shared surface water sewer - responsibility

[John D v2.0]

Hi all, for those who are not having a BBQ in the sun today -

After the thunderstorm last night I found our rainwater gulley and next door is flooding over and coming into the air bricks!
This is down on the water co maps as being a shared "surface water sewer" as it goes under next door's drive. I have drawn the gulleys in question in as blue splodges with their assumed path. A hose poked down hits something solid after a metre or two from either gulley, presumably a hidden elbow. 1920s houses, ours is the black edged one.

Would that be the water company?

I did call them and they were very vague, and said they didn't have any maps, but they said they'd call someone and get them to call me back. So it sounds pretty much like I'll have to persuade them!

Any clues would be very useful. Thanks in advance!

 

[John D v2.0]

Well just to close this out they came by no issues and put a camera in, discovered the drains are silted up, then tried to jet it, gave up, and decided it was also silted across the road. Then they're going to let the head office deal with it (or not)

 

[Ian H]

It should be pretty easy if they are jetting upstream from the manhole, they could catch the silt in the manhole channel, scoop it out then jet some more.

 

[John D v2.0]

I'll be sure to update this thread if/when they solve it! The problem they had was their on van jetting machine wasn't powerful enough, so they need the lorry mounted machine! Should be coming in the next few days.

 

[Nige F]

We had a similar issue on the estate where I live. The road and my garden slope to the house. I had a problem with water under the suspended floor. ( only a couple of mm in one area of 10 sq. M.) Then one time I noticed groundwater squirting into a foul manhole when it was raining. Later noticed water coming up through the joins in the concrete road. A neighbour beat me to acting. He moved in and saw the water through the road, and also found a hidden heavy manhole cover with water squirting out round the edges. He's higher up the road and opposite me. Long story short, the water co./council acted quickly and sorted it with a lorry jetter. So any problems witnessed will be acted on - because in our case, I'm sure if the road hadn't been concrete, we would have had a sinkhole. It's in their interest to act