Disconnecting shower

[Peter smith]

I have a electric shower in the bathroom and I want to remove it complteley. I can see how to cover of the shower comes off, its just one screen and it comes off then theres a few wires to diconnect and then the piping.

Next up how do I deal with the copper pipe ? it has a stop valve about half way down the pipe. Can I just turn the valve off and hack saw the pipe about the valve off. The rest of the pipe as I can see has been connected up to cold water tap under the bath. Or will this flood like hell ?

The wiring I guess with the power off :) cut the wiring back tape it up ? and tuck it back into the trucking out of site ? Pull the fuse and done ?

Or have I butchered this. Not a big diy-er or know much about plumbing. Just about change a washer.

[John Rumm]

You can turn the valve off, and undo the lock nut nearest the shower. You will get a dribble of water (i.e. the content of the show and the stub of pipes worth). If you cut the pipe between the valve and where it joins the sink pipe then you will get very wet very quickly! To remove that section of pipe you will need to isolate the water supply to the place where it picks up its feed. That may mean turning off the main stop c*ck. The quickest solution would be to cut the pipe with a pipecutter, and push a pushfit end stop on the cut end.

You need to disconnect the supply. Pulling the fuse only disconnects the live, leaving the earth and neutral connected. Any damp getting into the cable etc, could result in RCD tripping problems later. So either open the CU and disconnect the live and neutral (for want of a place to leave the free ends, you can connect them all to the earth bus bar - that will stop them flapping about, and ensure they can't take any dangerous voltages into your shower room). If you don't fancy that, then a less ideal but easier place to isolate it, would be at the main pull switch (assuming you have one).

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:24:06 +0100 someone who may be Peter smith wrote this:-

How is it connected up to the cold water pipe under the bath? If it is by a compression tee then the ideal approach, assuming there is enough spring in the pipes, is to take the tee off and replace it with a straight connector. Otherwise cap the pipe to the shower as close to the tee as possible, to avoid the stub of pipe acting as a place where large volumes of legionella can breed undisturbed.

Depends on whether the cable is buried in plaster, can be pulled back or whatever. Ideally it should be pulled back and terminated in a suitable junction box in a suitable location, labelled to indicate that it is the disconnected shower feed. This may sound vague, but we have no idea whether the cable comes up from below or down from above. At the consumer unit label the cable and connect all wires to the earth bar as already suggested.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Peter smith pretended :

Turn the valve off, make sure the shower water stops, then cut the pipe, but leave enough sticking out of the fitting so you can cap it properly. You can buy 15mm compression fittings (no soldering needed) to cap the open pipe end with - better than risking someone turning the valve back on and flooding the place.

NO, pull the fuse first before touching the shower! Then disconnect at both ends of the cable, and all of the wires. Leave the cable tapped up at both ends - someone may wish to reinstate it at a later date, so don't cut it.