Hi,
Well, I have the cold water distribution in place in my under stairs cupboard:
Well I've capped off (or closed valves) and pressurised the dry pipe to
2.5bar. Been over it with gas leak spray and several joints were leaking (I'd only done most up half-turn - marked the fitting with a Sharpie).Tweaked most of the leaky joints up a bit and got a perfect seal.
However, I have 2 joints that are better but not perfect:
Before they were chucking a big bubble (3mm) every second or two
Now they are popping a tiny bubble about every 10 seconds as seen in the picture.
The 22mm joint is done to about 3/4 turn and has gone "tight". I am very loath to turn it more.
The 15mm I forgot to mark, so not sure how much of a turn. I could go more, but I've tweaked it up quite a bit. Bit scared now...
It's not common to dry test a system like this, but as I'm swapping the main water over to the other end tomorrow I wanted to debug this now.
Anyone care to venture an opinion if I should dare tweak these joints more - or just test with actual water and see if any weeps self heal. Or even be prepared to put some compound on the joint (what?)
Anyway for the morbidly curious, this is what the layout will do:
Basically, mains will come in from the top right, through the pressure reducing valve (we have 7.5 bar here).
Right to left:
(Top) Pressure test point - will get gauge on top (Top) garden tap take off
(mid 22mm lever valve) - secondary house isolation. This will shut the house down but leave a feed to the garden taps for watering devices.
Next 3 - kitchen, bathroom, shower room cold takeoffs.
Next with butterfly valve - electric water heater will move to here;
Next top - toilet/washing machine;
Left 22mm - cold to boiler.