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I've examined the building basically there's about six of these pipes going in a line and they go through every single flat onto the loft the pipe is 28 m so it's not massive but theres alot of them.I'm struggling with this up/down issue.
A number of us seem to be basing the 'it must be a pipe coming down' theory on the size of the pipe. I'm happy to accept that it reduces as it falls if you say it does. Being an old building, it's entirely possible a pipe has been repurposed and the direction of flow reversed and it's likely that the narrowest bore for a former gravity distributing pipe is more than sufficient for a mains or pumped pressure pipe going up.
There are better ways of checking the direction of flow than the pipe size. For one, if you are able to use that stopcock that isolates the left branch you could test the pressure against your mains or pumped pressure on that floor of the building and compare it with the metres head you would have from the loft cistern to your floor. This would certainly be a start.
They had to pass up the house because every time they go up a floor they fill a water tank which was sat right next to it. In the loft you have 6 stop cocks on the joists they all lead into the tank then gate valves that allow water to go down and in the tank.
remember the most important thing downstairs upstairs the whole building had no water in the bathroom basically everyone who had a water tank but I continued to have water going through that pipe and it was going at some pace. Remember we went to the loft and we turned the valves
We were confused until another plumber came over and said this is the water going up hence why I continued to have water.
Today we went downstairs and we walked 13 Steps from the lift directly to the little Thames Water hole and every flat seems to have one on the pavement area.
We opened it up and indeed we see a valve
This valve is directly in line with that pipe outside my property in line with the whole buildings pipe
I'm not a plumber but I do think we have found the source.
Now here's my most important question I don't want to turn it and start anything unless I know for a fact with the plumbers public liability should the crap hit the fan he is liable so all this talk about rubbish going up the pipe and destroying the water tanks or 10'000 l of water crashing down and causing maybe 5m of damage do I make sure he's got public liability and do the work some people are saying don't worry some people are really making me worry.
I think we found the valve now I just want to make sure the person doing it is properly insured perhaps we should just do the work that's what the insurance is for ?