Ok, it’s hidden away behind the bottles of zing, bling, ziff and tide but best practice says that unsecured pipework will eventually leak causing superficial and possibly structural damage to walls and floors.

We were recently asked to tidy up the under sink plumbing at a property in Tynemouth, see pic below.

The original work had been carried out by the kitchen fitting company and the customer had been preoccupied with a sick child at the time and so didn’t challenge the workmanship.

The hanging pipework places stresses on the joints and on the flexible hoses that connect to the kitchen tap. That stress exacerbates the strain on the pipe materials and significantly shorten the life of the components. A failure of these pipe would be catastrophic as they carry mains hot and cold water. After a few minutes the kitchen could be flooded.

By securing the pipe work with pipe clips it takes all of the stress away from the pipes and allows the joints and materials to continue their happy lives for many years.

The back of the kitchen units is usually very poor quality hard board and not strong enough to hold a pipe clip. Therefore a section of 12mm ply is glued to the hardboard thereby making a solid surface on which to mount pipe clips. The photo below shows this in place along with the pipework neatly cut to the correct length and the correct fitting used to connect the flexible taps hoses.

We can now be confident that the integrity of the pipework will not be compromised by poor fitting and know that this will last a life time!