Water Leak (Part 2)

Second call to Thames, and managed to push them far enough to send someone out yesterday. Arrived only a little outside the four hour window.

Looks like there is NO Thames stopcock.

Came back this morning with plans - shows stopcock, and that this is a shared pipe feeding next door.

Anyway, they marked up where the stopcock is, sent digging team. Who arrived quite promptly and rechecked everything. We now have a decent size hole in our drive, and a pretty hefty gas leak. Where there was supposedly a stopcock is actually two gas pipes traversing a water pipe.

Nothing can now happen until gas people arrive - and the water diggers are pretty dismissive about them. Supervisor also arrived. Lots of calls. Lots of annoyance.

Still goodness knows how many litres of water pouring and and going... Actually, have no idea where it is going. I dug a miniature Venice, and somehow the water is flowing along that and disappearing at about the same rate it is arriving.

Only one external stopcock on whole street. Water people very confused. And fact that water main is shared is yet another complicating factor as the cost issues are still to be decided.

Reply to
polygonum
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Sounds a nightmare.

My mum's friend had a water leak from mains next to it. Half the drive has gone and the house has cracks in. They stopped the leak quickly once it was discovered, it just appeared to have been running underground for some time.

Reply to
mogga

The gas people are now cutting off the whole street (luckily not that many houses). As they claim to "need" access to check for gas build-up inside, we cannot go out anywhere to get away from it all.

Of course, the water issues are at a dead stop. And the water diggers are getting Thames back because the whole caboodle makes no sense.

Thankfully, while there is quite a bit of water, it is at least clean and not flowing into the house.

Am very glad I am not having to directly pay for the completely wasted gas and water.

Reply to
polygonum

polygonum wrote: [snip[

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Reply to
Steve Firth

'Twas on a Monday morning...

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

well I hope it's fixed very soon for you. I won't mention the cold weather on the horizon.

Reply to
mogga

currently had one Thames man, three ClancyDocwra chaps, one Grid gas bod

- and awaiting the digging gang. So we are a little bit ahead of the Flanders & Swan at the moment...

Reply to
polygonum

You mean they have not shorted out the electric supply and blown up the substation....... yet.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

To quote one of the water diggers:

"The water pipe crosses under the two (?) gas pipes - or is that the electric?"

Plenty of opportunity for that yet...

Reply to
polygonum

if it's anything like our experience, the grid/gas chaps seven separate people to make good the various holes/damage caused when they replaced the inner plastic tubing to our indoor meter.

There were the big hole fillers, the top concrete bods, the internal plasterer and then the external painter/finisher offer, all for different departments, and it still smells slightly of gas round the drain gully at the side of the house (Less bad than before but still there)

No wonder gas is so expensive...

I suppose it is supplying work for about 10 people though, (Shades of eastern bloc communism perhaps...? at least they had jobs!

Hope they get round to sorting you out soon.

dedics

Reply to
dedics

The demarcation is the street stopcock. If there isn't one there must be rules but they probably mean the water co will install one at the bounadry, where it should be.

Time to dig out the deeds of the place an have a look. Didn't you clarify all this when buying? If renting it's the Landlords problem.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

They may just clamp it. (Longitudinally split metal sleeve with rubber lining). Depends on how bad the leak is/pipe is corroded.

Reply to
harry

The rules about what happens when there is no street stopcock are far from clear. And we still do not know whether the leak is coming from the pipe which would be on the street side of the stopcock were they able to find one, or not.

Effectively nothing has happened on the water front today beyond starting to dig. And we are without gas tonight. Chap dropped off two fan heaters and an electric ring. That last is hardly needed as we have an electric cooker! Back in the morning.

Reply to
polygonum

Made oi larrf, I like Lego animations, often knocked out by teenagers showing remarkable talent and patience.

This is a video from the high end of production values:

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this one from a kid with a bit of time on his hands.

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We have currently had one Thames man, three ClancyDocwra chaps, one Grid

Bad luck on the Clancy Docwra workers. They seriously ballsed up changing a stopcock here.

Reply to
Steve Firth

Now gas pissed off at 17:00.

Water came back at 20:00 but can't do anything because there is a second gas leak in the hole.

You can see bubbles forming in hole here:

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regularly bubbles are breaking off and flying upwards. Picture doesn't make a lot of sense but is maybe 3 litre wodge of bubble flying up out of the hole:

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water have disappeared - banned by their boss from touching anything. And gas are, supposedly, coming back tonight... Is that a van I can hear?

(Sorry big pics.)

Reply to
polygonum

favourite bit (& reminiscent of the rayguns in _Mars Attacks_).

Reply to
Adam Funk

Bubble pic - very difficult to get timing right - was disappearing upwards as the shutter clicked. Quite pretty:

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people are back and looking - say they have never seen bubbles like that before. Probably keep us awake all night with the noise. :-(

Reply to
polygonum

If it still smells, check again.

My parents had them out to a smell of gas around their front door three times. Each time they insisted there was no leak. A few minutes with soap and water and I found the leak - on their connection to the meter!

When I bought this house, the gas had been capped off (it was a repossession). I contacted British Gas, who came round the next day, fitted a new meter and pressure tested the system. As soon as they'd gone, I turned the gas off and tightened up the totally loose stop-end supposedly capping the pipe to where the boiler had been.

SteveW

Reply to
SteveW

Is it just me who would want to set those bubbles alight when they are floating in the air?

Reply to
Toby

I *really* wanted to light them... (After all, it wouldn't have been ignoring the "No Smoking" sign.)

Reply to
polygonum

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