Moving manhole in the back garden

banshi

Hello, I know there are similar posts around but I did not want to hijack any of them with my query. We are in the process of purchasing an old, 3 bed house that seem to have a public drain running in the backgarden just outside the house outer wall. It's wedged between our house and adjacent extension build by neighbors.

When we were viewing the house, we learned that there is often an issue with backing up waste water due to some old pipes issues in this development but Irish Water seemed to handle this blockage fast enough.

House is tiny and when planning our renovations, we hoped to have this manhole moved along the pipe to the other side of the garden.

Where should we start looking for a quote and would that need planning permissions? I have little to no idea yet which authorities can be contacted about that and if we need any crazy legal planning permissions and how much that would cost on top of the costs of constructing new access to the waste pipe. I have no idea where the pipe runs exactly after leaving our property but I was told by the neighbor it does serve all houses in this development and originally was placed in the back gardens.

I would be grateful of any suggestions on where to go to have that checked (we did not sign the purchase contract just yet, so we can't freely invite engineers/ builders in there just yet. I am however in the process of getting surveyor down there hopefully next week - would they be able to tell me what can and can't be done with it?

Thanks!

ps. couldn't post pics or links because of that ''new user'' vibe

Gumbo

First of all you have to determine if it's a public or private drain.
Has anyone confirmed if it's a public pipe?

Is it in dublin? It could very well be an pitfall manhole with a buchan trap (Dublin Trap) as they always block.

banshi

kceire wrote: »

First of all you have to determine if it's a public or private drain.
Has anyone confirmed if it's a public pipe?

Is it in dublin? It could very well be an pitfall manhole with a buchan trap (Dublin Trap) as they always block.

It's in Cork. The only information about the garden pipe I have is from our neighbors. Their waste pipes go directly into the pipe running in the back of our houses as well. I am not sure who is administrating main waste pipes in Ireland, is it up to the county council? Irish Water?

Gumbo

banshi wrote: »

It's in Cork. The only information about the garden pipe I have is from our neighbors. Their waste pipes go directly into the pipe running in the back of our houses as well. I am not sure who is administrating main waste pipes in Ireland, is it up to the county council? Irish Water?

Get the drainage maps for your house from the council.
If your pipes are on them, then good chance they are public and you cannot do a thing to them. They will have a 3m wayleave each side of them.

If they are not on the maps, good chance they are private and you can alter them with permission from all users and subject to building regulation and good drainage practice.

banshi

Thanks. I just want to point out I do not want to change the route of this waste pipe, just move the manhole few meters along the way it runs. Or actually ask someone (private construction company? council?) to construct new manhole and seal up the old one. I guess it would be a trip to the council office this way or another to figure it out

Thanks again.

Gumbo

banshi wrote: »

Thanks. I just want to point out I do not want to change the route of this waste pipe, just move the manhole few meters along the way it runs. Or actually ask someone (private construction company? council?) to construct new manhole and seal up the old one. I guess it would be a trip to the council office this way or another to figure it out

Thanks again.

That makes no difference tbh.

Public, you can't do that. Private you can.
Hence why you need to properly find out who owns it.

BryanF

Op where in cork is this?

banshi

Blackpool. Sorry for late reply @BryanF. I wrote to Water Services when I created this thread. Explained that we want to know if this manhole is something that we can move once we will own this house, in order to plan extensions or perhaps alterations to the drain pipes (new Bathroom, utility room out of an unused brick shed etc) and today, almost a month later what we got is a message ''This property is in the Cork City Council administrative area.''

What would that mean for us - not a clue. In the meantime we did engineer's survey, and he advised to hire a proper drain surveyor. We did that. The camera test shows leaking and cracks in both gullies and the leaking along main pipe line.

So I wrote to Water Services again asking for clarification as to who should take care of that if this is THEIR administrative area (whatever that means).

Maybe someone was in the same situation? We did not factor drain replacement in our budged for that house, the seller was kind enough to drop the price already (as the whole heating system has to go), and now this. We love the house, we knew it will be challenging to bring it up to the standards, but this is just something we might not afford. Just makes me wonder if it's worth the fuss. We already invested almost 1k into having all the tests performed. Bummer.

BryanF

What age is the house - is it x council ?

Whenever I've had this issue, I've found it's best to ring until you get the relevant department and don't give up until you speak a local eng

banshi

The estate was built in the 60ties. I am not sure what ''x council'' means, but it was owned by a lady who lived there from the beginning. At least this is what we learned from neighbors as we still have not received official maps of the property. I did try to call of course, used up my credit waiting on the line I guess at some point we will need to simply go to the council office and ask in person, but I thought it is pointless to do so now as we are not the owners yet.

BryanF

assuming it's running through the back gardens parrallel with the house it's likely a private shared drain. Mine is 5ft down So I wasn't digging it up, I just put access points as best practice and built over.