Removal of redundant water main?

[Lobster]

Next to the back door in the kitchen is an old incoming water main... lead piping comes out of the ground, soldered to few inches of 0.5" copper piping, which is soldered to a grotty old stopcock, soldered to about a half-inch more copper, which is open to the atmosphere. The pipe is 'live'. The house is supplied from a modern plastic pipe next to the front door, ie direct from the street. Unfortunately there's no trace of any outside stopcock.

I'd like to lose the redundant water main (a) because with the stopcock, it sticks out about 4" from the wall preventing the washing machine being pushed back and (b) it looks like an accident waiting to happen!

Does anybody know if the water companies have any interest/liability here? I am worried that if stick my head above the parapet I will find myself being instructed to pay them to remove it or something!

What are my options? At worst I could just try capping off the exposed pipe with a solder fitting, but that would still leave the stopcock in the way, and a live pipe. The other one I suppose would be to freeze the copper pipe below the stopcock and chop it off before capping; but with no external stopcock to fall back on that would scare the daylights of me!

Thanks David

[Andrew Gabriel]

I doubt it.

Is your property joined to another, and what age is it? In my 1900 terrace, there was just a single feed from the street for the terrace, and the original plumbing wasn't installed with much of a view to the property boundaries. In my end terrace, there are two feeds from next door bringing the water to the original kitchen and scullery sink positions. There's probablty a feed to the back of the garden for the outside loo too, but the building has long since gone (a sewer pipe heads off towards the back garden, but clearly nothing comes down it anymore).

So, what you might have is the original supply pipework for the building which might still be used as the main supply for neighbours if they are ajoined. In this case, you'll probably find one of your neighbours stopcocks isolates it. My neighbour discovered this one day when he decided to relay his supply pipework without realising. The rest of us arrived home to find we had no water. Then he had to dig up the old pipework to find where to connect the supply back to the rest of the terrace.

[Rick Dipper]

Sir

NWW have a free leakage repair service, you could aways have the accident, and call them up, assuming your supply company has a free leakage repair service ?

Rick