Moving bath and sink waste pipes in a concrete floor All aspects of plumbing questions and answers, help, tips and information

[sarahholder]

Hello,

In installing a new bathroom the sink waste pipe needs to be moved about 25cm, and the bath waste pipe needs to be moved about 50cm (from the head to the middle of the bath) the bath is a claw foot bath so we don't want pipes showing underneath.

The floor is concrete, our plumber is reluctant to move the pipes, and doesn't want to get involved. But i don't see what else can be done? How hard will it be to drill out the concrete around the pipes ourselves? How messy? Am I being naive in thinking if we dig up the concrete around the existing pipes and make channels for where the other pipes need to go then the plumber can realign the pipes underneath the concrete and then we refill the holes after they've been put in the new positions?

I'm assuming the taps can be reached via flexible piping which can be tucked behind skirting with a batten to make it deeper from the wall.

Any thoughts, advice, and suggestions would be hugely appreciated.

Thank you
Sarah

[marrtin]

Think you'll find few if any plumbers will go anywhere near this one.

Ok, so any problem can be solved if you throw enough money at it, but really this is a builders job not a plumbers. Concrete is seriously tough, and apart from that, the integrity of the damp proof membrane has to be ensured.

[peter the plumber]

I think your asking a bit too much of your plumber.

We did have the similar problem on a job last year.

But we where lucky, the customer asked for the floor to be tiled and was happy for us to raze the bathroom floor by about 4-5 inches to hide the pipe work.

We just got our carpenters to put the new floor in after we had put the tails in.

But it was only a small bathroom.

[peter the plumber]

My co-worker with a bacon roll in his hand has just reminded me how we did this.

We didn’t do the whole floor; we just put in a plinth under the bath.

It was about 8 inches high and was tiled.

[bonzo]

Concrete is pretty easy to break up with the right tool. Ive been doing it today with a normal hammer drill with rotary stop to move radiator pipes. Alternativly a Kango isnt that expensive to hire.

I suspect most plumbers will avoid it due to the hassle of it and the potential cost of an entire new floor if something goes wrong.