Extreme rainfall exceeding sewers and sewage works capacity

Here we suffered a blockage, which turned out to be a collapse just on our property and a second one in the middle of the road, where our sewer pipe drops vertically into the street sewer.

Luckily it turned out to be a pre-1937 sewer, shared by our neighbour's kitchen and so not our responsibility and United Utilities had to sort it out.

For a week, until they could dig and repair, we had a tanker arrive every day and empty the inspection chamber in our drive, that was handily serving as a holding tank.

Anyway, when they first found the problem, they lifted a manhole cover, to see how far down the street sewer was - only to find it full to nearly the top. Further investigation revealed that it was blocked at two place and the cross sewers (it was designed closed off at both ends) to the next street were also both blocked in two places. God know what they found in the next street, but it all involved a lot of tramping through people's gardens, lifting fence panels for access and so on!

It was somewhat better than the blockage in the town centre, where the main sewer, under a cross-roads, criss-crossed by water, electric, gas and phone pipes/wires/conduits, was blocked. That turned out to be an unknown sewer pipe, on a nearby building site, that had been cut through when digging the foundations and then filled the main sewer (about 36" IIRC), for a length of about 45', with concrete as the foundations were poured!

They couldn't figure out how to access it to cut it out and replace, so ended up bringing in a specialist crew from Ireland, who cut all the concrete out from inside ... it took about 5 weeks!

I have added one downpipe on a corner at the front that waters my garden. It was put in before the need to make soak always, which to my mind are of limited use and clog up fast in any case. It stops the little flood that occurs along te front of my house. I never did quite get why the builders all those years ago only put two downpipes for a block of four terraced properties resulting in the overwhelming of the gutters which then overflowed as and when they liked and splattered the front and back of the house.

Brian

In message <skbbt9$l1s$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, at 08:50:58 on Fri, 15 Oct

Because they could?

All the front half of my house goes down the neighbours downspout and then into the street and about half of his rear half roof run-off goes down my rear downpipe , no longer to the sewer system. So saves on 1 downpipe it would seem

The front and rear of my neighbour's house go down my downpipes, we agreed tosplit the costs of replacing fascia and guttering and did the work between us ... except he refused to pay towards the cost of my downpipes ... what a git?

I felt like cutting the gutters and installing a stop-end half way along!

A variant of Vivian Stanshall's song about this topic "My pink half of the drainpipe"

In message <skbqmh$g1a$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, at 13:03:20 on Fri, 15 Oct

Rights to use next-door's downpipes are often in the deeds of older houses.

I wonder if its related to the "accurate to a T" phrase and the T or Ts on the plan on the deeds , designating fence ownership. In our area the original Victorian auctioning off of the building plots was intended for semis but the developer could make more money by putting terraced housing on there. Every incoming new house owner to this area is dumfounded to find that ownership of fences does not go every other one down the line , but some have 2 Ts and some have none,due to this parelling, excluding the small bits at the end of their plots which are always theirs.

Not just older properties when we moved into our bungalow we were link detached by a carport for my neighbour. Half my roof drained onto the carport likewise his. The carport had a slope towards the front where a gutter collected the water and it drained down a drainpipe to a gully on my neighbours side. The houses were built in 1975 and there were covenants in the deeds obliging both me and my neighbour to maintain the guttering and drainage.

When I had to have the roof replaced my neighbour had to make a decision about his carport which was in poor condition and badly needed fixing as the felting on it disappeared under a row of tiles on either side. As he was not willing to repair it he decided it would come down, we got a fully detached house out of the deal and he got more light to the side of his house. As for water draining off our roof we fitted a new gully on our side of his driveway and connected it to the original gully.

Richard

In message <skc6vq$vd3$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, at 16:33:05 on Fri, 15 Oct

Here's the plan in the deeds of a 1910's terraced house I lived in (have redacted the street names and house numbers). The terrace continues to the right (older) and left (newer), and comprises pairs of mirror-image front-bay-windowed properties:

Dimensions to the nearest inch, rather than the 3ft-wide crayons used nowadays.

The red lines are drains/sewers, and comprise pairs of effluent from guttering downpipes and a rare-for-the-time upstairs bathroom, plus the downstairs rear scullery. Being shared with neighbours, this plan is excellent evidence for who is responsible for which bits. We had to get permission from the water company (and stringent specification received) when we extended over the lateral sewer.

The black line at the front is a drain from a shared downpipe in the corner of the bay. The bay has a pitched roof, so there's just one short run of guttering per pair of houses.