Moving plumbing in my house for a kitchen

ST1991

Hi All
I started a thread last year but thought i'd create a new one as we are now in a position to complete this work, and last year we hadn't even completed on the house yet.

Our kitchen is currently in a very small single-story extension at the front of our house. The bathroom is upstairs in the room nearest the kitchen. This small room is where the front door is, so we'd like to change this into an entrance hall/utility room.

The room at the back of our house would be an ideal kitchen diner as it's a good size and looks out onto the garden. The only problem is that there is not currently any plumbing at the back of our house.
We are mid-terrace.

Here is a floorplan to hopefully help visualize the layout. I have labelled it, please ignore the red circle as that is the soil pipe at the front of the house (i initially used this plan for a separate issue)


We only need to have plumbing for a single sink, although a dishwasher would be great too (but not a necessity)

As we have concrete floors, i wonder if it is possible to run the new plumbing through the ceiling. There is where our central heating is (under the bedroom floorboards) and we could run it from the bathroom where there is already a water supply.

I need to dig out our searches to look at the drains, i know there is a drain somewhere in our back garden near the back door/ I have a feeling it may be just outside of our boundary.

Worst case scenario - if there is NO sewer drainage at the back of the house, would anyone recommend any other solution?
I've thought about perhaps a saniflow. We can run water through the ceiling from the bathroom to this room, and then pump it back to the front of the house via the same route. I'm not sure how much of a good idea this is.

Ideally we would like minimal disruption to the room directly above the 'kitchen', and don't want to dig up the concrete flooring downstairs.
We are happy to take down the ceiling in the small hallway running alongside the back room to give access to pipework.

Please can someone tell me that my idea is either crazy/genius - and has anyone else done something like this before with great success?

Wookey

Best to have a mains water supply in the kitchen for drinking water which your bathroom may not have so you might end up having to run a mains pipe down from somewhere else.

A drain could be put in place by channeling out a pipe connected to your existing soil stack below ground level if need be, this also could be a way to get mains water round if need be.

If there is access below the stairs it might be possible to drop the hot water down in there on the surface from the floor above and then run it in to the kitchen, this would keep the pipe hidden from view and save tracking a wall to hide it.

ST1991

Wookey wrote: »

Best to have a mains water supply in the kitchen for drinking water which your bathroom may not have so you might end up having to run a mains pipe down from somewhere else.

A drain could be put in place by channeling out a pipe connected to your existing soil stack below ground level if need be, this also could be a way to get mains water round if need be.

If there is access below the stairs it might be possible to drop the hot water down in there on the surface from the floor above and then run it in to the kitchen, this would keep the pipe hidden from view and save tracking a wall to hide it.

Thank-you for your reply

The soil stack runs down the front of our house, and is shared with next door. I'm not sure how we would channel it through, unless you mean digging up the concrete flooring all throughout the living room?

There is space under the stairs (currently just a large storage area)

I think out bathroom does have drinking water... as it has a sink? (sorry if that's a stupid assumption i've made, but we drink water from it all the time before bed/in the night)

We don't have a hot water tank, just a combi boiler. That is at the front of the house with the plumbing at the moment.

The house is pretty old (1700's) so we want to try and avoid digging out the floors and walls where possible. The walls are solid stone.

Wookey

Ah i missed you where in a mid terrace house.

The bathroom water will either be from the mains or from a tank in the roofspace, if it's a tank then it isn't recommended as drinking water as chlorine dissapates after about 24 hours when exposed to the atmosphere and you never know what animals/bugs have made it into your tank, check it by opening the basin cold tap and see if your roofspace tank starts filling with water or by turning of the stopcock and seeing if that stops the water supply at the basin tap. If it's a modern plastic tank installed in the last 20 years or so it should have some screening/covers to prevent animals and bugs getting into it, this won't stop a buildup of dirt coming thru from the mains supply though.

The sewer/waste water will be your biggest problem if you can't get access to it at the back, personally i wouldn't use any form of domestic pumped sewerage system, kitchen waste water can contain quite a bit of fat and having that build up thru a pumped system over time is only asking for bother.

Does the kitchen have to be relocated to there or would swapping the living room - kitchen around be a possibility as it would make life easier from an install pov.

ST1991

Wookey wrote: »

Ah i missed you where in a mid terrace house.

The bathroom water will either be from the mains or from a tank in the roofspace, if it's a tank then it isn't recommended as drinking water as chlorine dissapates after about 24 hours when exposed to the atmosphere and you never know what animals/bugs have made it into your tank, check it by opening the basin cold tap and see if your roofspace tank starts filling with water or by turning of the stopcock and seeing if that stops the water supply at the basin tap. If it's a modern plastic tank installed in the last 20 years or so it should have some screening/covers to prevent animals and bugs getting into it, this won't stop a buildup of dirt coming thru from the mains supply though.

The sewer/waste water will be your biggest problem if you can't get access to it at the back, personally i wouldn't use any form of domestic pumped sewerage system, kitchen waste water can contain quite a bit of fat and having that build up thru a pumped system over time is only asking for bother.

Does the kitchen have to be relocated to there or would swapping the living room - kitchen around be a possibility as it would make life easier from an install pov.

We don't have a water tank, so there is one less thing to worry about i guess

It would be easier to have it in the front room (living room) but this really isn't what we want. Our ideal is to have the kitchen at the back of the house so it overlooks the garden. We have quite a few BBQ's in summer so it makes life easier when it's at the back.
Having water at the back of the house also means we'll be able to water the plants without running a hosepipe through the whole house.

So i guess we can easily add a water supply to the back room (well not easily... but do-able) but the main issue is waste water

I know the saniflo is not ideal, but it may be our only option?

Wookey

Is there an entry out the back or do you back on to another terraced row? If there is an entry is there any sewers along it, it may be possible to ask for a new connection if its within reasonable distance.

If it came down to me having to use a saniflow, digging up the floor to install a pipe or moving house i would dig up the floor first or move, if you did install one you would need to ensure that it can handle the vertical height you need combined with the total length of pipe run you need. The outlet pipe will need to be free from any vibration with it running thru the house or it would soon get annoying every time you run the tap or the washing machine/dishwasher is on.

ST1991

We'll have a look art the drainage searches later tonight to see what's what.

If there is one close (but not within our garden boundries) is it possible to join onto that by effectively digging down and through the neighbors garden? We would obviously put everything 'right' afterwards.

That would be preferable to me, than digging through the flooring of the only room we've managed to overhaul and decorate fully in the house (the living room)

ST1991

Good news (i think) !

After looking back through our searches there is a foul drain manhole cover in our neughbours back garden. This would have originally been in our own back garden but there was alot of hoo-hah about the boundaries during the purchase (previous owner had both houses and just changed the boundary, one of the houses was since sold... but hadn't been officially changed and anyway that's a different story)

Does this mean we can dig down and through to the foul drain?
We get on well with the neighbour, so access shouldn't be a problem, we hope, as long as the disruption to them is minimal/not dragged out over weeks.

Wookey

As long as you have there permission you should be ok, you will need to ensure the new pipe has a fall towards the sewer and is tied in in such a way as to not block theirs or your sewer. Maybe as a show of goodwill you could ask them if they want a tee left of to maybe connect to themselves at a future date.