Week 22 - Starting first fix plumbing, and stairs

This week's job was getting most of the first fix plumbing done - running central heating and water pipes through the first floor void and up or down the walls as required. The ends of the pipes are all temporarily capped so that the system can be pressure tested. For the main system, we're using push-fit plastics called SpeedFit which are guaranteed for 25years. The pipes running the first couple of metres from the boiler will need to be done in copper though, to allow the high temperatures from the boiler  to dissipate a little. Our last place was plumbed in polyfit which is an inferior brand, speedfit is so much easier to use with neat little features like insertion marks on the pipe so you know when it's fully home in the fitting. Running the flexible pipe through the joists is simple compared with trying to feed sections of copper through and soldering each joint.

Below, the wall has been chased out to allow pipes to be recessed. These will sit behind the dot dab plasterboard.

Kai even managed to get the soil pipes all sorted in the time it took me to have a shower... (athough maybe this says more about how long I take in the shower?!)
We're trying to be clever and hide all the services in the floors so you don't get boxed in pipes everywhere but it does cause some headaches deciding in advance where pipes should poke through the floors and walls. It has forced us to finally decide what layout we are having and which suite we are going for in order to get the measurements correct.

The staircase was delivered on Friday afternoon so we spent the evening putting the last pieces together and getting it fixed into position. Finally we can get upstairs in a civilised manner! The straight flight came pre-assembled, just requiring the 3 winder steps and newel posts fitting into position with wedges, dowels and plenty of wood glue. The stairs were cut on a CNC router so everything fitted perfectly, with less than 10mm to spare in our stairwell, I love precision!

  

We'll leave the ballustrading off until the house is in a more finished state - don't want the messy plasterers getting our handrail all mucky.