Inspirations/Detail
Detail · 7 min read
Concealed plumbing: everything that goes wrong is behind a wall
Photograph the walls before they are tiled. It is the cheapest insurance in a build.
Concealed plumbing looks better and is harder to inspect, which is a poor combination. Once tiles go on, a leak announces itself weeks later as a damp patch two rooms away, and finding it means opening a wall you have just paid to finish.
Before any tiling, insist on a pressure test — the system charged and held, typically at around 1.5 times working pressure, for a documented period with a gauge you can see. Then photograph every wall, with a tape measure in frame for scale. In five years, when someone drills for a mirror, those photographs are what stop them hitting a hot water line.
Material choice is genuinely consequential for hot water. CPVC and PPR are both standard, and both are fine when jointed properly by someone who does it every day. The failures are almost always workmanship at joints, not the pipe itself.
Leave access. Every concealed cistern, every diverter, every shut-off valve should be reachable through a panel or an accessible tile. A system with no access point is a system that requires demolition to service.
Leave access.
