Shared soil pipe

[crazyman1979]

Hi,

I recently bought an end of terrace house and have gutted it, i have moved the bathroom from the front of the house into one of the bigger bedrooms at the back, when we connected up the new soil pipe and disconnected the old one we noticed waste coming from our old pipe, it appears that the next house next door (who only just bought it as well, they were both owned by same landlord) has their toilet pipe coming through the wall into our old bathroom and connecting to our pipe, this room is now going to be a bedroom and i really want to rip all this piping out as its old smelly and quite high up in the floor.

However this will leave next door with no working toilet, and a rather large bill to either re-locate his bathroom or somehow route the soil pipe through his house to the back (its mid-terrace), obviously this is not going to go down to well with him.

What would your advice be here ?

 

[mcluma]

Of course this is not standard,

I would speak to the neighbour and explain that you would like it changed.

This should not be to any cost to you.

Give him a time frame by when you would like to have it sorted

check if there are no other shared services between the houses

ie electricitly
water
gas
etc

if one thing is shared, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more

 

[digdilem]

Surprised this wasn't pointed out in both surveys.

Be polite and give a /reasonable/ timeframe to complete the works, but unless there is a covenant in place (sounds unlikely) then he needs to get his **** outta your house...

 

[Nige F]

then he needs to get his s**t outta your house...

Don`t be so harsh - it`s only passing through

 

[xr4x4]

Is there a party wall agreement in the deeds?

 

[crazyman1979]

It was never picked up in the survey, and the landlord stated 'not known'.

If he doesn't agree to this, and he is asking to simply pay to replace the piping and leave it in place, however this will affect re-sale and not to mention if it ever leaked..

Legally would i be able to simply disconnect it ?

 

[muggles]

Of course you can disconnect the soil branch in your new bedroom, but you can't stop him using his loo, so you'll end up with a big pile of turds on your bedroom carpet...

I think you should try to find an amicable solution, falling out with your neighbour a couple of weeks after you've moved in will not do either of you any favours

 

[electronicsuk]

Have exactly the same situation with a house that I own/rent - it was originally one large building that got split into two separate properties, although the waste from next door's upstairs bathroom runs directly into the bathroom opposite in my property. This isn't a problem for me as I have no intentions to relocate the bathroom, but you may well find that the deeds to the property permit services to pass through from the neighbouring house.

 

[xr4x4]

I'd discuss it with them, tell them you will disconnect it and plug it and give them a reasonable time scale to which it needs to be complete.