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I have an old kitchen sink connected to a concrete drain under my house via some very ancient metal pipework. Recently several leaks have developed at various places between the sink and drain and I was wondering if it is legal (im just a DIY guy not a licensed plumber..) to replace the entire pipe with PVC, myself.
I live in Queensland and its hard to find any legal info on this subject however I figured some knowledgeable people here would know!
Cheers,
Gabriel
Legal or not I'd just do it personally. If the piping is already there it's not like you need a license to just replace pipe.The plumber before did all the design and adhered to the regs. Any idiot can do it, just a straight forward replacement. It'd be different if you where installing it from scratch and might plumb it into the wrong place or not account for distribution which causes problems later etc. Recently I did something similar. Pretty easy job to be honest and not worth the callout fee let alone the labour charge.
Anyway sorry I can't give you a yes or no on the "legality" but as far as I'm concerned it would be irrelevant in this case from a personal perspective.
As montiee said, its not rocket science, and I wont tell anyone you did it. I take it, that its a gal pipe dropping into a earthen ware pipe with a cement joint. Just be careful you dont crack that earthenware when you knock out the cement.
Yes & when you put the cement back around the pipe don't make it of "structural integrity" cement ratio. Should you want to open it up in the future you don't want it so strong that you shatter the clay pipe instead of the cement when you chisel it out :2tsup: Hopefully someone did this favour for you when they installed the pipes in the first place..Chisel it out in small chunks working your way to the outer edges from the centre I've found to be the best way.Quote:
Originally Posted by davo2310
why use cement at all, I joined pvc pipe to earthern war pipe using a rubber collar, bought it from bunnings, just used over size hose clamps to make the seal...Quote:
Originally Posted by montiee
Because it will have a collar on the earthenware from the existing connection, and that would need to be cut off to use a rubber.Quote:
Originally Posted by Terrian
Tools
Rubber seals are something I avoid given the option. Especially when your earthenware pipe is exposed to the elements (ie outside the house). I'd rather cement it up and forget about it for the rest of my life than worry about the rubber disintegrating after a decade. That's just me.
You don't normally open up these things once they are installed. My house has been standing for over 70 years and this is probably the first time it's been opened up for that time. The original metal pipe was not in the greatest of shape and it made fitting new pipe to it a task since the sizes had changed from back then. Just as easy to replace the whole thing and cheaper since the rubber seals in the s/p trap had gone and it was only a dollar more for a complete brand new unit than the actual seals. What a joke.