Janjan wrote:We had a leak under the bath. Rang the Insurance Company and they sent a Plumber. My husband was putting up a shelf And drilled a hole right in the middle of a plastic pipe in the wall. Again a Plumber was sent and they laughed their heads off when they saw it. Spanish Plumbers. Must depend on the Insurance Company.
Yes, i find this habit of putting pipes buried in walls and floors very disturbing,. its a practrice abandoned in the UK 50 years ago, because it has some blinbding ly obvious deficiencies.
Copper pipe buried in concrete is corroded at high speed by the alkaline lime in the concrete. Many houses in the 60's were built with central heating pipes buried in the concrete floor, and they all had to be dug up withing ten years because of pipe corrosion causing huge leaks. Similarly, a plastic pipe buried in a wall is pretty much undetectable.
You need all pipes accessible and able to be inspected, its common sense. In a couple of years i shall set about this house, making sure there are no buried pipes.