Drain Reaponsibility

Nathan

Nathan

Nathan

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2003
Posts
5,401
Location
West Midlands
Hi,

We live in a detached house however both our front and rear gutter spouts run into drains on next doors property, along his side path.

He is an elderly widower and has recently been in hospital with cancer. As a result I have been managing his house, cutting lawn etc. I took the opportunity to look at the drains and couldn't even see the grates I had to remove a whole builders bucket of soil just to show the tops of my drains and the a further bucket to clear the first straights of the U bends. I unblocked two of his drains too.

The rear drain is now flushing water away nicely. The front one is blocked :( it appears roots are within the drain as I can feel them placing my hand in and around the u bend. Therefore it's blocked well and truly under ground. I have tried flexible rods, jet wash adopters and sulphuric acid. All have had no effect.

I have called the utility company and they stated they will be out within 12 hours.

Who's responsibility is the drain deep underground?
 
Got my fingers crossed that when the utility company arrive they will fix it. If not it's going to be an awkward conversation with the neighbour
 
So, they tried blasting it for me however that failed. They won't do any more as its a single serving drain. Home insurance doesn't cover it, what's my next option?
 
Unfortunately if it's not covered by anyone else it may be down to you or him (depending on where it is) to deal with it.

From what you've said it don't sound like it's far underground, or far along, in which case it may be possible to replace the section of pipe relatively easily as a DIY job (we had a cracked rainwater drain a few years back and it wasn't too bad to sort as it was fairly shallow).
Fortunately it's likely to be a job where the call out and labour charges will make up most of the cost, so digging out around the pipe to see what it's like would cut the labour cost a lot and may let you see if you could do it yourself (if it's the neighbours responsbility ask him to pay for any materials) if you want a bit of exercise.

As a thought have you tried a camera down the drain to see for certain what the blockage is? (you can get inspection cameras very cheaply now if you don't need a long one).
 
Check with your provider.

Both my incoming water supply and drain aways are NOT my repsonsibility even though they are directly under my path. The water company could never replace the old lead pipework due to how the main supply runs down the road so because of that it's on them should anything go wrong.
 
ci_newman said:
The landowner has responsibility for the drains up to the point where they leave his boundary
Click to expand...

This is incorrect. The water companies took back responsibilities for mains draingage systems regardless of location a few years ago, so if this is a mains drainage issue then it will be thiers to deal with.

I recently called my water provider regarding who was responsible for the main drain cover that sat on a raised concrete slab on my driveway, fully expecting them to say it was my responsibility. Nope, it was theirs and they came along and removed the slab and brought the manhole cover down to ground level. Saved me a few £££ that i was going to have to spend getting a builder to do it!

As others have said, call the water provider and they should come out and make an assessment as to who is responsible, them or the landowner.
 
Cheers guys.

Well I have called the utility company and explained I was not happy with the explanation o got. They have now stated that a single service drain on a neighbouring property is their responsibility. An engineer is coming back out today...fingers crossed! When the two came previously I heard them talking about having to dig it up. When they told me they were washing their hands of it I had a suspicion that they were lying.
 
We had a shared drain problem and Thames Water had responsibility for it. A camera finally found the problem a few houses away from us and luckily the problem was resolved without digging up.
 
Saga continues...came out today and the engineer (abused term now) said its a soakaway so not their responsibility. I said if I guessed in my job people would end up dead. He didn't like that, called his manager and now they are due back within 21 days for excavation and camera. These contractors are rubbish. Getting somewhere though...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom