How to connect to 6" old clay collar? - SOLVED

[Ian H]

With that length I would happily post in your 4" and simply mortar that.

A single piece all the way back to your 45degrees bend and going 50cm into the 6". If you give it a gentle fall you will never have a problem with it.

The only thing that could possibly go wrong is if you mixed your mortar so wet that it could flowdown between the 4 and 6 but I'm sure that wouldn't happen.

 

[Ian H]

It is a manhole, you can see the 1/2 channel.

 

[Nige F]

Not sure its a manhole... I suppose its possible & the top was covered in concrete. Seems like an old brick built sewer to me, but I am new to all of this. I get the impression you might be suggesting this is just a pipe that serves a couple of houses upstream of me & joins a 'common lateral' downstream of me? We have put an endoscope camera down - its hard to tell, but we think the ID of the brick structure is around 2ft - much more than the 12" the dynorod guy predicted it would be when we picked his brains! Externally - when I dug down to expose the stone/concrete cap previously - I found it was around 1.5m wide.


!

I think you may well be right about a brick sewer - I've never seen a weird Trap like you started with ( a buchan is usually at the end of a channel in a manhole) anyway you are going to be useful to Wessex water, and interesting to us guys P.S Ian - I can't see a channel - but that's my eyes

 

[Ian H]

Put my glasses on Nige

 

[bobasd]

go to unitedutilities.com and look for the diagram Typical sewer responsibility.

idont mean look in all the gardens i mean search at the beggining of the run for the first mh, maybe its buryin a garden, then at the end of the terrace the mh is probably in a rd or lane.thats the common lateral run.

what i meant was for you to cut offthe hub on the house side not the hub under the wall.

are you saying that theres a concrete cap above the brickwork? usuly they can be levered off.
fixing a patch liner an its possibleconnectin complications are not for diy'ers.you might get a later blockage or leak and end up with more digging.
getting access to the mh,if it is a mh, is your best bet.

open up the brickwork, lintel over and run new plasticc pipe

 

[Undaunt]

I think you may well be right about a brick sewer - I've never seen a weird Trap like you started with ( a buchan is usually at the end of a channel in a manhole)

I've found a few references of traps just before they enter the sewer - as it mentions manholes cannot always be afforded (these houses were built on a terribly tight budget - there is barely any lime or sand in the mortar, it is almost all coal/ash scraped from the inside of blast furnaces!) :

Presumably mine would have had a lid at some point like the one shown here :https://www.diynot.com/diy/threads/...rainage-interceptor-trap-plunge-shaft.439804/ ... although mine was long since buried under a foot of soil (with a clay roof tile covering the top)

We noted that the clay was *very* thin on the areas of the trap where it was broken, so there were clearly problems with the manufacturing of them.

There seem to be quite a few different types of historical interceptor traps - mine definitely seems to looks like the Buchan patent... although more common near manholes seems to be the 'Beancliff' or 'Kenon' intercepting traps shown here : http://chestofbooks.com/architecture/House-Construction/The-Trapping-Of-Drain-Inlets-Part-5.html

 

[Undaunt]

It is a manhole, you can see the 1/2 channel.

There is definitely a ledge part way up. From the endoscope video (terrible quality) the 'roof' looks somewhat curved. I just can't understand why there would be a manhole here, in the middle of the tiny garden, covered over with some serious layer of stone/concrete. The channel inside seems to be really quite large - much more than in any manhole I've ever seen! However, there wasn't constant running water, like you would expect if it was a larger main shared sewer.

This house - whilst attached to the house 'downstream' on the left, was built at a slightly later date we believe. I guess this therefore may have been the head of the 'run' at some point? It could have been covered over when it was extended for the 'new' houses including mine?

 

[Undaunt]

go to unitedutilities.com and look for the diagram Typical sewer responsibility.

idont mean look in all the gardens i mean search at the beggining of the run for the first mh, maybe its buryin a garden, then at the end of the terrace the mh is probably in a rd or lane.thats the common lateral run.

It does seem to be a shared sewer - therefore since the recent government legislation - the responsibility of Wessex Water. Regarding looking for the beginning of the run, not sure how we would without disturbing a lot of people! There are houses running at 90° at the end of this row of terraced houses. Pretty sure (judging by the shonky way houses are constructed in this part of Bristol) that the sewers potentially don't follow normal logic!

what i meant was for you to cut offthe hub on the house side not the hub under the wall.

Yeh... would be nice. Getting an angle grinder in there will be awkward at best. Since the cracked clay collar is embedded in the wall, not sure how we would create a square cut, let alone any kid of spigot to attach a band seal onto.

are you saying that theres a concrete cap above the brickwork? usuly they can be levered off.
fixing a patch liner an its possibleconnectin complications are not for diy'ers.you might get a later blockage or leak and end up with more digging.
getting access to the mh,if it is a mh, is your best bet.

open up the brickwork, lintel over and run new plasticc pipe

Agreed that this sort of level of work would not be sensible for a DIYer to attempt... to be honest, I think only the water company or an approved contractor could do it since it is a shared pipe. Having said that, I am cautious about getting someone in, since there are plenty of people I've asked who are a bit perplexed by it... and since I'm the one who would foot the bill if there was a problem (seems likely considering the state of everything I've thus far uncovered!) and Wessex or my neighbours weren't happy for any reason. I need to be cautious I'm not just getting someone who sounds confident but who is actually just going to do exactly the same as what we ourselves could do!

 

[Undaunt]

I swear trying to fix a victorian house properly is like pulling a thread on a jumper... still it can be quite fascinating & you learn so much, especially if you are as directly involved as we are! I figure it makes sense to document this stuff - it is historically relevant and despite being out of sight, out of mind... it is important. Not to mention it might help someone else with a similar problem in future (I have found this forum so incredibly useful for referencing!)

 

[Undaunt]

...anyway you are going to be useful to Wessex water, and interesting to us guys

Glad I'm interesting to someone! Ha! Not sure Wessex consider me useful... (maybe more just a bit of a pain!) ...I think on balance adding to their plans of the network & getting an idea of condition/type of sewers in the local area would definitely be useful. Especially considering how much development is going on around here (lots of Londoners fleeing the expense of the big smoke & thinking 1/4 of a million is a bargain for a decrepit, poorly built pile of bricks!) ^_^

 

[Ian H]

Nice diagrams!!! Did you come accross any for a 'Tippler'?

If the drain isn't shared upstream of the plastic 45bend then Wessex Water won't be bothered. But on the plus side, drains are the simplest of things with them being mainly gravity powered. Get in mortared in and backfilled

 

[Undaunt]

Nice diagrams!!! Did you come accross any for a 'Tippler'?

Thats a new one to me... how fascinating! Never heard of such a thing (no diagrams found yet either) but several accounts of people describing them. Glad we don't have one! I find all those diagrams so interesting - the care and attention, the problem solving engineering... the Victorians did some incredible things, even if they didn't always make the right assumptions... its amazing to see that process and progress in this hidden world beneath our feet.

If the drain isn't shared upstream of the plastic 45bend then Wessex Water won't be bothered.

Had a nice inspector come round today & he agreed with you regarding insertion of plastic pipe & mortaring. He also thought it was a manhole.

But on the plus side, drains are the simplest of things with them being mainly gravity powered. Get in mortared in and backfilled

Agreed, and we will do now I am feeling more confident (we will be inserting inspection chamber with drop shaft before to deal with excessive fall and removing the temporary arrangement with the 45° replacing with plastic back to the house).

We just have such terrible damp problems that we are working step by step to eliminate possible causes (rather than the previous 'tank it and hope' approach that has been used previously and made it worse). We have a weird damp section on an *internal* spine wall in the middle of the house (most other possible causes have now been excluded - lead water main replaced, no radiator pipes or anything here, an unusual spot for condensation since it is a warm internal wall not external) & plenty of (hopefully historic) settlement throughout the house... with some definite subsidence caused to the rear lean/to and kitchen wall corner ...probably by the buchan trap saturating/eroding ground over the years.

I am planning to do fairly extensive re-jigging of the property layout in time, with an extension close to the inspection chamber/shared sewer & am wondering whether it might be prudent to pay for a CCTV survey of the shared section now whilst we have better access. It would be good to know the route/condition & I have this slight fear that there is a collapsing sewer running under the house or something! (The dynorod guy said it is fairly common for this type of row of terraces to have a sewer running underneath to the big main sewer under the road every 5 houses or so?)

What is amazing to me, is that despite the Buchan trap clearly having been badly cracked, misaligned & leaking for (probably) many years... apart from the damp/subsidence, there were no other tell-tale signs. No blockages, bad smells, back-ups or anything! Yet much of the clay joints, and the buchan trap itself have been in such bad condition that it makes me wonder how bad the shared sewer is - I doubt we would get any other signs, apart from the damp/movement that the whole area seems suspiciously prone to.

 

[Undaunt]

We've got a 1/2 bag of postcrete lying around that we've no use for - can we just do a 50:50 mix with a normal cement & sand in a mortar... or should we just go grab a bag of blue circle extra rapid cement? Would that be better?

 

[Ian H]

I'd use the Rapid with building sand, but then I'm not paying for it when I do it.

 

[Undaunt]

I'd use the Rapid with building sand, but then I'm not paying for it when I do it.

Yeh - I think I'll just grab a bag of extra rapid cement - it was the guy in the photo suggesting the other option, but I feel better about not making up a random mix!

Spoke to a couple of companies about getting a CCTV drain survey done (a build over one with full plans drawn up, since potential extension will be within a few meters of it) - but they explained they would need to use the wheeled camera with a larger pipe like the shared sewer, so we would need to go down through the concrete cap over the assumed manhole to allow up/downstream access for the camera. Considering there is a garden on top of it (and the garden is my main bit of respite from the rest of the house/building site) ...I think I'll leave that for now!