Tuesday 19 November 2013

3 toilets and a certificate

We decided to complete our VAT return for the house because we're not far off completion and money is tight.
One of the requirements for the VAT return is a Temporary Certificate of Habitation.
Iain arranged for the Building Warrant Officer to come and said she would do an inspection based on a Competion Certificate and let us know what we needed to do for both, but while she was here she would like to see a pressure test on the drains.
That was in August and the kitchen drainage passed easily but not the bathroom drains!
Iain has been driven mad by this as he couldn't understand why it wouldn't hold pressure, apparently you put a bung on one end and another on the other then pump air in via a gauge which shouldn't go down!!!!
He ended up disconnecting everything, and I mean everything. The drain from the house to the first manhole was fine, he found a problem with the bath trap in the downstairs bathroom (a 50mm bath trap will only hold 50mm of pressure), the building inspector was duly rung and she advised that she would accept 50mm. Which was fine but the upstairs bathroom had a problem and it was the toilet which wouldn't hold any pressure at all. Iain wrote to the place where we bought it and they sent as a goodwill gesture a replacement pan, which still didn't hold pressure! So then we went to B&Q and bought another toilet and that didn't hold pressure properly although it did hold some.
With having them outside it enabled Iain to see better what was going on, all the toilets could be filled to overflowing and did not loose any water so none of them leaked but air was going somewhere. The replacement pan with the cistern tightened up (the seal wasn't sealing fully enough for an air pressure test) it passed.
So today 2 months later, the building inspector said yes we can have our Temporary Certificate of Habitation. Hurrah!