Neighbours drain manhole in our garden

Jdor

Hi all, just looking for some advice. We recently found out that there is pipe which runs through our back garden, but doesn't service our house. It services our neighbours house only and the access point/manhole is on our side of the fence. The neighbours caused a blockage twice now, and we were thinking of asking them to move manhole to their side of the fence. We were wondering what our rights are, if they refuse. It's very inconvenient as when the cleaning needs to be done, the workers need to do it from our garden,it's a dirty job and we have two small children. Thanks in advance.

ZX7R

Is the manhole give access to your surage dirty water flow

Wildly Boaring

Is it a public sewerage system?

decky1

had this with my neighbours but mine is also running into it and the manhole is in my yard, they have trouble now and again and they all come into my yard, some time ago they got a guy to work on a blockage and he damaged the pipe in the manhole which caused it to block in my yard was told it would cost 400 to fix so as their's 4 houses together i told them 100 each[although it was'nt my fault] only one of them offered to pay , so in the end i fixed it myself [only took an hour ] but i'll let them know the next time they want to enter my yard to sort out their problem. you may be lucky enough to be able to get it moved.

drunkmonkey

They may have a legal right to access it. You need to check that out.

nuac

Mod
Check with the solicitor who acted re the purchase of the property.
Also check the planning file
Cannot give legal advice on this forum, but leaving open for general discussion

Darc19

I had a manhole in the garden of house that I owned many years ago, but I can still remember the solicitor mentioning this and asking if I was OK with it.

Dunno why I remember, maybe because it was an unusual question.

So I would guess it's mentioned somewhere in the legal documents.

The chan chan man

Most likely a shared private drain. Very common and not illegal (if that’s what it is).

Jdor

ZX7R wrote: »

Is the manhole give access to your surage dirty water flow

No we have our separate access point for that, its not shared drain

Jdor

The chan chan man wrote: »

Most likely a shared private drain. Very common and not illegal (if that’s what it is).

Not shared, confirmed by two separate drain cleaning companies, when the pipe was blocked all other drains were fine in our house.

Wildly Boaring

Speaking purely from a builders point of view.

The manhole will not be moveable in 99% of cases without a bit of serious work.

Manholes are located when pipes change direction, gradient or for rodding.
In all likelihood this manhole is on a bend or where your neighbour's pipe joins the mainline.

In the both cases your neighbour would need to dig back as far as their house and change the direction of the sewer from their house. May also need to excavate in your garden to move or extend pipe runs.

It may not even be possible if the gradient isn't there to do.

If just on your side of fence would you consider offering to move that bit of fence?

NUTLEY BOY

Not legal advice - just a view on general issues arising.

Is there is an actual legal right for the manhole to be where it is ?
Even if there is a right for the manhole to be where it is there may be no automatic assumption of a right to enter the adjacent property to access it.
Just placing the manhole on a property does not create the assumption of permission to enter to access it.

As drunkmonkey says they may have a legal right to access it.
The title documents to the property may contain what are called drainage agreements.
There might be a few of those i.e. original owner of land to developer, developer to first purchaser and so on in a way that binds successive owners.
I was looking at a set of deeds recently and there were several formal drainage agreements ultimately assigning rights and obligations to individual parties.

Others have raised the issue of whether the sewer is actually a private one or a public one which is the responsibility of the local authority.
I presume that we now substitute Irish Water for the latter !

The previous point does generate rows about which part of the sewerage system is the legal responsibility of the local authority [IW] and which part the responsibility of the householder.
Neighbours recently had this issue. The local authority first response was "it is your problem as it is on your property".
A private contractor cleared the drain having established that the blockage was actually in the public sewer as distinct from the run of foul water drain between the house and the public sewer.

It might be worth talking to your local authority engineers to see if they have any records - including drawings or plans - showing locations of drains/sewers in or around your property.
This might give a clue as to whether it is public or private.

This all sounds like a lot of bother but you need to clarify your legal rights and obligations especially if there are going to be ongoing problems with repeated blockages causing effluent to appear in your property with it's attendant inconvenience and hazard as well as nuisance in the legal sense of that term.

buzz11

NUTLEY BOY wrote: »

Not legal advice - just a view on general issues arising.

Is there is an actual legal right for the manhole to be where it is ?
Even if there is a right for the manhole to be where it is there may be no automatic assumption of a right to enter the adjacent property to access it.
Just placing the manhole on a property does not create the assumption of permission to enter to access it.

Again theoretical question on above, if over time the neighbour has

1) used the drain

2) accessed the manhole for maintenance purposes

does the neighbour gain any rights to continue with the practice?

Peregrinus

buzz11 wrote: »

Again theoretical question on above, if over time the neighbour has

1) used the drain

2) accessed the manhole for maintenance purposes

does the neighbour gain any rights to continue with the practice?

First thing to do is to check your title deeds. This may all be covered there.

If not, then you need a detailed history of events. Who installed the drain and the access point? When? Who owned the land at the time? Was there any kind of agreement? What did it provide? Who has used the access point since, when, how often and in what circumstances? Did they seek permission to enter on the land/open the access point? Did they get it? And were they seeking permission, or merely seeking to negotiate an agreed time for the exercise of a right that they already had, or considered themselves already to have?

Was the access point there when you bought the land? What was said about it at the time?

s7ryf3925pivug

In my house, if the toilet is flushed once/normally then it doesn't reach the septic system and after about two months I need to use drain rods to clear it. It's a vile job but it should only be dirty for the person doing it if any care is taken. In my case increasing the volume that is flushed appears to have been sufficient to prevent further recurrence. Possible it's as easy a fix here. Don't know if your neighbours can be engaged successfully to discuss practical ways of avoiding it but it would seem like the simplest solution.