Replacing Lead Piping

[hollyivysaurus]

We’ve had to pull the dishwasher out today and I’m pretty confident we have lead piping after the stopcock (picture attached for any second opinions!). DH has scratched it with a screwdriver and it went shiny. I’m annoyed our plumber has never mentioned it in six years of us living here! It’s a 1930’s house so not unexpected, I know the internal pipe work is copper as we’ve had lots redone, but between the stopcock and the street I now want replacing. We’re not in a hard water area so I know it’s a little more important due to that!

My question is, who do I get to do this work? My usual plumber? A builder due to the digging required? Will Yorkshire Water do it?

We’re having the driveway and back garden redone next year, so this would probably be the best time to do it at least!

Had ours done a few months ago. Best place to start will be your water supplier website. Most have a lead replacement scheme where they will do the final few metres to the main if you sort the rest with an accredited plumber.

Ours cost about £800 including some internal work. They were WIAPS accredited. Ours had started leaking under the stove, which was the main motivation.

Often will try to Mole the new pipe in, avoiding the need for a massive trench.

Good luck.

Stove = drive.

Thanks, that’s useful! How did you find a plumber who was accredited with this?

Watersafe.org.uk

I thought this was a Cluedo question. 😉

Our new house has this, it came up on our survey. Again our water company was pretty useful in telling us what needs doing so we were ok going ahead.

You can do it yourself.

You just need a sturdy woman with a spade who knows how to dig a trench. It need not follow the same route as the old pipe.

Plumbers are weedy little fellows with petal-soft hands who may not have been trained on spades.

The water co will want to inspect the depth of your trench before you fill it in.

If you are lucky they will connect it for you free. Ask them to test your drinking water for lead content before you start work, and scour their website for the Lead Replacement Policy.

If you are not used to plumbing work you can get a plumber to fit and connect the indoor stopcock. Get a full-bore one.

Thank you SO much for the replies on here. I'm going to get in touch with the water company on Monday and see what the next steps are. I'll ask for the water testing, but I want it done regardless for peace of mind. I'm already beating myself up as I've had two formula fed children in the last five years, and I wish I'd known about the sodding lead pipe, going forwards I want to know it's gone! Doing it ourselves isn't an option as everything outside is paved so it's doing to need a proper trench being dug. DH and I wouldn't have a bloody clue what we were doing, we have a small amount of savings to throw at fixing this at least.

We're under Yorkshire Water, their website says they will do samples, and will replace the communication pipe if we state in writing that we're going to have the supply pipe replaced - no advice about going about that though!

I'm actually going to stop using our plumber after this. He has done LOADS of work in our kitchen and used the stopcock multiple times, never mentioned that it was a bloody lead pipe. Possibly because he knew I'd want him to replace it and didn't want the job! He was involved in our building project a couple of years ago where the entire kitchen was ripped out and they were digging trenches in the garage we were converting anyway - it would have been pretty simple and less disruptive to do it as part of that work. At least we've noticed it now, I think I'd have cried if we'd paid to get the garden redone and then realised we needed to dig loads of it up to redo the bloody pipework!!

That WaterSafe website looks good too, thanks! Though our nearest one who does moling replacements is 9 miles away in a city and I'm not too sure they'd travel that far to even quote.

We're going through the preliminary work for some building work at the moment and have just agreed a contract with an architect, I might speculatively ask them if they know anyone who would be able to do it, they seem to be a font of knowledge about general building work!

depending on the length of the pipe, and the number of people and bathrooms and potential people in your house, you might want to run it in 25mm or 32mm blue plastic. The extra cost of 32mm material is insignificant, but it will be ample for an unvented cylinder or an enormous combi, should you desire one in future, and if the internal plumbing is of good size, you need have no squeals from the shower when somebody turns off a tap or flushes a WC in another part of the house. But be sure to get full-bore stopcocks. They are more expensive in larger sizes, and plumbers will sometime cut corners. But it is a hundred times more effort and expense to dig up and replace an undersize stopcock at a later date.

If Yorkshire water will replace their pipe at (about) the same time, it should save you the cost of reconnecting, and you will have an all-round better job. If you are in a soft-water area, your old pipes will not have a layer of limescale coating the lead which reduces the content in the water. Request the test straight away because there is sometimes a long delay in getting it done (which must be before you start work).

The new pipe does not have to follow the same route as the olds one. This can make it easier if it can pass through a cellar or an underfloor void, or digging up a flowerbed rather than a concrete drive.

We did it in two parts. When we had the kitchen done we replaced the inner stock cock/lead piping. Then when we had the drive done the following year the driveway contractor dug the trench and laid the pipe (in some trunking so we could remove/replace it if required without digging up the new drive) a normal plumber put a dummy connector on it and Severn Trent 'inspected' it and the trenchnvia video call. Then STW did their bit at the road a week or so later and the plumber came straight back to connect us up. It was very faffy as you had to make sure you were following all the regs plus get the timings right so you weren't without water for too long. Water tasted wierd for a couple of days afterwards and I filtered everything but was fine after. STW were very helpful all the way through. Can't remember the cost as it was absorbed into the driveway costs - I remember the plumber being more than we expected but that was probably because of the pain in the bum factor...
I wouldn't worry about the lead, we had the water testing and it was well within the limits and half the housing stock in the country have lead pipes, we only did it as we were doing the drive/kitchen anyway so it was now or never.

Ooops stop cock I mean.
Also we asked about the 32mm pipe but there was an extra cost with STW for them to connect to this as they would only do 25mm at the road end.

There is some way of calculating it, but if you have, say, a foot or so of 25mm at the meter, followed by ten metres of 32mm all the way into the house, you do still get a better and quieter flow.

It's quite handy to dig a pit just inside your boundary, with a lift-up iron lid and a stopcock in it, and a length of pipe ready to reach to the meter. The water co can connect this up, and you your plumber just swaps over from old pipe to new pipe at a convenient time. With everything prepared in advance it doesn't take long.

You can also take the supply off to a garden or car-washing tap from the same pit, should you so desire. I currently also have a fire hydrant next to mine, that I keep clear of weeds and mud, and the lid moving freely, but that doesn't belong to me. Hopefully it will never need to be used in anger. When the firemen come and test it they joke that I use it to fill my swimming pool (I haven't got a swimming pool).

@SprayedWithDettol

I thought this was a Cluedo question. 😉

Me too