Before embarking on my house extension project, I spoke to a number of friends to see what I could learn from their experiences.  I heard various stories of success and failure but generally stories of things that went wrong and how they were then fixed.  One story that I remember quite well was from some friends who had converted their garage into a small self-contained flat with a bedroom/sitting room together with a small kitchen area and a separate bathroom.

Their project went very well and was completed on time and to budget and a good finish resulted.  After the builders moved out, there was the smell of glue and drying paint but this was not a problem as a few weeks with the windows open would soon solve this.  These smells reduced quite quickly but after a few months a generally musty smell started to arise.

So my friends had a nice new self-contained flat but it was a bit smelly.  They kept the windows open to get plenty of fresh air flowing through but after a few more months they realised they had a problem.  A thorough search did not bring up much, except for a bit of dampness under the kitchen units.  They kept the cupboards open but the dampness did not go away.

The next step would have been to get the builder back but, in a very unfortunate twist of fate, the builder had gone bankrupt shortly after completing their project.  My friends spent a few more weeks doing nothing, just hoping that somehow the problem would go away but eventually they realised that it was not going to solve itself.  There was obviously a leak in the pipework behind the kitchen units and the only way to find out, was to remove all the kitchen units and investigate further.

The builder who had gone bankrupt was a good friend of theirs and they accepted that there was nothing to be gained by asking him to come back.  A new builder was hired and some of the kitchen units were removed including the sink.  In behind was found a water pipe with a nail in it.  The water pipe was one of the modern plastic pipes and although the nail had not gone right through it, it had penetrated far enough to generate a very small leak.  This was not much more than a drip but a constant drip over time releases quite a lot of water.

The pipe work was mended and the kitchen was then rebuilt.  The problem was now fixed but my friends had spent another £2,000 that they had not anticipated.

Having learnt as much as possible from my friends, I embarked on my house project and I even used the same builder who now, a few years later, was back up and running.  I considered using copper water pipes but I was advised that the cost would be a lot more, so I decided to opt for plastic pipes.  I did jokingly say to my builder friend at the time ‘please make sure that no one inadvertently puts any nails through the pipework’.

In my loft conversion project, one thing we did do, was to keep the space under the eaves as an accessible void into which we could put electric cables and pipe work.  By making it accessible, I felt that this would be useful, in case in the future we ever want to put in more cables or access the existing pipework.  As it turned out this decision was very fortuitous. 

Our small en-suite bathroom was completed satisfactorily and towards the end of the project my wife decided (quite rightly) that we would need an extra radiator.    Because we had made the void under the eaves accessible, installing an extra radiator was hopefully going to be fairly straight forward.  So the new radiator arrived and the plumber crawled into the void to sort out the extra pipework but while doing this he actually noticed that there was a small leak in the pipe work to the new toilet.  A nail had penetrated one of the plastic water pipes and a small leak, no more than a drip had resulted.

We had not been aware of this leak but I was of course mightily pleased that the plumber had found it at this stage.  I was even more pleased that he had been able to fix it without having to rip out all the new bathroom tiling to get access.

So this was a problem that my friends had had.  It was a problem that I had experienced.  It was also a problem that another friend of mine was later to have but in his case he had to smash all his tiles out to get access and afterwards his bathroom had to be rebuilt at great expense.

So what can we learn from this.  Perhaps the following:

1. When designing a new kitchen or bathroom, if possible try and design it in a way where you will be able to get access to the pipework behind.  For example, instead of covering a wall with tiles, just install a neat little cupboard door for access?
2. Use copper water pipes instead of plastic pipes in any areas where there could be a risk of nails.
3. Choose a good reliable builder but don’t expect him to get everything perfect.  Hopefully he will sort out any problems but if he becomes bankrupt remember that this will not only be very unlucky for him but it could also be very unlucky for you.
4. Expect the unexpected and make sure you have extra some money in reserve to pay for it.

Article written by JJ Heath-Caldwell