I need to get electricity, gas and water from my house down to the bottom of the garden and into the garage.
I've already got armoured cable running along the ground between the wall and a row of conifers which seems fine and no-one can get near it without intending to.
It will be really difficult for me to dig a trench of any sort.
Can I screw a 2" X 1" frame to the wall and put the armoured cable, blue water pipe and yellow plastic gas pipe in it? I'd then pack the whole thing with insulation and screw a 1/2" ply cover over it all the way down to the garage.
Once we get to the end of the row of conifers I'll bury it all in a brown 6" underground plastic waste pipe and pass it through the foundations (hole and waste pipe already in place) and leave a small traphole access in the concrete floor.
ok, thanks very much for the advice and confirming that i'd probably be sectioned for trying what i suggested.
do you think it would be ok to go with my suggestion if i omit the gas and replace it with a central heating flow and return in plastic along with a domestic HW feed, all from the house combi boiler?
So, if i left the armoured cable where it is (running behind the trees, not buried but also not very accessible) and put the water pipes in the insulated channel, do you think it will be protected from frost?
I've done something along these lines between the house and my garage workshop.
The first point, though is that the power cable (which should be armoured SWA) should be kept quite separate from any piped services and not run in the same duct. It can in any case be run or buried in the ground.
I did not run a water service, but did run a heating service using
22mm plastic barrier pipe. This was implemented by insulating each pipe with very thick Armourflex insulation (IIRC I used the 22mm thick stuff). The pipes were then threaded through 150mm soil pipe from end to end with the pipe buried, of course. If they were run above ground in some form of box then I would suggest more insulation packed around them.
As far as hot water is concerned, unless you want a lot of it, it may be more practical to run a cold service and have a small electric heater for it in the garage.
One thing that I did do for the heating was to arrange a completely separate circuit rather than running the main heating circuit to the workshop. I did this by using a stainless steel plate heat exchanger to separate the circuits and transfer the heat. The primary side of it is connected to the house CH flow and return with a two port zone valve to control when heat goes to the heat exchanger. The secondary side connects to the workshop circuit which is run sealed. There is a filling loop at a convenient point in the house but the pressure vessel is in the garage where there is a convenient location for it. In the garage there is a separate pump and of course the pipework to the radiators.
The secondary system is controlled by a timer/thermostat which operates the pump. On the secondary circuit in the house there is a flow switch which operates the zone valve. Thus, when there is a demand for heat in the workshop, the pump runs, the flow switch detects it and closes and the zone valve opens and signals the boiler that heat is required.
The reason for the extra complexity is because I did not want to risk compromising the house CH system if anything went wrong with the workshop circuit - for example damage to the pipe etc. I also added a combined corrosion inhibitor and antifreeze (Fernox Alphi-11) to the workshop circuit at a concentration sufficient for -15 degree temperatures. This stuff is relatively expensive, but it would be foolhardy not to use it because if the workshop pump fails or the heating is off for a period, there would be a risk of freezing, insulation or not. It was another reason to separate the systems so that the whole system including the inside would not need to be dosed. The workshop part of my system needed 4 containers of this stuff at around £15 a go and if the house system had been combined another 4-5, so this went most of the way to the heat exchanger cost.
Because of the added volume of water, an additional pressure vessel would have been required for a combined system, so separating the systems did not add to this cost.
Overall, the arrangement works extremely well. I insulated the workshop very thoroughly with Celotex, which reduces the heat loss to
3-4kW, and I sized the radiators to provide quite a bit more than that.
Depth is your friend when it comes to frost protection. 1m down is pretty much impervious to a bad frost. Deeper will be better, but you would need to balance this versus the effort involved. If as you say trenching is not an option then you should plan on experiencing & recovering from frozen pipes at some point. A 3 degree water pipe in a minus 7 air temperature would need _very_ good insulation.
my initial thought was to put a small, cheap combi in there, run the gas/water down and the whole thing would be self-contained.
looks like i'll be looking for an alternative since it's too hard to dig a trench at the moment.
that's how it is at the moment, so i'll leave as is.
i've got a megaflow for the main domestic HW, but a few taps are run off the combi HW circuit so i thought i'd make use of that, although there might be quite a delay in delivering HW if i only need a little. i anticipate running a hot pressure washer, etc so on occasion might need enough to make it worth it.
do you find the SS heat exchanger efficient? sounds like a good idea simply on the basis of the anti freeze issue alone.
i'll probably need to think about a pressure vessel on my own system. you very kindly illustrated the calcs for me some time ago, but i've not managed to work through it yet. however, if i have cold pressure much over 1 bar the pressure release valve lets out water then the cold press drops below 1 bar. my boiler cuts out below 0,5 bar, so it's pretty marginal when i have to bleed dissolved air from the big narrow towel rail which is the highest point in the system and it's very noticable when the 1st few bars are cold.
i'll need to look at the insulation when the roof's on. i'm buying a big insulated sectional door for the main entrance, but i'll still have two
9' X 9' single skin doors on the other sude.
as an aside, have you heard of Amarr Doors supplied by Garage Door Systems in Ireland? they're american made and the fitter says they're comparable to Hormann.
it really is a garage, but it'll probably have an attice room and there's space for a workshop in the main garage area.
i do need to run water down, and just thought it might be relatively straightforward to put the CH in. i fitted CH to my own house with the help of the group, so the garage isn't daunting, but i now understand the concerns about running gas overground.
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