Drainage problems with new property!

[morganog]

Hi there

I hope somebody can help me out regarding this issue we currently have with the foul drains that my property and two others share.

My property and one other which are two years old are built on the grounds of an existing 150 year old property.
The builder of the my house and the other new house renovated the existing house and then sold that one on 2 years ago.

All was well until a couple of months ago when we had a problem with raw sewage overflowing into next doors(150 year old existing) garden.

This as since happened 4 times and i have had to rod the drain out and call in specialists at a cost of £80 a time.

We have since discovered that the foul drainage of the two new houses have been linked into the private sewer of the old house by the builder.
That private sewer then leaves the grounds of the old house and branches into the public sewer which is around twenty meters away across the main road which passes our houses.

Because he owned that old house and it was a private sewer he did not require permission from the local water authority to connect to it and only had to submit plans showing his proposed connection to the private system which the water authority have no concerns over because it is not a public sewer.

Yesterday after a CCTV survey we have discovered that the old private sewer which the two new houses and the existing house use is of an old pitch fiber construction(100mm) and is in very poor condition and requires emidiate replacement.

We have been in touch with the builder of the properties and he says that its our problem even though he made the connection without carrying out a full survey of the sewer system to find out if it was capable of taking the extra load of the two new houses and two extra bathrooms of the old house(gone from 1 bathroom to 9 in total).

I have been in touch with the NHBC and they tell me that we are not covered by their insurance because our new drainage is ok and the drains at fault are existing.

We have had a rough quote to carry out the replacement which is a staggering £20,000 because of the main road.

im sure that the builder should be liable for this as at the end of the day we have all bought new houses from him totaling nearly £900,000.

Can someone with experience of this issue please advise me of my next coarse of action as we are all very worried about the cost implications of resolving this problem.


Thanks very much in advance.

Paul

 

[moderator]

I would suggest you seek legal advice in the absence of any further replies

 

[gcol]

I would suggest you seek legal advice in the absence of any further replies

Sounds like good advice to me.

 

[Nige F]

You have my sincere sympathy........I`m in a similar situation with a private sewer serving me and 8 other houses in Pitch Fibre 2 things I can possibly help with .........1 cost of connection from a sewer to the main in a road to 3meter depth was quoted to me as c. £6500.....deeper sewer in road and cost soars 2 allegedly all the houses should pay a portion of the costs...so the old house should allegedly contribute .........It may be possible to mole through the pitchfibre bursting it and installing a seamless resin/socklike tube to refurbish it @ less cost than dig/backfill..........I would suggest you google "private sewer"......and possibly drainage repairs ...........Hope you get a result and before I do ...........as to legal advice I would personaly pay for a survey before a solicitor ....unless there is one who does no win no fee on getting blood from stones....also, if the house is that old you may find that the drain, tho` private is actually adopted That`s something I allegedly found while trawling through loads of sites when I googled" Private sewer ". I`m not a Barrackroom Lawyer but I think you`d save a lot of £££ by doing a bit of research on the web and your local council who hold plans of sewers under public roads ...to look costs nothing.........also you may find an interceptor trap on the boundary of the property where the house drains are disconnected from the portion that is "Main" and adopted by the council .............I`d love to have a look for you myself but I`m miles away in Sussex............PS .I don`t think there is an issue with the amount of sani. appliances "overloading" the drains........I looked through my design data for drainage and what you describe appears to fall within a 110mm pipe providing it`s in good condition..........the thing that surprises me is that there is pitchfibre and not old saltglazed.........the original drains must`ve been replaced in the 60`s when PF was all new .............It`s common knowledge in the building industry that PF is a disaster........if there is just one section that is PF then this could be removed alone possibly with access manholes created @ either end .........If you can find someone who will survey the whole run and provide solutions other than re-doing the whole @£20k.....then that`s where I would spend my money........Go to Law and you might as well get a nameplaque saying Bleak House.....in my opinion

 

[jeds]

Don't take what NHBC say on face value. They will try anything they can to avoid responsibility and their first response to almost anything is to confidently say nothing to do with us because...

NHBC standards (5.3(b)) says that, when connecting to existing systems, the drainage system should be designed to be compatible with existing drains. It goes on to say (5.3(d)) that where an existing private drainage system is to be extended, or where the capacity is to be increased, sufficient investigation, measurement and calculation should be undertaken to ensure that all parts of the private system are of adequate capacity.

So, did the NHBC inspector check to see that the existing drains were of adequate capacity? Did he even ask the contractor if investigations were carried out? If he/she didn't then I would think they might be negligent.

You bought the house with an NHBC guarantee and in my opinion you are entitled to rely on that as meaning that the house has been built to the proper standards - after all, that is exactly what the guarantee is supposed to be for.