Water leakage

[pinnerite]

My property lies on the slope of a hill. The ajoining properties are either higher or lower than mine.

On the side towards my immediate lower neighbour, we recently demolished a dilapidated garage and replaced it with a modern single-storey extension.

Because we have tall trees nearby, the building inspector insisted that the footings should go down 2metres. That takes them well below the level of the boundary wall with my neighbour.

After several weeks, a seepag of water has appeared on my neighbours sideway adjacent to my property.

The only water bearing pipe on that side of my house is a common rainwater drainage pipe.

Given that we have had no rain for ages, I cannot find any reason for the seepage.

What do you make of it?

TIA, Alan

[Brian Gaff]

Could there be a leaking pipe which has gone unnoticed till you effectively made a kind of dam? other things are springs of course. There is one near where I live that started to cause a house to suffer subsidence when the owner took out a lot of soil to build a flat area to park his car off road. Brian

[pinnerite]

A lovely young guy from affinity Water came round today.

He conducted a sound test (never saw that before). Makes sense but it was inconclusive. My neighbour was out so he couldn't get in to take water samples. He reckons that if their Lab compares water from their kitchen tap with a sample from the puddles, they will be able to tell whether it is from "clean water", i.e from a source provided by Affinity.

We should know the result in a week or two.

My guess is you will prove to be correct.

Alan

[Mark Carver]

Wow, that's excellent. I've always thought it would be so convenient if water could speak, and you could ask it the simple question, 'WTF have you come from ?'

[Davey]

Many years ago, as students, we rented a house next to which a housing estate had been built, so we didn't really wonder about the constant noise of water running, we reckoned we were hearing the main supply for the estate. But one evening, there were people outside on the grass verge, and they asked us if we had ever heard water flowing. What had happened was that a basement downhill from us had flooded, and investigation had drawn the water board to our verge and the running water sound. Apparently, there had been a continuous leak, for several years, just outside our house under the verge. The water men asked if we had noticed a change in the level of the verge over the three years we lived there, and then we remembered that the now gently sloping verge had originally been flat and level. Once the repair was done, it was eerily silent in the house, it was most unsettling. The house was odd, in that it was one half of a semi-detached pair, only the other side had never been built. So one wall was full height and width, with no windows.