Where on earth is this brown water coming from?!

First up. I'm not a full time plumber. I'm doing a bathroom refurb in my own house. Mostly at weekends because of work and family stuff. Now here's my dilemma and if anyone can spare the time to read my story and advise me, I'd appreciate it.

So, I'm fitting wall mounted taps on the wall, a waterfall mixer above the bath.

Before I put in the new bath I tapped into existing hot and cold that runs in 15mm plastic behind the bath and upstairs to the loft conversion.

Then for each service, hot and cold, I went from 15mm plastic to a 15/22 reducer and connected a section of 22mm, connected to 90 degree bends and took a short length of copper up to a wall mounted backplate elbow with 3/4 inch female thread. I sleeved the pipework with that furry stuff and cemented it in after making sure it was sound. I then tiled over it so the outlets were flush and plugged it off till the taps got delivered to the plumbers merchant.



I put the bath in tiled right up to the edge and took the taps out of the box. Unfortunately, I'd made an assumption that the tap connection would be 3/4 but unfortunately they were 1/2inch.

I then had the problem of how to reduce and keep the outlets flush with the tiles. The problem with a normal bush was the fact that the lip that you'd fit the spanner too would be proud of the tiles. I didn't fancy ripping the bath out and chopping out the wall. Then I found reducing bushes on eBay and thought my problem was solved. I then fitted my taps and wifey was happy.



Then...after a couple of days of use, the family complained of brown water coming from the taps. It was only when it was being used for the first time in the morning or evening and was a small amount before running clear. There's been no work in the street and no brown water from any other taps so I'm thinking "What the hell?"

So I Google it, as you do, and can find nothing that seems relevant. Then I'm speaking to a pal a few days later and he says, were the bushes you put in brass?

"DOH!" I'd bought the first thing I found after searching something like "lipless bush" trying not to get distracted by some of the "interesting" pictures such a search produced, lol. Anyway the bushes are not brass and when I went back to have a look what I'd bought on eBay it says "for use with Gas". In my excitement of finding them I didn't really notice or think about that. Along with my lack of experience I'd made another boo-boo: the bushes were obviously rusting.


Then I had the problem of getting them out, I did a post yesterday asking for advice on removing the bushes and tried the solution of super gluing in plugs, waiting and trying to undo the plugs, hoping the glue held and plug and bush together would come out.


It didn't work so I decided to bite the bullet, remove a tile, chop into wall and replace with a new backplate and BRASS bush.


I did this yesterday and cemented it in this morning before I went to football with my son.

So.... here we go...I just came home, turned on the temporary bib tap and THE WATER WAS BROWN!


Please...Anyone got any idea why the brown water is back?

 

Hi Kiab
It's on both supplies. It doesn't come out of the taps anywhere else in the house. The supplies go up to the loft conversion with no problem and before the bath I've since put in a basin and the problem isn't there

 

It's a head scratcher. There's no iron anywhere in the house. The stopcock is under the first floorboard as you walk through the door and the run from there is all copper. The patch from that stopcock to the street stopcock is plastic, it was originally lead but stripped out 14 years ago when we moved in

 

Yeah, we were all having baths for about a month before I realised the problem wasn't going away. It's when you first turn the water on, then runs clear after about a cup full

 

It's brown enuff to show up against the white of the bath and not nearly as dark as black tea. More like a lighter ice tea maybe

I used loctite 55 on the bush threads. As the bush didn't go all the way into the backplate, I used a little fernox Ls-x inside the bush. I Googled both of these to see if they turn water brown and nothing came up

 

The stopcock for the incoming main is under the first floorboard as you step into the threshold. It's feeding the cold supply to the whole house. The hot comes off of a combi boiler. Both hot and cold supplies are affected. No other taps in the house are getting this problem

 

The taps are by Flova. They certainly wasn't cheap (for us anyway) here's an installation video of our tap. It shows the cylinder-type connections that go into the bush. They're definitely brass http://www.flova.co.uk/videos/# it's the wall mounted mixer video...second row down, first on left

 

No dead legs as far as I know.

 

I

its got to be local yeah, as it's straight after turning on the taps.
I'll try and shoot a vid and/or take pictures in the morning. That's when it happens. It's the water resting in the new sections, it has to be