How do I go about doing this? I'm putting a new bathroom in, and the soil pipe is too far from the old one to redirect - I know there is a sewer running just below the garden (it's on the council charts) and my guttering drain already flows to this. Can I route my guttering elsewhere, hook into that drain (with some kind of seal around it) and forget the issue, or do I need to dig down to the sewer and install some kind of conenction there? The house/sewers are old - early victorian. Or, is there a fixed charge for water companies to carry out this work for me?
Guttering probablu goes to soakaway..its unlikley to go to fould water sewer, even in very old prop3erties. Even if it doies and the BCO catches ou, you run teh risk that as you are making a 'matyerial alteration' its up to you to divert the gutter water away from the foul sewer and install a huge soakaway etc.
Yes. You will need an inpsection chamber inserting at the join. This is not trivial, and needs to be done to building control regulatons of fall, access, pressure testing and general construction.
You will also neeed an air admittance valve at the near end of the soil stack.
If you are lucky, and a mini digger will fit in the garden, the whole thing will only be a few hundred to install. If it needs hand digging, or thigs go wrong (they nearly always do with old pipes) it could easily cost a grand and it always leaves a fair mess behind that needs re-seeding with grass at a minimum, and often complete new driveways etc if ou have to hack them up.
Don't be tempted to try and do it on the cheap. Get a reputable groundwork firm to quote, and pick on that looks big enough to sue. A one man band will vanish if the job goes sour.
Its not their problem. You need to work out who owns the bit of pipe you are connecting to, but its your responsibility to connect to it IIRC.
It is rare for gutter water to go into a sewer. It can be quite tricky connecting into an old drain. If you have no previous experience I would not recommend it. Best bet is find an existing inspection cover and add a pipe into the chamber below.
If the gutters are run directly into the main sewer pipe and it is a minimum of a 4" pipe then this can be used for the foul drains. It is best to insert a plastic inspection chamber, run the house drain to this and then run a pipe from this to the main sewer.
The gutters can be run to a soakaway in the garden. Which is basically a pit filled with hardcore. Again an inspection chamber should have the downpipe run to it and the chamber drops to the soakaway.
I have two properties in old style town centres and in both cases the surface water feeds into the main sewer. Certainly in any newer developement the two are split!
I agree, in London anyway. But neither is it rare to find the gutters draining into a dedicated surface water drain and thence into a public surface water sewer, quite separate from the foul water sewer. The water authority would take a very dim view of connecting foul water into that! The OP needs to ignore the gutters and establish exactly the route of the existing foul water drains, by lifting manhole covers and flushing loos or running taps.
Definitely does - according to the charts they have in the town hall. Just one combined sewer/drain goes right under my garden. No manholes unfortunately....
I'll try to check things out witht he neighburs, see if they have a manhole.
We had a similar problem - a bathroom (sans loo) at the front of the house (1930s), discharging (sink & bath) into a hopper and thence into the same drain as the guttering. The only toilet was at the back of the house connecting directly (about 4ft of pipe outside the house) into the main 6" sewer running along the rears of the properties.
We moved the bathroom around to the side of the house, and added a toilet. We therefore needed a 4" connection to the sewer. Both our builders and two different BCOs were adamant that under no circumstances were we to go anywhere near the main sewer; "ooh no, that's Welsh Water property and they want to do all the work themselves - it'll cost a fortune." (aside, it did occur to me that it was their property on our land and as we have no record of a wayleave we might be cynically able to counter-charge them for access ;-)
There was no existing manhole on the property and the main sewer had at least a couple of dozen houses "up stream".
Our poor builders had to break into the 4ft of 4" from the existing downstairs loo and insert a "mini manhole" in that extremely tight space. Both BCOs were happy :-)
There was a *lot* of hand digging involved - filled a mini-skip with spoil, and used an awful lot of hardcore and cement to re-do everything afterwards. Cost us the thick end of a grand.
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