British Gas Home Care - comedy of errors, but nobody's laughing

ilesmark

Hi all

Hope this is in the right part of the forum.

I have had BG HomeCare 400, with Plumbing and Drains Care and Electrical since 2004. I have called on the plumbing and drains cover only once - when they attended and (satisfactorily) fixed a drain blockage some time in 2007/08.

My house is a 1900-built terraced one with separate rain water and foul water drains. Rainwater from the roof and concreted ground areas runs into the rain water drain which goes into its rain water counterpart in the road and then into rivers, while waste water from everything else runs into the foul water drain which goes into its sewer counterpart in the road and then to the sewage treatment plant.

The drain blocked at the back of the house in mid-Nov 2011.

- 21/11/11 – someone from BG/Dynorod turned up and attempted to fix what turned out to be a blocked rainwater drain, firstly by dyno-rodding it but without success. He then attempted another solution - in the manhole at the front, the foul drain opens out where it enters the bottom of the manhole while the rainwater pipe runs parallel through the manhole but without opening out and he smashed the rainwater pipe with a hammer in order to divert the rainwater into the foul drain.

This didn't work and he concluded that the blockage was caused by roots that had grown into the rainwater pipe somewhere between the front manhole and the rear of the property. He then announced that what was needed was an underground connection between the rainwater drain and the foul drain at the rear of the property, and that British Gas would get back in touch within the week to return with the right equipment to do the underground join. He did also comment that there was a foul pipe leading from the bathroom sink into the rain water drain at the rear and that this should not be there, 'but not to worry as it all goes to the same treatment plant nowadays and the rain water's going to be diverted into the foul anyway'.

I didn't understand any of this rain water / foul water drainage business until recently, but that pipe has certainly been there for the past 30 or 40 years.

Various promises ensued of calls / visits to sort the problem out that never materialized until someone came again on 5/1/12. He looked in the front manhole and I explained about the smashed rainwater pipe. Then we went to the back of the house and immediately he homed in on the waste pipe from the bathroom sink feeding into the rain water drain, telling me it was illegal and that therefore clearing the blockage probably wasn't covered. I said the foul pipe had been there for the past 30 or 40 years and that even if the it was leading wrongly into the rainwater drain, it wasn't the reason for the drain being blocked and that it shouldn't matter anyway as the rain water and foul water all went to the same treatment plant (remember I had been told all this on 21/11, and that the guy on that day had tried to divert the rainwater drain into the foul). This operative said that wasn't correct.

11/1/12 - I called Thames Water and guess what - the operative who turned up on the 5th is right and the first guy was wrong! What goes into the rain water drain still goes into rivers, while what goes into the foul water drain still goes to the sewage treatment plant.

Moreover, they told me that since October 2011, Thames Water has been responsible for shared drains on private properties so that THEY would have come out to do a root cut if I had asked them AND that smashing the pipe in the manhole to divert rain water into the foul was definitely the wrong thing to do, so that there will be contamination if they do do a root cut for me. Now it looks like I have a problem

There are other aspects to this story, and I may post about them separately if / when the need arises, but in the meantime - anyone else have anything like this happen / anyone have any comments?

Thanks in advance

Mark