Hi Chaps and Chapesses, just jumping over from the Sparky forum for some advice!
The short version is that I need a crash course in lead pipes, in Scotland, in private rental, in a listed flat, above a cafe. And here's why....
My good lady OH owns a place in Scotland which has been rented out ever since she foolishly decided to jump ship and move in with me down in the wilds of the West Country years ago. It's a 'upper villa' (what I'd refer to down south as a Maisonette) type property so it's a two floor house that happens to start a floor up, in a small complex of similar dwellings that were all converted from one much larger original building a long time ago, part of the ground floor is an old cafe of which we straddle, and everything is listed to one degree or another.
Unsurprisingly, somewhere back in time when the original conversions would have been done, the mains CW riser wasn't replaced and a refurb and internal ripout of the cafe has revealed that from the street mains ('Tobey' - that was a new one for me!) there's currently one lead incomer which I assume (yet to do the 8hr drive up to see this for myself) does an internal Y and one side has been feeding the cafe and the other has been bodged to put a metric stop tap in line in a short section of copper before reverting to lead up to the floor boards of our internals and another stop valve where (as far as I know) everything is then copper throughout.
So yes, the lead incomer needs replacing asap for all the sensible reasons (and I've this week learned about the rules on lead in rentals in Scotland...) but my questions are:
1. In this scenario, where do you define the boundary of our property as?
2. I've scan read articles on line about grants for replacements, anybody know if this would either apply or is on offer in Scotland?
3. Having only now discovered it, what if any is the legal (Scots) timeframe for resolution given the rules came into play a year ago?
4. I'd figure it's highly likely that all the internal copper is held together by lead % solder joints - how big a deal is this in reality?
5. Are there any modern pipe products available that are flexible enough to mole through the remainder lead pipe as an insert to avoid what I fear would be a semi-demolition job otherwise?!
6. Also, if ever we/tenant wanted to have a water meter fitted, that would then entail having to make a junction at the stoptap/tobey anyway, so logically the best engineering option would be to get that done now and run one entirely new riser throughout - although again, unsure of how much of a job that would entail.
Any and all advice is very appreciated!
Rock. x.
The short version is that I need a crash course in lead pipes, in Scotland, in private rental, in a listed flat, above a cafe. And here's why....
My good lady OH owns a place in Scotland which has been rented out ever since she foolishly decided to jump ship and move in with me down in the wilds of the West Country years ago. It's a 'upper villa' (what I'd refer to down south as a Maisonette) type property so it's a two floor house that happens to start a floor up, in a small complex of similar dwellings that were all converted from one much larger original building a long time ago, part of the ground floor is an old cafe of which we straddle, and everything is listed to one degree or another.
Unsurprisingly, somewhere back in time when the original conversions would have been done, the mains CW riser wasn't replaced and a refurb and internal ripout of the cafe has revealed that from the street mains ('Tobey' - that was a new one for me!) there's currently one lead incomer which I assume (yet to do the 8hr drive up to see this for myself) does an internal Y and one side has been feeding the cafe and the other has been bodged to put a metric stop tap in line in a short section of copper before reverting to lead up to the floor boards of our internals and another stop valve where (as far as I know) everything is then copper throughout.
So yes, the lead incomer needs replacing asap for all the sensible reasons (and I've this week learned about the rules on lead in rentals in Scotland...) but my questions are:
1. In this scenario, where do you define the boundary of our property as?
2. I've scan read articles on line about grants for replacements, anybody know if this would either apply or is on offer in Scotland?
3. Having only now discovered it, what if any is the legal (Scots) timeframe for resolution given the rules came into play a year ago?
4. I'd figure it's highly likely that all the internal copper is held together by lead % solder joints - how big a deal is this in reality?
5. Are there any modern pipe products available that are flexible enough to mole through the remainder lead pipe as an insert to avoid what I fear would be a semi-demolition job otherwise?!
6. Also, if ever we/tenant wanted to have a water meter fitted, that would then entail having to make a junction at the stoptap/tobey anyway, so logically the best engineering option would be to get that done now and run one entirely new riser throughout - although again, unsure of how much of a job that would entail.
Any and all advice is very appreciated!
Rock. x.
