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- 12 Jan 2020
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I have a Victorian terrace which has a combined drainage system. The soil pipe connects below ground to the rainwater gully and then this runs to the lateral drain across the back of the gardens that serves all the houses. Tacked onto the back of the house is a utility room and an old, disused WC. There is no toilet there anymore, but the base of the toilet is visible and is just capped over with cement. I assume this is either directly connected to the lateral drain, or there is a short branch to join them up.
At the moment, the wastewater pipe (for sink and washing machine) in the utility room is an asbestos pipe embedded in the concrete slab. For various reasons, it would be preferable to abandon this pipe. A drainage engineer has suggested re-routing the utility room wastewater by putting a new plastic pipe out through the back wall of the utility room and connecting it to the base of the old toilet. The condition of this old pipe would need to be confirmed via a CCTV survey.
This seems quite a neat solution. It puts the wastewater pipes above ground, and in a shorter run, for future maintenance. Its the only way that I can see to stop using the asbestos pipe without doing a lot of digging and laying new bits of pipe.
For the purpose of this forum though, my main question is in respect to Building Regulations. It seems like a simple option because it doesn't involve any new connections to the existing underground drainage system. It would hopefully just be bringing an old connection back into use and on that basis my initial thoughts were that no Building Regulations approval would be needed. But having done some reading it seems like perhaps this isn't so straightforward and might be classed as an alteration to the drainage system and therefore would be notifiable.
I'll probably end up asking the Local Authority to confirm anyway, but would like some opinions before I do that. What i've described above is a bit of a simplification but would repurposing the old toilet waste be classed as an alteration?
Thanks!
At the moment, the wastewater pipe (for sink and washing machine) in the utility room is an asbestos pipe embedded in the concrete slab. For various reasons, it would be preferable to abandon this pipe. A drainage engineer has suggested re-routing the utility room wastewater by putting a new plastic pipe out through the back wall of the utility room and connecting it to the base of the old toilet. The condition of this old pipe would need to be confirmed via a CCTV survey.
This seems quite a neat solution. It puts the wastewater pipes above ground, and in a shorter run, for future maintenance. Its the only way that I can see to stop using the asbestos pipe without doing a lot of digging and laying new bits of pipe.
For the purpose of this forum though, my main question is in respect to Building Regulations. It seems like a simple option because it doesn't involve any new connections to the existing underground drainage system. It would hopefully just be bringing an old connection back into use and on that basis my initial thoughts were that no Building Regulations approval would be needed. But having done some reading it seems like perhaps this isn't so straightforward and might be classed as an alteration to the drainage system and therefore would be notifiable.
I'll probably end up asking the Local Authority to confirm anyway, but would like some opinions before I do that. What i've described above is a bit of a simplification but would repurposing the old toilet waste be classed as an alteration?
Thanks!
