Plumbing Inside of walls

[BuffieSch]

I’m just curious why plumbing is always done outside of and adjacent to walls here? I’m american and I can not remember a single time seeing boxed in plumbing in a bathroom ever. Do building regs proclude pipes being fitted inside of walls (through wooden studs etc) or is this just lazy plumbing that’s been accepted?

 

[Best]

I’m just curious why plumbing is always done outside of and adjacent to walls here? I’m american and I can not remember a single time seeing boxed in plumbing in a bathroom ever. Do building regs proclude pipes being fitted inside of walls (through wooden studs etc) or is this just lazy plumbing that’s been accepted?

Since when has Americans stopped being lazy?

To answer your question, If the walls are stud, then the pipes should be inside them for neatness, and frankly in the U.K. most new bathroom work and any decent old bathrooms have this done anyhow.
I would have thought proper plumbers here in the U.K. were doing a better job than the Yanks tbh.
Solid one brick wide walls not ideal for cutting into for large pipes though.
Sometimes best solution is to build a partition in front of a solid wall to use for all the pipes to be hidden

 

[BuffieSch]

Since when has Americans stopped being lazy?

To answer your question, If the walls are stud, then the pipes should be inside them for neatness, and frankly in the U.K. most new bathroom work and any decent old bathrooms have this done anyhow.
I would have thought proper plumbers here in the U.K. were doing a better job than the Yanks tbh.
Solid one brick wide walls not ideal for cutting into for large pipes though.
Sometimes best solution is to build a partition in front of a solid wall to use for all the pipes to be hidden

Thanks for your reply. Mine is a 90’s house- the main being stud frame. So I’m surprised that the bathroom plumbing has all been housed in boxed runs that frankly, encroach on the floor space and are also an eyesore...

 

[king of pipes]

Many of the big boy property developers have a way of doing the plumbing and heating alot box stuff in its just for a quicker turn around and not always the best looking , a bespoke bathroom installation you can more or less have anything you want with everything hidden here is a bit of my handy work not a pipe in sight . Cheers kop

 

[Pickwickpick]

New builds are the worst example of British construction, the big guys have a quasi monopoly and it really shows, including in the ever shrinking size of out houses! It's such a contrast to the continent (grew up in France) where majority houses are self builds.

 

[Ric2013]

You ask a general question as well, so this is a general answer.
I would imagine a lot of Modern British Plumbing is retrofit and post-dates the original construction by half a century or so, so much cheaper and easier and less wasteful of resources not to demolish half a wall or pull up floors to hide pipes, so that's all the old housing stock explained.
UK homes are generally small, so not much space to build in service voids, so often that means walls and such spaces will be as narrow as structurally possible and that making holes for services would cause too much weakening of the structure.
UK building tends to be conservative and we often continue to do the things as above even when there is a new-build project and the opportunity to do things better arises. We simply don't think outside the box enough (mental laziness), and are averse to doing anything differently because when the next tradesman sees it, he will simply say we did it 'wrong'.
Personally, I have no objection to high-quality plumbing being visible and accessible for future maintenance and adaptation. Not everyone feels the same, I know.

 

[Best]

On a lot, but not all of bathrooms here that were done in the 60’s or much older had pipes on the surface to go to basin and toilet. Although even back then on a decent job the pipes were hidden.
On cheaper properties and council homes the plumbing used to be just on surface.
I always believed in pipe runs being hidden below floors and in stud walls, same with kitchens, so it has been the norm for me to repipe any, even if customer did not insist on it.
I was told that many decades ago it was not allowed to put pipes in joists and that might explain why some old houses had casing built below the ceiling for gravity pipes from fires and sometimes other hot and cold pipes.

 

[BuffieSch]

Thanks all for the posts- I think it may well be just a new(er) big box build issue- clearly it's faster and cheaper to put the piping in that way...

 

[chris watkins]

Most of our housing is old & solidly built of brick / block, unlike the timber frame light wight build in a lot of the USA which is why they blow away with the first puff of wind that hits them.

 

[BuffieSch]

Most of our housing is old & solidly built of brick / block, unlike the timber frame light wight build in a lot of the USA which is why they blow away with the first puff of wind that hits them.

To be fair, in CA where I'm from, you wouldn't want to be in a block/brick house during an earthquake- they don't tend to be very flexible... In any case the original of my house (aside from a recent extension) is wood framed..

 

[BuffieSch]

That being said- German houses tend to be block/brick and somehow they manage to not have exposed or boxed in plumbing in the last 30 years...

 

[SimonG]

North American plumbing tends to be ran in bulkheads below the ceiling.

 

[BuffieSch]

North American plumbing tends to be ran in bulkheads below the ceiling.

Could be the case in older homes- my parents just built a house a couple of years back- trust me, the piping is within the wall or between floor/ceiling below.

 

[SimonG]

Nope. Still using bulkheads, even more so in new builds.

 

[Ric2013]

To be fair, in CA where I'm from, you wouldn't want to be in a block/brick house during an earthquake- they don't tend to be very flexible... In any case the original of my house (aside from a recent extension) is wood framed..

I'm from an earthquake area too, and can confirm that the most stable structures are the log-cabin style ones with interlocked timbers forming the walls. My predominately brick house in Colchester remains standing largely due to force of habit and I doubt it would survive a quake.