Knock a hole in A Sub-Floor Wall?

[dodger421]

A very daft question from someone who doesn’t crawl around under houses for a living.

Our shower pump has failed and needs replacing, it’s buried underneath the floor and rather than lifting Lino/plywood and/or laminate flooring I’ve lifted the carpet in the spare room and cut a hatch in the floor intending to crawl along to the shower pump.

There’s a short brick wall running the length of the house with no access holes in it (pictured) and which stops me getting to the location of the pump. Can I knock some bricks out to make an access hole between two joists or is that verboten?

 

[Vortigern]

Excuse me if I am being stupid, but are you sure it is under the floor? I assume you looked behind the bath panel? More times than not a shower pump is mounted under the bath.

 

[dodger421]

Excuse me if I am being stupid, but are you sure it is under the floor? I assume you looked behind the bath panel? More times than not a shower pump is mounted under the bath.

Wouldn’t that be nice? When we moved in I did think that, and even got all excited when I took the bath panel off to see a pump. Sadly that turned out to be the pump for the water jets in the bath.

I vainly hoped it might turn out to be in the loft, after all there were two 22mm pipes with ball valves just inside the loft hatch and roughly where the shower is. Moving aside the copious new itchypoo revealed they were in fact stop-ended after the valves.

The only place left was underneath the floor, and sure enough that’s where I found the bloody thing. Buried, inaccessible and leaking like a sod.

Thankfully the sub-floor is concrete above the DPM, so it should dry out quickly.

The honeycomb walls are for ventilation of the suspended floor space to prevent rot, there should also be air bricks in the outside walls on both sides to provide through ventilation, the underside of the floor was never meant to be accessible, but sometimes hatch's where provided if electrical cable's where run in the underfloor space, but very rare in that age of building, only when modern electricians got involved did floors get butchered, electrics where in conduit from drops from the ceiling.

Thanks Mike, I knew it was for ventilation and sure enough the air bricks are all present and unrestricted (good chance to check while I’m under there). I was surprised the north/south wall wasn’t honeycombed too given that it’s all one house, but it’ll have a hole in it soon enough so I can get through to the rest of the house for a rewire.

 

[7029 dave]

The picture brings back memories as me as a skinny 16 year old apprentice getting under the floors...

I could fit in that space with only 2 rows of bricks... just couldnt breath out unless my chest was between joists

Yes me too skinny 16 years old apprentice, no chance these days, mind you some of the big old houses in London, the voids were massive could nearly stand up and walk around the whole area with the brick piers like statues.