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[guest]

Anyone had any experience of trying to get water companies to deal with problems on previously private drains*?

I only ask as our water company (Severn Trent <spit>) are doing their level best to ignore at least 10 leaking joints on my property - I'm the poor sod at the end of the run of four houses so it all lands on me.

Both foul and surface water sewers are leaking front and back and all I can get out of the sods is "we'll come and cut the roots regularly and maintain the sewer". What roots grow in a foul sewer? None. How do you "maintain" a leaking foul sewer without fixing the damn leak?

Its having an adverse effect on the concrete floorslab in the house but nothing that you can involve insurance companies with** so I find myself in the bizarre situation of having to "illegally" fix STW's sewers. Its insanity on wheels.

My options appear to be :

1) Pursue STW legally - the only realistic option here is to give them notice I'm going to fix the leaks and invoice them, then subsequently take them to the small claims track. Will take a year or so to reach resolution and runs the risk they might countersue (stupid as it'd be);

2) Complain via STW and the ombudsman. Will take 18-24 months to get a decision as they are overloaded since 2011;

3) Pay someone cash in hand to reline the drains. Will take 5 hours to do and will cost £1k (14m reline roughly - lot of branch drains on the run).

Remember that all the time this is happening I have water leaking under the house so things won't be getting any better.

Given that the kitchen floor tiles are going to have to be ripped up/relaid and that will be £2k alone (there's a week's work there for one guy) I am seriously tempted to take the cash in hand approach but I just find it unbelievably irritating I'm having to consider this.

I wish the damn drains were still private - I could get them fixed properly.

Anyone have any advice other than kill them all?

* water companies were forced to adopt previously private drains which served more than one property in Oct 2011
** no mainstream insurance companies in the UK cover concrete floors now - not unless damage occurs to foundations at the same time, good luck proving that. I won't consider any more properties with concrete floorslabs now, its just too risky for former coalmine areas and clay areas. One to check in your own policies TBH.

[tickmike]

I have no experience of trying to get water companies to deal with problems sorry.

First how do you know they are leaking ?.

Re " What roots grow in a foul sewer? "  Tree Roots And Shrubs Roots etc. , as you know I built my own house and I put in some 'Hepsleave' drainage pipes, some years later we had problems with one of our toilets backing up, on investigation I found some roots from a shrub had gone in some hairline cracks in the pipes, opened the cracks up and grew inside the pies blocking it.
In the end I got a very good deal from Hepworth for supplying me with faulty pipes which I replaced.
Tree roots will get into a old faulty pipe joint looking for water.
Vitrified Clay Pipe.
The most common form of drainage in the UK found usually in sizes from 100-225mm on domestic systems, The sand and cement joints offer little resistance to persistent and hungry tree roots and the resulting weeping and leaking joints erode the very sub-soil that  the pipes relied on for structural support.

[guest]

CCTV shows a lot of misaligned joints which in all probability are leaking and 4 displaced joints which are definitely leaking.

In addition there's a tree to the front which STW have tried to do a rootcut on and failed - there's a root growing into the drain which is too large to cut using a spinner. Only option is to take the tree down and dig out the drain - which the neighbours are fine with but all we can get out of STW is "that's capital expenditure and we don't have the budget".

The drains will have some form of rubber seal as they're only 20 years old - they stopped using sand & cement joints in the 1950s - but rubber seals will only do so much. The foul system is vitrified clay and judging from left-over bits I've discovered under slabs they are not the spigot type so there must be plastic collars external to the pipe at each joint. The surface water system is PVC which is normal these days but doesn't seem to resist root growth as well as clay as it deforms easier.

[c6em]

The old fashioned clay spigot drains were easier to mis-align at the join.  Actually this made it easier to introduce a slight curve into the route by deliberately offsetting slightly each connection.  In fact it rare to see a perfect line of these.
They came in 1 yard sections and could be laid directly in the ground.
To allow for movement they were joined in sand and lime rather than ultra hard setting cement however I've found this has over decades of time deteriorated and allowed tree roots in at the joins.
(The use of lime rather than cement at least means you can get them out/re-lay them with reasonable ease - cement and breaking them would be the only option).

Modern plastic comes in interlocking rubber sealed 3m sections and obviously can only be used in straight sections.
They should be laid in and backfilled over in gravel which usually costs more than the drain itself - so builders skimp on this bit.
This is requirement because yes, they can deform and should not be laid direct in the ground.
I've no experience of plastic drains in a 'tree rich environment' - and how good are the rubber interlocking join seals.

You can get plastic/neoprene/rubber collars easily for joining drains of different sizes or converting between clay drains and plastic.
They have a steel band round them that you tighten round the pipe. They are not cheap. 

I'm surprised to see a system of non spigot clay pipes joined by lots of plastic whatever joiners. 
The only non spigot clay pipes I've seen are old fashioned non-vitrified clay land drains which are each about 12-15" long and are simply placed butted up against each other and laid in clinker with the deliberate intention that water flowing through them DOES leak though the butted up "joints" into the clinker and thence to drain away naturally into the subsoil.

[guest]

http://www.draindomain.com/types%20of%20pipe%20work.html

Go half-way down the page and that's the type that gets used now.

Edit - I'm assuming that's what I have as thats what I've found chucked under slabs by the original builders, haven't found any spigot type but that doesn't prove anything.

[guest]

We're now up to 4 houses with "issues" but apparently the criteria at Severn Trent for getting leaking drains fixed is that they must block 3 times in 6 months.

They are coming around (again - this is the 8th or 9th time) to do rootcuts/jet drains. The guys freely admit that it doesn't matter how much the drains leak, nothing will be done as they only have to pay out compo for damage caused by blockages.

Life is too short for this so when they finish the jetting I'm getting someone in to line the drains. Cost is £50/m for 100mm drains & £75/m for 150mm drains.

If Severn Trent want to argue about me fixing their drains then let them argue about it in front of a district judge, he'll slap costs on them for wasting his time.

Annoying as hell but there we go, spend years fighting STW or pay £1k and know its been done properly (video before/after).