subject: How To Handle Costly Plumbing Renovations Yourself [print this page] The costliest part of your new house is the plumbing. When you have run the hot water pipes and the cold water pipes and acquired all the fixtures you have spent the maximum of any other part of the house. So it is wise in the planning stage to attempt to group your plumbing all comparatively close together. It appears a bit mad to have a big house and an en suite found way over on one corner all on it's own. You have got to run cold water pipes to it and hot water pipes to it and waste water pipes away from it. Makes that one small room terribly dear.
That having been said, you'll doubtless find that one must be an approved plumber in most places to be well placed to install plumbing to a house. However, if you're just going to install an exterior kitchen say, outside at your BBQ or something similar you might possibly be able to do it yourself. Or if you have that cabin at the lake and you want some additional plumbing installed it's not complicated if you follow one or two suggestions.
The cold water is comparatively straightforward to plumb with the user-friendly 0.5" pipes and fittings available nowadays. It does pay to use the plastic piping if you're a non-professional. These come with all of the fittings you'll need and just glue together. You can cut your plastic piping to length with an easy hack saw and glue it all together. Ensure you clean your cut in and out side with some fine sandpaper to be certain all of the burs are removed and to enable the glue to hold correctly.
Some products come with a solvent that you use to wash your joint before gluing. You can cut and gently put together your pipe to be certain it is right before you glue it. T 's and straight joints and elbows in ninety degrees and forty five degrees mean you can make your plumbing fit anywhere. When you wish to fit a tap say, there's the right fitting which has attachments to fit to the wall and a threaded end for the tap to screw into. Use thread tape here as you usually would and you've a top job.
The hot water is best in 0.5" copper pipe and you do not want the gas and fittings the plumbers use. There's screw up fittings you may use so with two wrenches you can shortly have your hot water in. You'll need a tube cutter for giving your pipe a neat cut so the fittings will be leak free. There's the same range of fittings as the cold piping so that you can plumb anywhere. One benefit of copper is it is flexible and you can bend it a little to get a better fit. Ensure all of your pipes are held soundly with brackets often so you do not get that knocking when the tap is turned on.
Your waste plumbing is done in 4" sewer pipe which feeds into the sewerage. Your other fixtures will feed into that in their relative sizes. Toilets are plumbed straight into the 4" sewer pipe while baths and sinks and showers etc. are in 2" pipe and have to be reduced to go into the sewer pipe. The exception is the bathroom vanity sink which is usually 1 1/2" pipe.
All this piping is in the easy to use plastic so you can cut it with a fine hand saw and glue it together with same tools as the cold water pipe. Once you get into it it is really quite fun and very satisfying to see your plumbing all working. Make sure you do a water leak test before you put all your tools away as you may need to tighten a joint or two.
