{"id":7132,"date":"2026-01-23T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=7132"},"modified":"2026-01-23T20:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T20:41:15","slug":"rainwater-pipework-labelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=7132","title":{"rendered":"Rainwater Pipework Labelling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One risk with having two separate water pipework systems in a building, where one set of pipes carries Drinking Water supplied from the mains and the other set carries Rain Water, is that it&#8217;s important to ensure the right pipe is connected to the right appliances &#8211; especially when new connections are being added some time after the original pipework was installed. Accidentally connecting to the wrong pipe won&#8217;t be obvious since both pipes carry cold water, but Rain Water is not safe to drink (and must not be allowed into the water supply network).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Outbuildings (as opposed to the House) it helps that the pipework is exposed so it&#8217;s not <em>too<\/em> difficult to trace the pipes, but the regulations rightly specify that the rainwater pipework needs to be clearly labelled at suitable intervals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seemed sensible to label <em>both<\/em> sets of pipes, for extra clarity, and to follow the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.waterregsuk.co.uk\/downloads\/publications\/info_leaflets\/pipe_identification_bs_1710.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">BS1710:2014<\/a> guidance for the label colour scheme. This uses Green as the background colour (to indicate a Water pipe) then various other coloured band(s) to indicate the type of water and the source. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rmlabels.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RM Labels<\/a> offer a nice range of pipe labels and valve tags and I settled on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>For the Drinking Water pipes, their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rmlabels.com\/drinking-water-pipe-marker-pmw32a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Drinking Water Pipe Marker PMW32a<\/a> which has a Blue band, indicating &#8220;Potable water derived from the public water supply&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>For the Rain Water pipes, their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rmlabels.com\/rain-water-pipe-marker-pmw59a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rain Water Pipe Marker PMW59a<\/a> which has a Grey band (to indicate a source other than the public water supply) and a Black stripe (to indicate the water is non-potable).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>While it is of course necessary to follow the label colour standards and professional plumbers should be familiar with the colour codes, I&#8217;m not sure who else would know what the Grey, Black and Blue bands mean &#8211; but the text makes the pipe contents clear too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5329-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7133\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5329-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5329-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5329-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5329-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5329-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5329-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">&#8220;Rain Water&#8221; and &#8220;Drinking Water&#8221; pipe labels attached to insulated 22mm copper water pipes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One minor problem is that these labels don&#8217;t stick very well to polythene pipe insulation &#8211; especially in cold and damp conditions &#8211; so I opted to over-wrap the labels with the sort of clear sticky film intended for wrapping paperback textbooks (visible as a shiny band in the photo). That film is cut long enough to wrap over onto itself, which should help it stay in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(An alternative would have been to use slightly different labels that are supplied on a roll and which wrap all around the pipe by themselves, e.g. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rmlabels.com\/drinking-water-pipe-banding-for-potable-water-from-public-water-supply-pb001pwpws\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Drinking Water Pipe Banding for Potable Water from Public Water Supply &#8211; Self-adhesive &#8211; PB001PWPWS<\/a> and its equivalent for Rain Water.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One risk with having two separate water pipework systems in a building, where one set of pipes carries Drinking Water supplied from the mains and the other set carries Rain Water, is that it&#8217;s important to ensure the right pipe &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=7132\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,110,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outbuildings","category-rainwater-harvesting","category-water-supply"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7134,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132\/revisions\/7134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}