letter from water co yesterday - news to me

[Tim Watts]

Good - that is fairer for everyone then - as you have no chanche to do a DIY fix on that section and repairs using approved contractors can get very expensive under the highway.

[Kim Bolton]

AIUI it runs like this...technical terms first.

The pipework serving your house are known as 'drains'. Where your 'drains' extend beyond your property, they become known as 'lateral drains'. Where two or more 'lateral drains' share a common pipe, that pipe is known as a sewer.

The companies are taking over responsibilty for lateral drains and sewers.

However...sometimes the pipework layout is such that 'drains' from two or more houses connect together while still on private property, i.e. there are no 'lateral drains' and so those 'drains' empty into a sewer. That sewer will also become the responsibility of the water company.

In your case it depends where your 'drains' connect to a sewer, so you could be responsible for all the pipework on your property - it really depends on the exact layout of drains, sewers, and property boundaries.

If your neighbouring property is at the end of the line, then they will be responsible for all the pipework on their property. It will then become a sewer, and you will be responsible for your pipework that connects to that sewer. So...you could be right ;-)

[Steve Walker]

It came close for us. I am self-employed and due to two and a half years of illness, was unable to work more than half hours. Because I was working those half hours, my insurance policies, benefits, etc. would not kick in and help us and we were slowly (in fact, fairly rapidly) sliding into deep debt. Then our drain blocked.

We called in a jetter and they informed us that from the colour of the muck that was coming back, the drain had collapsed. Further investigation confirmed collapses under our driveway and under the centre of the road.

The projected bill came to fifteen thousand pounds. The bit under our drive I could have at least temporarily repaired for fifty quid and bit of hard work, but of course I had no control over the section under the road. Our insurance would cover only a tiny fraction of the cost.

We are the end house in a row of semis and each has it's own connection to the main sewer. Next to us, on the other side, is a row of bungalows, each of which has its own connection. By pure good luck, when resolving a previous blockage on our own property (half a brick left in there since construction) I had found that the nearest bungalow's kitchen was not connected to their own drain, but to ours - presumably the builders at the time thought that this was easiest.

A recollection of something that I'd seen on this newsgroup lead me to investigate further and we were extremely relieved to find that as both houses (and therefore the drain) were pre-1937 and the drain was shared, they were not our responsibilty, but United Utilities.

Any other house on the row would not have had this get-out and would have been hit by the full bill - then followed by demands for payment, legal action, bailiffs, etc.

How many people can suddenly find fifteen grand? Many struggle to live from week to week, have no savings and no way of borrowing money.

SteveW

[Jeff]

If you read the information correctly what you will find is that it is only sewers that run *outside* of your property to the main sewer, and any *shared sewers* on your property that will be taken over.

You will still be responsible for any sewer from your property that either run to the boundary or until they join a shared sewer.

Jeff

[Tired]

As i understood, any part of the sewer that is in shared ownership transfers, but that means, say you are on a block of three houses, you are in house one, and the connection to what is now the water company sewer is past house three, a simple diagram would be a line running parallel to the three houses, but ten foot back. From each of the houses a ten foot line extends out.

House one is responsible for that ten foot line, *plus* the parallel line until it hits the property of house two which becomes shared. From that point on, for house two and three *only* the ten foot pipe remains their liability, while the parallel pipe, the part that is shared by house one, two and three is covered by the water company right up to connection to the sewer.

[Tired]

It can easily hit a few grand for collapsed drains, in fact on unadopted roads that are poorly maintained, collapsed drains are quite common and can add a couple of zeros for total costs.

[PeterC]

Ah - I'd wondered about the terminology.

Yes, it is at the end of the line. My stack goes in at about 80% of the way to the next fence but, AIUI, I'm not responsible for the section from the upstream fence to my input (output?), only for the section from my stack to the (now) sewer - that is about a foot or so long to the manhole so shouldn't be too difficult to access.

[PeterC]

Yup, that's how I interpreted it, so I have ~1ft!

[Pete Shew]

All the information I have seen covers either lateral drains from the boundary across public land to the sewer, OR drains to join a shared sewer at the property boundary with private land of a neighbour.

It is possible that I have a drain that crossed neighbouring private land without sharing before running to the main sewer in the road. I say possible as the property was built in around 1890 and boundaries have shifted and properties changed in that time.

The question is whether the responsibility shifts to the water company for the drain outside my property as far as the sewer even if it runs through other private land and is not shared.

The pipe in question is normal 4"(?) saltglaze. (Another drain - around

12" diameter - comes into my property from somewhere else (I rodded it 60ft) but is disused and partially blocked with roots but then takes surface water straight towards the road.)

Pete

[Mark]

"Pipes serving one property, inside the property boundary, will remain the responsibility of the homeowner as private drains. If the problem is outside the boundary of your property, you should contact your water company"

The final guidance document has not been published as yet.

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[tim....]

Compare it to a situation that my friend is in. The road to his house (and another 14 and a busy old folks home) is a private road but everyone uses it. The road is in shit state - I hate driving it because it has so many deep potholes that are only inches apart - sitting in the car in 1st gear on that road is certainly no fun..I can hear my suspension cursing me as a drive. Anyway, the road is temporarily patched by the odd resident or two but it's nowhere the professional job that would be done if the L.A. adopted it. The residents have had quotes of £300k for getting it properly tarred and drainage installed but that's just too much. Answer = let the L.A. adopt it.

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They wont do that until the 300K has been spent (on the road)

tim

[Andy Champ]

That sounds good and clear, and is what I think they _mean_. But all the stuff they've sent me - and the Northumbrian link someone posted earlier - seems to say the rules for detached houses are different to terraces and semis. Which as next doors drain connects to a manhole in the middle of my back lawn, and then heads off under the fence to the house that backs onto ours, is of some interest.

Andy

[<me9]

Haven't had a letter, but am pleased that it is going ahead at last, as I share with 4 others, and there is always a dispute over paying for/clearing blockages.

The foul water drains are laid in the same trench as the surface water ones, less than a foot apart, encased in the same concrete. Do the surface water drains transfer also? I can't see any mention on the wibble.

[<me9]

A sewer by definition is shared, and transfers. A lateral drain is not shared but is on another's land and transfers. A drain is not shared, and if on your land doesn't transfer. So only if it is used by the owner /only/ and on the users land is it not transferred.

[Frank Erskine]

You could always have the offending turds DNA tested, and bill the "owner".

My NWL letter came about a week ago; much the same content as the above website.

Presumably if you want to do any work on a "manhole" which then belongs to the water company, such as fitting a sealed lid if you build e.g. a conservatory above it, you'll have to get their permission, or even get them to do the work.

[JA]

Although if in the future you wanted to add an extension to your house you would now need to get permission from your water company if it affects the public sewer in any way. There are special rules on how close you can build to public sewers, etc, which would not have applied when sewer was still private.

[Roger Mills]

There are probably building regs though, even if the Water Board is not involved. But having the water board involved certainly complicates things by an order of magnitude - as I found out when I built a garage over a public sewer!

[funkyoldcortina]

Our extension is built over a private sewer. It obviously won't be private for much longer....

[funkyoldcortina]

Our situation is that we are the second detached house in a row of 6 up a gentle slope. A combined foul & surface water drain runs about 7ft from the back wall of the houses down towards the main public sewer that is under the road perpendicular to the lowest house, in other words, our turds pass under one garden before reaching the public sewer. Previous owners of our house built an extension over this shared private drain. My understanding of the changes is that this drain now becomes the responsibility of Anglian water, even though it runs directly under our kitchen, utility and dining room (all in the extension). I'm not complaining at that!

[Tim Jackson]

Does that comply with building regs? (Or did it when your predecessors did the work?)