Help for soil pipe with no building control (duplicates merged)

Hi Team

Need your expert help once again

Im buying a house which the seller has been adamant hasn't had any work done in the last 35 years , despite having a En suite fitted 4 years ago .

I used Google street view to prove a soil pipe was added in circa 2010 and a window installed ( see the pictures attached )

Upon presenting the pictures to the solicitors the response was as follows :

As to our talk earlier, I will ring in the morning.


The position as to the en-suite bathroom as set out in my earlier email is incorrect. I understand there was no toilet in it until the refurb approximately 4 years ago. The down pipe carrying the surface water was replaced by a larger soil pipe which runs into the main sewer. A small window (approximately 12” square) was also installed for ventilation. Mr Taylor was assured by his builder that Building Regulation Consent for this change was not needed.


Hopefully we can still exchange tomorrow.


Kind regards


My question is can you have a down pipe replaced with a larger soil pipe, and how do we know it goes correctly into the sewer as there was no building control etc passed or inspected ?

any help would be greatly appreciated

 

You would have to swap the rain water gully below ground for a rest bend.

Doing it that way the roof will drop some silt into the drain but the onsuite should clean it. The other thing will be that the sewer vents at gutter level when it would usually be higher.

It could be a combined system where rainwater and foul go into the same sewer. You can usually tell if they are seperate because the manholes in gardens and the raid would be in pairs rather than singles.

 

You won't get an answer here.

That looks like a property that would have separate drains for rainwater and foul water. Whether it is or if the connections are correct will require investigation on site.

If that's a new foul connection, it should have building regulation permission.

 

I cannot make it out from the photo but does the rainwater downpipe connect to the new soil pipe or does it just run down beside it? It should not be connected as the rainwater downpipe then becomes a vent pipe which will terminate at roof eaves height too close to the opening windows. You'll get nice drain smells through your bedroom windows in the summer.

Whether or not you can connect the soil pipe to existing surface water drain depends if the area has combined sewers. A surprising number of towns still do have combined sewers.

Ultimately the work should have been subject to a Building Regulations application but I would not lose too much sleep over it not having it as it should be relatively easy to check the work to see if it complies or whether it was a cowboy bodge job.

 

You don't 'replace' a rainwater pipe with a soil and vent pipe. The rwp should have remained with a separate new svp ,for the wc branch, continuing up to at least 900mm above the adjacent window heads. The rwp and svp should then go to separate underground drains before connecting to separate surface water and foul inspection chambers if a separate drainage system, or to one manhole if a combined drainage system. If combined system the rwp's should go into trapped gullies . The photo doesn't show exactly what is happening.

 

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