If you have a property where the neighbour's water supply comes through your stop-c*ck in your basement, should the water company be paying you any money for providing this service?
Next, if you want to turn your water supply off, whose responsibility is it to maintain the neighbour's supply? (Property is in England).
Tim
No idea. However, while its turned off could you not stick another tap on the bit that feeds your property, and then in future you can isolate your supply and leave theirs untouched?
I had a similar situation, in that I had a shared supply which ran under my house then tee'd in my back yard, one branch feeding me, and the other running under the fence to feed next door, and a shared stop valve in my front garden. I spent a long time researching on the web but found there is very little provision in law for covering this situation, you are jointly responsible for any shared parts, and solely responsible for your own, as well as being restricted by not being allowed to interfere with anybodies water supply. I could find no definitive verdict on whether you have to carry your neighbour's water, and how you went about pipe maintenance/replacement, beyond the water company having the right to serve improvement orders requiring supplies to be separated. In the end I ran new MDPE on my land, and connected next door's old lead pipe at the boundary, they let me do it, but I had to foot the entire bill.
The supply concerned runs through a basement with several branches before it veers off through the wall to next door's basement. My problem is that I'd really like to turn off the water and drain the system down for the "upstream" property but to do so would mean cutting the neighbour's existing connection and putting in a new bypass loop from the incoming supply to both properties.
It wouldn't be a huge problem to do it, particularly as the neighbouring house is currently empty but I just wondered if I should contact the water company first as it means interfering with someone else's supply. One complication that comes to mind is that I doubt that I'll be able to find who the neighbours were paying for their water as I suppose it's *their* water company I should be contacting.
Tim
Unless you happen to live on a water authority boundary, their water company will be the same as yours, it isn't like this nonsense with have with gas and electricity (and even there an infrastructure provider does the pipes and wires, it is just the billing that is encrusted in bull shit). I wouldn't contact the water company, at best they will say the pipes are your and your neighbour's property, and not their's so it is up to you to negotiate it, at worst they'll serve improvement orders to have both supplies separated, water bye laws inspections which means no lead, MDPE buried 3/4 metre deep, insulated in voids and ducts passing under walls etc, and the enormous circa 700GBP connection fees they demand for connecting to their pavement boundary box. I'd just get on with it and keep quiet, same as most things these days.
Ah right. I wasn't sure about that but it makes sense.
That's what I'm inclined to do. Thanks.
Tim
Don't know the answer, but a related story...
New neighbour is gutting the house, nothing much having been done to it since before WWII. I come home one evening, and notice he's ripped out the water supply and a nice new plastic one is laid in a trench to the road. Think to myself - I wounder if he knows it's a shared supply doing the whole terrace? Easily answered when I get indoors and find I have no water!
Next day, he has to root around in the ground under his house to find out where the original pipework branches go off to the neighbours, and reconnect them (2 branches each side, it turns out). Fortunately, he was a heating installer by trade, so he could handle the plumbing OK.
What's best to do depends on which area you're in. We had the same situation in the North East, and Northumbrian Water replaced it with new separate supplies to each house on a free lead replacement. Yorkshire Water, when we had the same again, did a free lead replacement to the boundary of the first house, and we replaced the lead through the 3 cellars with MDPE. They wouldn't consider separating the supplies unless we paid for 3 new connections - they wouldn't even knock off the cost of the lead renewal, and allow us to pay the extra. Might be worth contacting the water company and asking them what their general policy on shared supplies is. A
Thames kindly told me they'd come and test my water for lead content, and only take action if it was above dangerous levels, which they reckoned was very unlikely due to the dosing chemicals they add to the water.
That reminds me of our own experience shortly after buying our first house some 36 years ago. It was an ex railway company semi, one if six pairs. We both came home from work one day to find we had no water. A little searching found the stop tap in the pavement was turned off, so I turned it on. Next day the same thing happened, we were now convinced that someone was playing silly buggers with the "incommers". Two hours later someone was banging on the door asking if it was me that had turned HIS water back on.
It turned out that neither he nor I realised that the tap in the pavement controlled our house and his which was the one on our side of the next pair. He was not happy because my actions had resulted in water flowing full bore into his (then empty) house all night causing a lot of damage.
I never knew if it was connected but that house remained empty for the four years we lived there.
Mike
Do you have contact details for the owners? I'd at least talk to them first if possible - refilling a drained system seems like a good point for something to fail, and a major leak in their property could be rather damaging (unknown legal issues aside). It wouldn't hurt to invite them to be around when you turned everything back on, just so they could check their side of things over.
cheers
Jules
The property is in Delph (Yorkshire) so I guess you've answered my question.
Thanks.
Tim
Ouch! Which water co. charges 700GBP for connection. I replaced my old lead incomer with MDPE. They sent an inspector around twice, then a team to connect up - including running a mole under the road. Then a team to relay the tarmac on the pavement and finally another team to resow the grass on the verge. Total cost zero.
Andrew
That wouldn't have worked in our old house. Row of three 1850s houses, the one in the middle had its own supply installed some years ago, but when we lived there one end fed the other - turn the tap off under the old dear's sink and ours went off too. No sign of how it worked, it just did. The pipes vanished into the wall either side of the tap.
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