UPDATED (2) What's going on with my drains?

Canucklehead

aliasojo wrote: »

Just wanted to bump this in case anyone else had any ideas.

Been all over the garden, the only thing we can find is a small square drain cover in the back garden at the top end of the house under the kitchen window that the drain from the kitchen sink goes into. (The white drain pipe comes out through the wall and down the outside of the wall and just discharges into this drain. )This is nowhere near the toilets.

The house and garden are on a slope the toilets are at the front of the house at the low end of the slope and the kitchen is at the back of the house at the high end of the slope. Garden all round.

Stands to reason the drains flow from the back (high) to the front (low) but the only tiny drain cover we can find is the one at the high end, nowhere near the toilets.

The toilets have been flushing ok as long as you leave at least 5 mins between flushes but the downstairs toilet hand basin holds water a lot. It can take 20 mins to drain away.

Daughter has just had a bubble bath (bathroom upstairs). I went into the downstairs loo to be met with a cascade of bubbles coming out of the pan!

Surely if there was an actual block then things wouldn't be ok sometimes?

The other thing is, that I do feel as if the problem is slightly better when the weather is freezing and the ground is solid, and when it gets milder, the problem gets worse. Is that even feasible? :undecided

It's a very old property that suffered from subsidence previously. That issue was dealt with, but the resulting internal damage (cracks in walls etc were not dealt with properly in some places and not at all in others. The house hasn't been looked after well, only enough and no more and I'm told it lay empty for a long time before we started renting it. I'm genuinely concerned that the drains are in a state and we we will end up paying handsomely to repair them.

So if anyone has any other ideas before I have to bite the bullet and get the LL involved.......?

Hi: tbh contact the LL before the problem escalates. One of the upsides of renting is not having the hassle/cost of maintenance issues though I appreciate it would niggle someone who has been an owner-occupier....you just need to know what the heck is going on.;)

Canucklehead

P.S. Please let us know how you get on....curious to see how this one plays out.

southcoastrgi

i agree with ch get the L/L involved it really sounds like a blocked or colapsed drain, either way it sounds like you will need dynarod (or similiar) involved to jet it & prob do cctv

aliasojo

Canucklehead wrote: »

Hi: tbh contact the LL before the problem escalates. One of the upsides of renting is not having the hassle/cost of maintenance issues though I appreciate it would niggle someone who has been an owner-occupier....you just need to know what the heck is going on.;)

Canucklehead

P.S. Please let us know how you get on....curious to see how this one plays out.

Yes, I expect I will have to now.

I'm just concerned we get saddled with 'blame' and unfair costs. That's why I was trying to get an idea of what was going on first to either see if I could do anything myself to rectify this, or to be a little more 'in the know' if anything gets tried on iyswim.

If we have caused a blockage then fair enough, I wont be trying to shrug that off, I just don't want to be paying for poorly maintained drains that have suffered problems previously or are in a poor state now.

Guess I better just make the call.

Will update when I know more.

ju1i3_2

Do you have a cellar? Maybe the manhole is there. Ours is. (sorry maybe this is obvious)

We had problems with the old drain when we moved here. Had to have it cleaned out but that's all it needed. It hadn't collapsed. Maybe that's all you need.

josiejump_2

We have similar problems. We have had to have the drains power-flushed twice in the past 6 months but the problem recurs, so we suspect tree roots are causing a build-up of sewage over time which then causes drains to back up. Could this be likely? You mention having a lot of garden - does that include trees? We too cannot find a manhole anywhere (property dates from 1935). Drain flushing was done via soil pipe access as per previous photo. I know we're going to need to get a camera down there to investigate properly at some point. Does anyone know if British Gas plumbing & drains cover will cover us for that? I've forgotten we have that policy up to now and have stupidly paid to have the drains flushed both times!

aliasojo

josiejump wrote: »

We have similar problems. We have had to have the drains power-flushed twice in the past 6 months but the problem recurs, so we suspect tree roots are causing a build-up of sewage over time which then causes drains to back up. Could this be likely? You mention having a lot of garden - does that include trees?

I think this may well be the case. There were a lot of trees here at one time, the stumps are all over the garden. There's still a very large pine tree in the garden and another tree just outside the fence.

The house suffered subsidence previously which I suspect was down to the tree roots and that's why so many were cut down. I don't know if the roots from those would still grow though.

Hopefully next week should throw some light onto the problem.

Green_box

If you fail to find the MH cover and you don't want to involve your LL you could consider calling in a drain jetting co. They may have to break into the waste pipe, but they should be able to trace the route of pipes by radio detection, or possibly CCTV.

Karins

Have you contacted your water authority ?
I had the same problem with downstairs toilet backing up and nasty smell, called a plumber who said it was my drain, he tried to clear it but couldn't and then looked at houses either side of me and found they were also backing up.
Neither of the neighbours were actually experiencing any problems yet but were obviously going to if it wasn't sorted.
I contacted our water company as since last year a lot of drains are now their responsibility due to change in law and they sent someone out to investigate.
They found blockage had started next door due to tree roots and cleared drains for all 3 houses at no cost.
I was very impressed and would recommend calling them as even if they say it is not their responsibility they should be able to diagnose what is wrong and you can take it from there.

aliasojo

New question if anyone can answer please?

Is it usual/normal/allowed for all drains including the guttering downpipe drains to be linked?

We've just had soapy water come up from the drain that the gutters run into and I think it's come from the washing machine emptying.

We lifted the small square cover I mentioned earlier and scooped out handfuls of thick mud and stones along with what looks like a couple of seriously old wetwipes. Now if that drain was solely for the kitchen and not the soil pipes, how the heck could wet wipes get there, they wouldn't have got down the kitchen plughole (old fashioned type with metal bars across not the modern type with a large hole iyswim).

After we scooped out as much as our arm length would allow, we flushed the toilet and the water level rose everywhere ...this small drain , the drain the gutters go into and also the drain the kitchen sink goes into. If all the drains are connected then all sorts of rubbish could have come down the gutter downpipes and into the drains as well as in via the small drain covers.

Surely that's not right?

ormus

sometimes all drains go into the single sewer pipe. thence to the public main sewer pipe.
other times the rainwater pipes will simply empty into the gound, via soakaways.