My father in law has re-done some of the plumbing in an old house but has connected all taps / cisterns etc to the rising water main. I thought that there were regulations that don't allow this - i.e. that the main should only feed the kitchen tap and the cold tank in the attic.

Any comments / reference to regulations?

Cheers
Gary

There's nothing wrong with connecting straight to mains - so long as all fittings remove any potential to cause back pressure or back siphonage into the public water supply.
This chnage came about with the revised Water regulations in 1999.

If there is a potential risk to back flow/pressure, each installation is given a risk assessment category (1-5).
An approporaite protection fitting must be insatlled to cope with that level of risk. e.g double check valve/ reduced pressure zone unit/air gap.

In a nutshell, if a basin/bath/sink is completeley full then the bottom of the tap should not be nearer than (in general) an inch.
For toilet cisterns, there should be an overflow lower than an inch below the ball cock outlet and if that fails then the cistern should be able to overflow.

If you are concenred about any work that your F-i-L has done then I'd contact www.wras.co.uk who can link you with a trained risk assessor (which I am not ).

There is lots of nitty gritty detail to the Water Regs but they do at last allow the removal in dependance of water tanks in controlling backlow/pressure risk, which ironically will be a great step forward in controlling Legionella.


Nick