Plastic pipes in CH

[mj]

Hello all you DIY Sages!

I've just dug all the central heating pipes out of my concrete floors in my bungalow ~ the joints were not protected from the cement & were leaking all over the place. I now need to replace them all & was wondering whether or not to use plastic pipes & pushfit connections.

Obviously they won't suffer the same fate as soldered copper joints but how do they compare with respect to their performance & reliability?

I have also discovered that I have 2 pumps in the heating circuit (11 rads) ~ currently only one is powered, the other looks pretty defunct. How much resistance to the flow of water would this non working pump add? Do you guys think I should whip it out whiilst the system is drained, replace it or leave alone?

Thanks for the anticipated help Mike J

[G&M]

They are fine. All problems were solved years ago.

Take it out. And if you can afford it take the other one out as well and put in a Grundfos Alpha.

[IMM]

Take no notice they are only suitable for certain situations. Under a concrete floor is one, but don't have joints buried. If that is unavoidable then use plastic coated copper with soldered joinst. Then wrapp the joinsts. Plastic pipes are available in pipe in pipe with the outer being the conduit.

Find out what the pump was pumping forst.

[John Stumbles]

In the real world you should be OK burying PB or PEX (Hep2O etc or Speedfit) directly in your floor, but the BS (rather bolting the stable door IMO) says that you should install them so that they can be removed and replaced (without digging up the floor) later. For that purpose you can buy corrugated plastic pipe (like the stuff used behind sinks and baths for overflow, but a bit bigger) from BES etc (you run your Hep2O etc in it)

If it's really not doing anything I'd take it out.

[Ed Sirett]

Sounds like the BSI committee was loaded from people from the CDA?