structural engineer if I feel I need the reassurance.

There's more of that 5mm polystyrene stuck to the wall which is a right fire hazard. I think this is the last of it.

If all is well I can block up the window, build the new wall to support the ceiling and then take down the exiting one. Easy peasy right?

Not quite.

What I've worked out from this network of pipes I've uncovered is that there is a mains cold supplying what was the sink which then goes up to fill the tank in the loft. A cold then comes down from the tank that supplies the bath and then goes downstairs to supply the shower room's sink and toilet cistern. A hot comes down to supply the bath and sink here then downstairs to serve the shower room's sink and kitchen sink (cold for kitchen sink is on the mains).

So what I thought was just supplying the old bathroom and could be capped off is in fact serving much else besides and will need to be re-routed 😮‍💨.

💦 Soakaways & Waste Pipes

Fed up with all this investigation work, I wanted an easy win under my belt for the week so I went to investigate one of the blockages in the rain water pipes.

Remember this?

I got up a ladder and could see no blockage. Poured some water down and it disappeared down the pipe. Maybe there's a blockage lower down, I thought. I'll lift the closest inspection chamber to see if the water flows through. Nothing.

Hmm, either there's a blockage at the bottom of the downpipe or it doesn't flow into the sewers at all. I consulted the extension plans that came with the house (a lucky thing as it was too long ago to appear on the planning portal. I just wish I had the original plans for the upstairs).

These showed the rainwater pipes running to soakaways.

I haven't noticed the front right downpipe overflowing but the downpipe I've marked on the front left is. Whether that runs to the same front soakaway, I don't know. Probably not. This means I could have as many as 3 soakaways that are blocked up with their exact locations unknown.

To sort this out is a big and disruptive job and not really one I wanted to tackle right now 😒. The first thing I've done is apply for a back-dated rebate on our water bill as we're not sending rainwater runoff down the sewers...but it would be a lot easier if we could - at least at the back. I'll have to put this on pause for now.

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However, with one of the inspection chambers up and the plans to hand I decided to map out all the waste pipes by lifting the other chambers and manholes. I flushed loos, opened taps, poured water to see what happened. This is what I figured out:

It's good to get my head around one part of the plumbing system! If I think ahead to the rear extension the pipes that run alongside the boundary are where a concrete foundation would be laid so that will require some research to overcome. The other two manholes and inspection chamber are where a future patio would be with the idea that it will be level with the internal ground floor so they'll need to be built up with risers.

Sometimes I think it would be easier building a house from the ground up!

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With all the testing of pipes I somehow managed to create an airlock in the cold water pipe that comes down from the tank in the loft - no water was coming out the downstairs tap or old bath. To remedy you're supposed to get a hose, connect one end to a mains feed and the other to the troublesome tap and push water inside until the air comes out at the tank. I wondered if I could do the reverse it by pulling the air out so I got my shop vac, took out the bag and filter and sucked it out.

It worked! Good old shop vac and first time using the 'wet' feature.

👋

What I've been watching:

Frozen Planet 2 - Classic Attenborough. He's the same age as the Queen was. That will be a very sad day.

The Rings of Power - Set a few thousand years before LOTR it's the most expensive series ever made, not least because Amazon paid $250m for the rights from the Tolkien estate. I'm enjoying it so far.

A Scandi Flick - The Grand Tour's latest outing. Not being a car fanatic I've only ever watched the specials because travelling with mates having a laugh makes great tele. This one had Abi in stitches.

The Father - A very realistic portrayal of progressing dementia, something I've seen first hand. Incredible performance from Anthony Hopkins. A hard but worthwhile watch.

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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