Help! Shower waste level trouble - how to adjust this copper to cast iron junction? (Pics)

[bickering]

Any plumbing advice please?

I’m trying to DIY fit my bathroom - taking out a half size bath and installing a big shower 1100x760. It’s not massive but it’s a really small bathroom (probably smaller than many en suites?!)

Anyway in the picture the top of the cast iron drain is roughly floor level and theres a copper connection pipe which turns into the top of it.

The connection is solid but by the time it passes through the wall (300mm (?) away) the underside of the pipe is 80mm above the floor!

By the time i add the fall (40-50mm depending on where I measure from) my shower tray might be 220-250mm off the floor. Making the headroom only 2m which is a bit rubbish.

I spoke to some bathroom fitters who want to charge £5-£7.5k to do the work (on top of fittings)… but this is a tiny room and my budget won’t stretch to that. So I’ll need to go DIY - Ive got the tools and can tackle a lot of things but this connection is new to me - seems like a standard 1960s/70s detail?

If I can release the copper pipe out of the cast iron I was thinking I could use a plastic fitting (as pictured) to save around 50mm of height on the tray… but how to release the copper pipe from the cast iron?

Anyone seen anything similar and have any tips please?

thanks!

Sounds like good progress is being made.
Super impressed with everything you are doing.
Hope the week has gone well.

Im also happy with progress - still slow but plodding along…

Saturday was spent re-working the boxing out to suit the shower plumbing first fix - the plumber had installed the pipes slightly further off the long wall, which would end up with a weird tile layout later. So I adjusted the timbers across the short end and the dimensions of the cut tiles down each side of the short end should be equal…

I got the shower tray located and that works with the timbers placed last week on the other short end of the shower tray (sliding door) - phew! I was worried my adjustments at the opposite short end might push things out of square but that all looks good.

I was able to dry fit the shower and basin waste, and fit pattress plates for the shower pipes and basin waste.

Sunday I took DD for a girls trip in the afternoon so only a short day. spent it dry fitting the toilet connectors - what a pain they are?! I’d measured up for a McAlpine back to wall right angle but it’s so floppy on the adjustable section. Ive got no confidence it will stay in position behind the boxing out. So I’ve had a re-think and bought a viva “long” rigid right angle which I can trim down and clip to the wall, so that when I push the back to wall pan into place I’ll be confident it’s all connected. It’s not as well made as the McAlpine so I’ll need to sand off some rough spots and put silicone sealer to smooth off an odd ridge but it’s the best I can find…

Ran out of time to get things trimmed to do the final dry fit but I’ll have some time later in the week and hopefully will get the loo working again before the weekend.

Before I do anything else Ive got to buy the 2 sliding doors and make my final flooring choice so I can fix the door frame/shower tray levels and finish off the wall boarding. Flooring choice is proving more tricky that expected.

Looking good. Please me you don’t have a pedestal for the sink.

I went semi pedestal in the end because I hate cleaning exposed bottle traps. Sorry!

That looks amazing.💪
Stud work is great.
Out of interest what are you using to cut your timber?
Its something I struggle with.
I use a jigsaw and I have definitely improved with buying better quality blades but I don,t have a decent workbench to fix a circular saw too.
I used the jigsaw to cut down full length MDF panels to build my wardrobe and it did take ages clamped to my dining room table.😀
Do you set yourself a budget and try to work to that?

Refitted my son,s wc at the weekend as it was wobbly and leaking slightly, quite suprised when we opened the McAlpine WC connector that the inner seal was snapped. So annoying as we had the toilet out and they have 1 toilet.
The joys of plumbing.😎
Looking great @bickering really something to be proud of.

Timber cutting - at the moment im just using a regular hand saw as it’s only short cuts. I mark all around with a set square and let the saw do the work so im doing ok for accuracy on cutting. My measurements might be the weak point TBH! I did get DH to help with some cuts but interestingly both he (and seemingly my dad) cut faster/with more power but are working out less accurate. I did try a jigsaw but thats no good for carcassing - I go way off line which I can’t understand as im sure I could get straight cuts when I originally bought it (crumbs 25 years ago… maybe the tool hasn’t aged well?!).

Ive been considering one of these having seen someone on YouTube using it for laying laminate flooring. Not as big a commitment as a bench saw?
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/4546649
But I’ll only need that if I decide to tackle making the boiler cupboard… but our local B&Q is good for cut to size on the panels so maybe I can avoid buying more tools… I hope your dining table survived unscathed?

Gah - how irritating about the snapped toilet connector. Although I suppose that made diagnosing the problem fairly straightforward.

The bathroom budget - I’d set aside £5k to get someone else to fit it plus about £2k for the fittings. But then I struggled to find a fitter - either they were too busy to visit, or they came and never quoted or they told me all the things they’d need to change with the layout to make it easier for them to build ugly. I got one firm quote of £7500 - or £5k if I organised the plastering which in the end cost £600. By this time they were looking at a completely stripped out room - I had removed tiles and a lot of plaster where it had failed, the bathroom suite was away and the flooring all out. Yet that didn’t seem to make a difference. That made me think about how much other slack there might be in the quote…. So here I am on the DIY route despite all my best intentions. And even if I’m totally profligate on the builders work, I’ll still save at least £5k! But Youve reminded me to update my budget to see how it’s going - the budget for toilet pan connectors is way out of control as im on #3 at this point 🤣

Thanks @bickering .
Interesting reading the hand sawing results. I do hand saw, however I cant saw straight. I pull quite heavily to the right so I always no matter how small a job have to use the mitre box.
I just have a cheap Titan jig saw which really was bought as a throwaway for a load of timber I needed to cut but the thing has lasted.

So invested in a couple of Bosch laminate undercut blades which were expensive and then really started practising on offcuts. I do seem to have got a grip on how to handle it now for straight cuts. Just a couple of tweaks and watching youtube vids has really made a big difference. I had to put 2 real oak shelves up in my daughters the other week but needed to cut around trunking and really needed a very clean, neat cut out, the laminate blades worked a treat on the solid oak as well. Literally mm precison.

I think because I do everything myself I am quite cautious of super duper power tools even though they would make the job quicker. Yet always find myself gazing at power tools.😀

Alas it was the new replacement McAlpine that we needed to put on leaky wc that had the seal snapped. So annoying as a 10 minute job turned into a fair bit longer as we had to go back out to return and repurchase. That,s plumbing though, always a bit of a faff.
I have enjoyed reading your thread and it really is a great project. Like you say about time you start prepping for these jobs you realise actually you have done a huge amount of work already so why not carry on and save the money.

@bickering
Your probably to far gone with the studwork to make it worth buying, but a chopsaw or mitre saw is brilliant for repeated cuts especially when you need to cut an angle. A bit fiddly to set up, but easy to use. Hand circular saws have their uses, but I always find that it is easy to wander off the line even using the guide plate, setting the blade for a vertical cut can also be difficult. I'm of the opinion that if you've got a lot of sheet timber to cut it's much easier, to work out the cuts needed, then cut B&Q or Wickes to cut it, no risk to the dining table that way.

Oh yes i was eyeing one of those too! McAllister (B&Q tool range?) had quite a well priced one and I have been impressed with the other 2 tools of theirs I got recently. I have to do skirting in a couple of rooms and am sorely tempted to get a mitre saw even though I am a bit scared of them

Nothing wrong with being scared. Over-confidence and complacency is what causes accidents.

Just checked my spreadsheet and did some updates. My original estimate was £3k for all the bathroom items/fittings and £5k for installation. So total budget was around £8k. I was then quoted £7.5k for the fitting which would have blown the budget at £10.5k.

This is for a shower room which is 3m long x 1.4m at its widest! So original quote would have seen a cost of around £2500/sqm. Which is ridiculous because the Dept for Education expects new schools to cost less than that and they have to build an external envelope...

Anyway I'm currently at just under £500 on the tools and timber/plumbing bits and pieces, plus £1900 on sanitaryware, concealed cistern/flush button, illuminated mirror etc, brassware, shower tray, screen etc (and that includes my errors on buying the wrong toilet pan and trialling 3 or 4 different pan connectors). I have also spent £600 on plastering and the sliding door & mechanism will come to about £500ish.Still to buy: wedi boards, tiles & grout (I'm going super plain 150 square with coloured grout), paint, towel hooks and maybe a small shelf so I am hoping this will be £300 or so. If I add in £300 for flooring and £200 electrics (as part of the larger re-wire) and then £200 for half a day for the plumber then I'm looking at around £4.5k all in - which is £1071/sqm which is much closer to what I would expect for a back to brick refit.

Anway for a saving of £6k and enjoying getting my hands dirty, it is all working out quite well so far 😂

A update in case anyone is interested… Been held up by waiting for doors and getting one fitted in a sliding pocket for the bathroom. It went in last week so the bank holiday was spent lining walls with shower boards. Went with Marmox as they have some insulation as this is a cold corner of the flat. Plasterboard can finally go up at last next week. Having done the bulk of the prep a couple of months back Im hoping things will come together fairly quickly now.

Looks good, just waiting to see the end result. Just think how satisfying it will be to have that first shower. One question how did you get the lead seal out of the downpipe? I'm hoping I'll never have to do it, but it might be handy to know, so I can nonchalantly say, of course what you need to do is......

I used a wood drill bit in my cordless drill and stitch drilled all the way around. Under that was lots of bitumen impregnated rope. Which I also drilled and it broke up. So armed with the hoover I could suck out the rope. The lead was too heavy so I was able to scrape out strips/chips of that and set aside. It was fiddly and took a while but wasnt difficult