Why the bloody hell do new builds have plastic water pipes in hollow plaster board walls?

There I was installing in a brand new house, no furnature, carpets or other obstructions.. great I thought, be out of here and in the pub by 3, (it was a saturday)

I'm in the kitchen, mounting the PIR to the wall top corner. My labourer is upstairs fixing down cables, doing well i thought, lets fix this PIR properly, ie not use the ceiling bracket, one hole ok, lower case hole, straight into a hidden pipe bent within the wall at mains pressure, I got half soaked, the cooker on the opposite side of the room got drenched, the floor was covered in a film of water, fortunatly for me I was using a cordless drill or things could of been worse for CDH (thats me) who was up a ladder at the time.

What level of common sense do these builders have? When I looked where this pipe went, it seemed to be an after thought supplying the en-suite. Had a separate stop tap and everything.

F**kin' stupid idea if you ask me... quick and cheap I reckon, just like the new houses built.

Houses nowadays are a minefield for potential dissaters when doing alterations or installing stuff, - I dont know what the answer is either, guess we'll just have to plod along and these things happen from time to time - did you get the matter resolved???

Why the bloody hell do new builds have plastic water pipes in hollow plaster board walls?

31710[/snapback]

Err, something to do with the price difference between plastic and copper.

Guess which one is cheaper..

Regards

Bellman

I always push a screwdriver through the plasterboard instead of drilling, its quicker and safer

even then chances are you could have gone through the plastic or cracked it - coz you would have still put a screw in the same hole most probably....

On the plus side though, plaggy pipes are a doddle to fix.

31757[/snapback]

Especially when half the wall's just fallen down!

This one wasn't, the fu*kin builders had concreted the bloody thing in! Had access to both ends, pull it through I thought, no probs.... no chance. Spoke to the customer yesterday, the builders had to take part of the offending wall down, part of the ceiling away, cost £100 to sort so not too bad. It wouldn't of been too bad if the pipes went straight up, oh no, that would be too easy... Wa*kers.

As you can probably tell, I'm still quite annoyed.

Wa*kers.

31806[/snapback]

What? As in the people who make crisps?

No that's G*lden W*nder !

Actually plastic pipes are slightly dearer than copper its the installation that saves time and money.

On the plus side, plastic piping is only usually suitable for newbuilds which have the new I-section frefab joints.

Each joist have precut holes for installation of pipe work and wiring and they are in the middle of the joists, meaning you wont find any pipework just under the floor boards. Good news for daves up n over method