Plastic pipes!

[CompostCORNER]

The only pipe I've ever drilled through was a plastic one and this particular day, my luck really was out.

I installed the system a year before the pipe incident, and like Chris, it was in an empty house, brand new, not even carpets in. The install took a little longer as the clients were both deaf. So plenty of internal strobes fitted on that one.

Anyway, a year later, the system started falsing terribly. So off I went to find what was the problem. The customer had fitted a coving around the kitchen and where the PIR was situated, they had left a gap in the corner of the coving. I put my cig lighter up in front of the PIR and sure enough, there was a pretty nasty draught coming from this area. So the solution was to drop the PIR so the customer could finish the coving.

Dropping the PIR should have been so easy. The bottom drill hole would be used for the top fixing hole when I lowered the detector so I only needed to drill a new bottom hole. Yes, this hole was the killer. Straight into the hot radiator line.

So, picture this. I have a deaf woman, standing just 4 feet away with her back to me doing the pots. I'm up my steps and have my finger in a hole in the wall that is spewing red hot water, slowly poaching my finger. The hole getting bigger as the pressure was eating away around the edge of the hole and I'm literally screaming like a girl with the pain and the customer carried on doing the pots.

Eventually, the customer turned around and saw what was going on. Handed me a tea towel to shove in the hole and I bolted out of the house and up the street where the houses were still being built, in the hope of finding a plumber. Eventually, everything was under control.

Something amazing came out of this. Obviously, we had to pay for the plumber and the repair to the damaged wallpaper at the clients house. The plumber put in a bill for

[arfur mo]

when fixing to plaster board or breeze block i use the nylon fixing bushes that you screw in with an insulated electricians phillips driver, having first used the driver to carefully make the right size hole, then run the screw in FULL SAFETY, B) and very little dust too!.

i have been thankful of this technigue as it has avoided several potential mishaps.

[arfur mo]

PMSL - you wish

my son thought for a long time it meant 'likes oral love' after i said it as a joke - and i did not correct him

[inglishg]

I too have gone through a pipe...and a copper pipe as well.

A fairly new house, and absolutely immaculate. Not a thing out of place. Really posh people, but the woman must spend hours putting on the makeup every morning. It was caked on!

Well, I start the install, and the husband is a right pain. Over my shoulder all the time. Everything I do needs to be "just an inch higher" or "a little to the left". Everything.

The job is slow. By mid-morning I've done very little.

Imagine my happiness when they announce the are off shopping...

I bet the car was barely off the drive when I thought "these pir's will all be up by the time they get back, then they can't get me to move them".

So, I choose the corner of the lounge for a pir and decide to drill through the wall into the garage for the cable, rather than picking up the wire upstairs.

A quick check for pipes shows none, and anyway, the radiator is much further down the wall...

Now, these new houses are a doddle for drilling through aren't they? The low density breeze blocks can virtualy be "drilled" with a sharp screwdriver.

In my haste, the fact that the drill seemed to hit something solid should have been a clue, but "it's only the mortar" comes to mind, and I just need to put more pressure on the drill don't I?

Oh Sh*t!!

Hot water starts shooting out of the hole, against some fancy veneered display cabinet. The deep pile carpet makes a good sponge...and what is the stuff the plumbers put in central heating system boilers? It stinks!

Quick empty the swing top bin onto the kitchen floor, and lodge it nect to the cabinet to catch the hot water, whilst I disappear into the garage to find the stop-tap.

Eventually, the water stops...

Devastation...what a mess, a stinking, stained mess...

"I'm never fitting another alarm in my life" goes through my head. What do I do? A runner?

I call a friend in the building trade. What a star. Within 30 mins, he's with me. Calm and collected, he cuts out around my little hole to reveal the two pipes. I had managed to go right into an 8mm pipe, perfectly central, with a 6mm masonry drill.

Fortunately, the pipe had slack in the cavity and ceiling void and it was possible to pull it through and cut out my damage. He then disappeared to get a compression fitting.

Whilst he's doing all this, I was at a loose end. I know, I'll finish off the system...

Mid afternoon, the owners arrive back. I greet them on the drive. "I've had a problem" I say in my soaking wet clothes, "but we've fixed it".

They weren't best pleased. Later on, I noticed the husband with my pipe detector running it over the wall. The pipes were so deep in the wall, it couldn't pick up the pipes (don't forget only mm pipes, and they were 2" deep minimum).

Anyway, we agreed

[alterEGO]

I've also stapled into a central heating pipe...but that's a story for another time!

a border line //.B.W.F.// once ran a cable along a gas pipe on top of a skirt at our place, he got 5 staples in before i got in to ask what the //.B.W.F.// is that noise and what you fixing to, whys it on the skirt i ask, get a little closer and then make a dash for the gas main.

how lucky were we, he was put in a care home we service by the end of the week.

[inglishg]

a border line //.B.W.F.// once ran a cable along a gas pipe on top of a skirt at our place, he got 5 staples in before i got in to ask what the //.B.W.F.// is that noise and what you fixing to, whys it on the skirt i ask, get a little closer and then make a dash for the gas main.

how lucky were we, he was put in a care home we service by the end of the week.

That's so similar to how I did the central heating pipe.

I was working in an understairs cupboard, and I just needed to tack the cable along the top of the skirting.

It was a fancy skirting, loads of coats of paint, but in the darkness of the cupboard I could see the carefully machined "roll-top" pattern which I was going to staple the wire to.

HISS...steam...HISS

Oh Sh*t!!

Push on the staple...it's still hissing. I wonder if a bit of tape will hold it...no...HISS...steam...HISS

The owner soon came to see what had gone on. I came out of the cupboard and admitted my error.

"No problem mate. You carry on with the alarm, I'll sort this."

He then drained his system, went out and bought a compression joint and did a full repair.

When the alarm was finished, he came to pay me, and I told him to take out what he wanted for doing the repair.

He refused, and paid me the full amount!

I honestly could not have done a job for a nicer guy. In fact, he's now one of my regulars, and as he's in the building trade I often get a call when his guys damage systems in properties they are working on, and I always get the new systems to do on any new builds.

He usually calls me and starts the call with a HISS though!