Are un-adopted sewers a problem? (and do canals flood!?)

blizeH

Hi guys,

Just got a couple of (hopefully!) quick questions:

1. The house I'm very close to buying has a certain amount of unadopted sewerage, which my friend has told me I should be really cautious of - is it really a problem? I would've thought sewer stuff doesn't take that much maintaining that often, and shouldn't be too much of a problem/that expensive.

2. Do canals flood?! Possibly a silly question, but according to the environmental agency site it's in a moderate flood risk area, and the environmental search I just paid for said it's a 'medium' risk too. It's super close to the canal so it is rather worrying if canals do flood!

Again apologies if these seem like silly questions, particularly the first one (my friend has made me paranoid about it!) but if the answer is good to both, I'll go ahead without doubt as I like the place a lot

Cheers!

CloudCuckooLand

http://bbs.scoobynet.com/non-scooby-related-4/616749-do-canals-flood.html

SouthCoast

March 01, 2010


HEAVY rain has caused rivers to be put on floodwatch and forced part of the Basingstoke Canal to be shut.
Hampshire County Council decided to close the waterway on Saturday because of concerns about a weak section of the embankment near Crookham Village.
Footpaths around the village have also been closed.
The Environment Agency currently has 18 flood watches in force across Hampshire, Surrey, the Thames Valley and Berkshire.

http://www.gethampshire.co.uk/news/s/2066721_heavy_rain_causes_flood_risk_as_river_levels_rise

ETA I am signed up for this:

Floodline Warnings Direct is a free service that provides flood warnings direct to you by telephone, mobile, email, SMS text message and fax.

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/38289.aspx

CloudCuckooLand

blizeH

Oh great.

/sigh

CloudCuckooLand

!

timmyt

1. your lender may have to have this reported to them by your lawyer (CML) or at least you need to know tat residents will have to share the costs of repairs. It could be expensive.
2. just ask the seller what their knowledge is

blizeH

Cheers, it's annoying because I've already started the process, so would not only lose quite a bit in different fees I've already paid, but also quite considerably stitch up the current seller, so I'm not sure what to do now!

poppysarah

Depends on the canal. Right by us there's a wier the other side of the canal and that woul;d take any overflow. Also the lock system means it should all drain down to Manchester and flood them first (So if it ever floods enough to flood the whole of Manchester - something like 20-30M below us then we're doomed)

Go walk the canal.

Richard_Webster

Private sewers are everywhere so the simple answer is that in itself it shouldn't be an issue unless the private run is very long and its repair cost is likely to be shared by very few people.

A sewer (pipe taking drainage from more than one property) is generally a public sewer if it existed in 1936 so most older areas have few private sewers.

Anything built since then can have private sewer runs. The Water companies will only take over sewers of a certain size so you generally find on modern estates that a house will perhaps drain to a private sewer running through back gardens which may link up say 6-12 houses and that will then connect into the public sewer which is generally (but not always) under the road.

One of the more useless aspects of drainage searches is that they give no indication about the length and routes of private sewers. They show you a plan depicting the nearest public sewers and tell you that the property is connected (or not) to the public sewerage system. They do not tell you that you are connected to the nearest sewer.

So in an extreme case you could have a sewer in a road near a house (perhaps at a higher level) and the drainage from that house goes through a private sewer that connects to the public sewer half a mile away or further!

The CML Handbook stupidly tells solicitors that they have to report to lenders if the roads or sewers "immediately serving the property are not adopted..."

The roads point is different because there is potential liability for making a up a road but no such liability exists for a sewer unless it needs to be unblocked/repaired. In many cases it will not be possible to determine whether there is an "immediate" connection to a public sewer or not and there are so many modern estates where this is not the case that it is quite silly for lenders to expect solicitors to report this. What would be sensible would be, if the drainage search could give us information about the length of private sewer run, to have to report such runs over a certain length. Unfortunately this information is not generally available.

My house was built in 1953 and my next door neighbour but one has lived in the road ever since his house was built and he tells me that the private sewer that runs under our back gardens has never been blocked. The house is maybe 100-200m away from the connection to the public sewer and we are on a hill so gravity will play a big part in keeping it clear. There will be lots of cases like mine but, yes, occasionally, we do hear of problems with private sewer runs (usually in 1960s/70s estates).

Canals - doesn't it depend on where the water comes from and where it can go?

If you are on the "summit pound" of a canal, it might be fed by streams or in some cases the water may have to be pumped up to it. If there is a lot of rain then the canal fills and the water flows over the top of the lock gates down to the lower level below and so on. If you are lower down there isn't anywhere else for the water to go - there is no downhill over the lock gates because you can't get any lower. This will especially be the case where a canal carries river water or runs parallel to a river liable to flood.

blizeH

Thank you so much for the replies guys, some genuinely awesome information there! With regards to the canals I had a real good drive/walk around by the area and think it should be okay. All around the canal is fields pretty much, just miles upon miles of fields, and at places not too far is the river severn, so I'm assuming (hoping!) that those areas would get flooded before the area where I'd be buying as there's a lot of houses there now. I spoke with someone who lives there and they said during the really bad Gloucestershire floods a few years ago they checked the canal every single day to see if it was going to overflow, but it was no different to usual, so very promising!

With regards to the drainage, the property is about 11 years old and mostly around there is adopted drainage it seems. I asked the solicitor who did a search on the property and gave me this drainage plan back - so it isn't too far at all for un-adopted drainage, maybe 50m or so, if that! Shouldn't be anything to worry about I think, from what I gather, and from Richard's great post above.

Thanks again, really appreciate all of your replies.