Conservatory on top of drain/sewer

SWMBO mentioned liking the idea of having a conservatory built onto the living room at the rear of our semi.

Unfortunately there is a drain/sewer pipe running directly underneath that part of the garden (parallel with house) with an inspection point (brick lined hole with cast iron cover on top) smack in the middle of that area. Is this a show stopper? This pipeage serves one house upstream of us, and ours.

Reply to
dave
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On Friday 13 September 2013 14:44 dave wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Until you said this ^^ I would say "no".

Mine is built over a drain - I did my best to make sure Part H was adhered too (BCO not interested as it is an exempt structure).

You can get sealed drain lids for internal applications.

However(!) what you have is not a drain, but a shared sewer and assuming you are in England (maybe UK - not sure) your shared sewer is now under the remit of your local waster water company (assuming you do not have a private sewerage system).

For a shed I would not worry - but for a conservatory, you should take advice from the water company - because if they come along and want to dig it all up, you'll be in a bit of a bind.

They may allow a building over it if they inspect it and you conform to their specifications - OTOH they may not...

It's impossible to say.

I have a shared sewer - and I am doing my best to clear stuff off it and build sheds clear of it on the assumption it will get dug up one day. It does not go anywhere near my conservatory.

HTH

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

As other have said, shared sewers are now the responsibility of the water company, even they were private sewers when originally built.

How deep is the manhole?

You will have to get the permission of your water company to build over it. They will probably agree, but are likely to impose certain conditions.

For starters, they may require you to commission before and after CCTV surveys of the sewer to prove that your building operation hasn't damaged it. They will probably require you to take the foundations of the conservatory to below sewer level, and to bridge over it so that no load is imposed on it and - if like mine when I built a garage over a sewer - will require you to submit a risk assessment and method statement. [My impression was that these last two were just a box ticking exercise, and that it didn't really matter what the documents said!]

If you do a Google search which includes you water company's name and "Building over sewers" you'll find lots of guidance and application forms etc.

Reply to
Roger Mills

On Friday 13 September 2013 15:23 Roger Mills wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Which is exactly what you'd want to do for any drain :)

However, the Water Co might be a bit more particular with exactly specifications. However, a read of Approved Document Part H will giv ethe general gist.

Reply to
Tim Watts

and what about all those who have already done this like a previous neighbour who had to dig it all up as the builder had not made the new floor level manhole brick part according to the regulations of that time, never mind now. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

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