Cap off service pipes drilled too large with a diamond drill system like Porsadrill 365 drills on porcelain tiles

Tile Drills oversized to fit service pipes By Richard Hazell of 365 Drills

How to drill a neat hole in a hard or soft tile and cap it off

This article is written by 365drills using porsadrill to cap off holes in ceramic or porcelain tiles

Whenver you drill a hole in a tile the outcome is either one of two things for your project

1) The hole is perfect and the service pipe fits snug

2) The hole is oversize and the pipe looks too small. In that case you can cap it off

This is a selection of standard service pipes that you would come across in a project

Our drill kit contains 16mm, 30mm and a 40mm service pipe cutter. As well as 6mm and 8mm for the fixtures and the fittings.

In this shot a raditor pipe is fitted to a tile with a 30mm diamond drill.

Looks like the hole is too big. But a cover plate makes the fitting look neat.

If you use the 16mm diamond drill to cut the hole the results are dramatic

These 15mm copper pipes have been fitted into the 16mm hole and look really neat. They need not be capped off.

But these cover plates conceal the larger gaps when it is not possible to drill such a small hole. The main reason that it may not be feasible is because the pipe may already have something fitted to it obstructing the way through like a radiator valve. In that case the 30mm is perfect. Also it may be that you want a certain amount of play in the tile hole so the pipe can move into posistion. A cover plate then hides the gap.

There is a generous 45mm of cover to hide the results of the tile drill behind. So the 30mm diamond drill is a perfect choice. Also we do a 40mm tile drill and yes you can fit that inside the footprint of the cover plate but you get very little clearance at 5mm on the edge. Best to stick with a 30mm.

This is a radiator fitted with perfect holes at 16mm so that the pipes are flush with the wall.

Here you see a closeup of the pipes and you can see the 16mm hole is flawless.

In this shot we show you what the pipes would look like if they were fitted with cover plates. You may prefer this look or it may be that the holes require you to fit them. In either case its nice to know that there are solutions.

In this shot the common pipe sizes are laid out as 15mm. 22mm and 32mm next to our drill plate which is 16mm, 30mm and 40mm. The BFKMX covers these service pipes very well.

Advertisement