Help a sparky out..... lead pipes!

[Rockingit]

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.

 

[Chuck]

Scottish Water publish various factsheets about lead pipes, including grants and how to get the supply tested, e.g.

https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/-/media/ScottishWater/Document-Hub/Factsheets-and-Leaflets/Factsheets/300424SWFactsheet7Lead.pdf

I know that the law in Scotland concerning property boundaries, tenants rights, leaseholds, etc. differs significantly from the rest of the UK so you should really try and get advice from a lawyer or reliable source in Scotland.

I've never come across anybody using old domestic lead pipework as conduit for new pipe. It doesn't seem like a feasible idea to me but others may disagree.

If you Google, you'll find at least one firm who claims to be able to 'line' lead pipework as small as 1/2" with epoxy resin in a manner that complies with WRAS requirements and the UK’s Drinking Water Regulation 31 program but I've never come across anyone who has had this done and I don't like being an 'early adopter' of novel methods.

First thing I'd do is get a test done to see how much lead is actually being leached into the supply.

 

[Rockingit]

Scottish Water publish various factsheets about lead pipes, including grants and how to get the supply tested, e.g.

https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/-/media/ScottishWater/Document-Hub/Factsheets-and-Leaflets/Factsheets/300424SWFactsheet7Lead.pdf

I know that the law in Scotland concerning property boundaries, tenants rights, leaseholds, etc. differs significantly from the rest of the UK so you should really try and get advice from a lawyer or reliable source in Scotland.

I've never come across anybody using old domestic lead pipework as conduit for new pipe. It doesn't seem like a feasible idea to me but others may disagree.

If you Google, you'll find at least one firm who claims to be able to 'line' lead pipework as small as 1/2" with epoxy resin in a manner that complies with WRAS requirements and the UK’s Drinking Water Regulation 31 program but I've never come across anyone who has had this done and I don't like being an 'early adopter' of novel methods.

First thing I'd do is get a test done to see how much lead is actually being leached into the supply.

The new cafe owner below has already had their own test done (see below) by Scottish Water so logically it follows that our place above will have these same redaings plus a margin for the extra few m's length of pipework.

The First Draw sample from your property determined a concentration of 107.8µgPb/l and the Flushed sample 0.6µgPb/l.

I was hoping that there may have been some Scottish lads able to help on this one?

 

[ShaunCorbs]

@SimonG

I believe Simon is up that way might be high Yorkshire can’t exactly remember

I’m guessing the shop and the flat share a water main ?

 

[Rockingit]

@SimonG

I believe Simon is up that way might be high Yorkshire can’t exactly remember

I’m guessing the shop and the flat share a water main ?

They do at the moment, although I'm thinking that a way to 'force' a separation is going to be having a water meter installed. I get the impression that they've also discovered communal electrical splits from the DNO side and also the same from Openreach. To be frank the whole thing just sounds like a massive mess that's been covered over for years! And we're just trying to minimise what it's going to cost to put right, from 400 miles away...

My hunch is that I can probably go up with one of my lads and rip the whole lot out for plastic in a few hours of swearing but if we can get it done by one of your local fine fellows and covered by a replacement grant instead then everyone's a winner, clearly. I've also just discovered the plans on the council portal and have some major parts B, F and L concerns, too!

 

[niftyprose]

Rockingit, I'm not a pro so I normally "lurk" on this forum. Your story about lead piping prompted me to stick my head up. I hope the following story is of use.

My wife also owns a small rental property. Hers is in a city in the NW. It's a small 19th century house and the connection to the local water main is via a run of lead piping. That's pretty standard, but the lead pipe in question runs about 30 feet from the street, under the concreted-in ginnell, before making a right-angle, going under the kitchen floor, and coming up between the quarry tiles on a short vertical.

When we were doing the place up, our original builder decided it would be a good idea to break off the vertical at floor level. This was a disaster. There wasn't enough of a stub to repair properly and I didn't trust my pipesweating skills to join copper to lead. Re-running the broken pipe would have meant taking up the quarry tiles in the kitchen and the concrete floor of the ginnell. Meanwhile, the council stopcock didn't work, so water continually leaked into the kitchen from the broken end.

I Googled for hours before finding out about Philmac. Philmacs are compression joints made of ABS plastic, mostly used by agricultural water engineers. They're designed so that the joints are much larger than the pipes going into them, allowing you to exert absolutely massive pressure without much effort. And they make every size you can imagine. I re-cut the broken lead pipe with a hacksaw to give us the cleanest, roundest end I could manage, then used a right-angle Philmac to join the lead to a run of 22mm copper. The joint held and has been fine for five years, passing a couple of inspections.

Hope this helps, NP.