Central heating system - 10mm piping / 15mm piping

JustAnotherSaver

I'm guessing there are other sizes available too before the wiseguys come in :T

I was just thinking earlier of when i pretty much flooded the living room after overtightening one of the valves on the radiator because i didn't know how much to tighten it & was worried it'd leak :rotfl:The emergency plumber at the time said he has a lot of call outs to 10mm pipework (which ours is), often due to people hoovering & hitting the piping. Said it's not very forgiving & that 15mm (i'm sure that's the measurement he gave) is much better.

After that, whenever i went in to someones place, i'd try notice their pipework :rotfl::rotfl:Almost always thicker than ours, so i assume 15mm. My mothers is also 15mm.


Hence why i'm here - why opt for 10mm then? What would the reason/s be? Or is it only one of cost? If so is it really a huge difference?

In ours, we've a 3 bed semi, towel rad in bathroom, 1 rad each in the 2 main bedrooms, a smaller one in the box room, 700x600 in the hall and diner i remember that as well as the 900x600 in the kitchen and one in the living room as well as a long one in the living room, maybe about 1800x600ish.

Or is it a case of shell out £5000 on a system but wont shell out the extra £250 it'd cost for better pipework? Figures are totally random plucked from nowhere of course for example purposes only

Warwick_Hunt

8 and 10mm micro-bore is quite common. Probably saves a few quid when building a whole estate.

Gloomendoom

You would feel very inadequate if you came to our house. Due to the long runs, a lot of it is 28 mm

JustAnotherSaver

Our house isn't a new estate. 1930s house so it isn't as though it was done along with the rest of the street. I guess they just decided to get central heating installed one day.

I guess it's just something the installer decides on. I don't imagine my parents were ever consulted - her Mr & Mrs, what piping do you desire?

So in our case it'd just be a 1 job. I'm guessing it still comes down to cost though.

Cost aside, as well as how fragile they may be, are there any benefits of going for one over the other?

Since the plumber mentioned the Hoover I'm really careful around the rads now

Davesnave

It's probably a bit easier to bury the 10mm stuff in walls etc and it is generally less obtrusive where it does show.

One doesn't have to hold a physics degree to work out that the effects of friction per unit of liquid pumped around will be more, however.

You have found the other main disadvantage.

Ruski

Easier and quicker to install.

It has moved on to 10mm plastic now

HTH

Russ

Jsnb88

At one point 10mm copper was all the rage,easier to install then 15mm because of flexibility, now with plastic piping the need for that has gone away (although 10mm plastic is still used on a lot of new builds to an extent)

EssexExile

Ours is 8 & 10mm. Presumably because it's easier to retrofit in an old house. We've been here 20 years & never damaged it doing the hoovering yet.

JustAnotherSaver

How's plastic piping get on then? Is that one of them modern ideas that creates more problems than it solves or is it overall better?

When we changed a few imperial rads to metric they just cut pipe work and soldered new. Is it just as easy with plastic?

Not that I'm thinking of ripping the whole thing up. Just curious.

bris

Plastic is an installers dream job, it bends round corners (to an extent) so uses far less solder fittings. Some insist on copper as they think it's better but they're wrong.


I use John Guest on all the hidden areas (underfloor etc) then bring Chromed copper to the radiators as it look far better than copper and copper to the boiler. The customer loves the chrome touch.


When the plastic first came about it was a nightmare, the rats used to eat it causing serious problems but that was a few years ago, now it's poison to them so they don't get through the first layer.

Alex1983

I disagree massively with plastic being better then copper, as a repair engineer I’ve spent far to long clearing blockages from microbore plastic, dirt from the system breaks off of the inside of plastic pipe work in lumps that look like tea leafs and blocks at fittings. With worse case scenario having to quote to repipe, people in new builds don’t appreciate having to have pipe work redone in relatively new houses.