Hello everybody 'Lurgs' here welcome to my channel and today it's how to fix a leak on a plastic
PolyPlumb elbow, I'll show you how I fixed the leak and at the end I'll show you how the elbow
joint works, this room has been newly plastered and all decorated came in one day and there's a
big damp patch in the corner and I know that behind this studwork there is a plastic pipework
joint and that is going to be accessible from the loft, now before I climb into the loft and
try and fix this I'm just going to chill out for a seconds and have a nice cup of tea, if you're
going to be following any of my how-to videos make sure you have a lovely brew! What you need to do
first is turn off your mains cold water this could be out in the street if it is then go and find it
turn it into the off position that turns off your mains cold water don't do this if you live in a
block of flats because you'll isolate everybody's water if you can't find it in the street and
you've got it indoors locate your stopcock and turn that clockwise to turn it all the way off
talking of stopcocks there's a link above now about what to do if your stopcock is dripping
now let's climb into the loft and locate the pipe that is dripping which is here you can see here
is dripping and that is what's caused the damp patch in the corner of the room
now looking at this it looks like the pipe has not been pushed in properly so what I'm going
to do first is I'm just going to gently unscrew this anti-clockwise one or two turns and then
gonna push the pipe all the way home into the elbow and then tighten it back up again
So I'm now going to push the pipe inwards and it may spray a bit of water out even though the mains
cold water feed is off because you've still got a bit of pressure in the pipe work
now with your hands just turn this clockwise just to tighten it up some more
now I'm just going to dry all the area completely just with a cloth
then it's a good idea to take some kitchen towel and just wrap it around this pipe work near where
it was leaking and then we'll go and turn the mains cold water feed back on and then we'll
leave that for a few hours and we'll come back and check to make sure it's not leaking still
So as earlier go out to the mains stopcock in the street and turn that on
If it's on your internal stopcock then turn this open fully but a TOP TIP don't leave
it open fully once it's open fully then turn it back slightly about 90 degrees, that just helps
the stopcock from seizing up because that is a nightmare if that happens. And it is now about
an hour and a half later I'm just going to climb back into the loft and check that pipework elbow
and we do this by just removing the kitchen paper towels and just making sure they're nice and dry
so fingers crossed, fantastic
bone dry that is a great result
What I can do now is put the pipe insulation back on
and then pack the loft insulation back round the pipe work here, talking of loft insulation there's
a link above now about how to install Diall plastic loft insulation like you can see here
that's really good stuff because you don't need gloves to handle it and you don't need a mask,
what I'll do now is just show you how the PolyPlumb elbow joint works,
this is a PolyPlumb elbow here
and these are the parts that you've got inside it
these will already be in the joint
and as this video is about plumbing there's a link
above now about how to fix a leaking pipe under your sink
and then finally the rubber seal now these work with plastic pipe work or copper pipe work
but generally you're going to be using plastic pipe work
what you do is just push it in nice and parallel
push it as deep as you can get it
and then just tighten it up and you only need to do these hand tight as tight as you can get it
Obviously to remove it you unscrew it anti-clockwise and then you can just
pull the pipe out this will pull out the innards as well if you need to reseat this for any reason
then you will need to slide these components off to the right hand side but you've got this grab
ring at the end you can reuse that but I would recommend that you remove this and replace it
with a new one. I hope that's helped somebody out there whilst I'm climbing out the loft on
the top left hand corner is a link to the Diall plastic loft insulation really good stuff and
on the top right hand corner is a link on how to fix your dripping stopcock and you can of course
subscribe to my channel by pressing the button in the bottom right hand corner, cheers. 'Lurgs'.