public sewer under the extension

amsi1980

hi guys need some advice , i am buying an extended house which has a public sewer under the extension . extension was build in 1979 i found out from sellers that there has been no issues till date . is there any thing i need to worry , shall i go ahead with my purchase or what should i do ? any help or advice ? is this a common practice to build extension over sewer ?

Thanks in advance
amit

sammyjammy

I'm no expert so just my opinion. It isn't something that would be recommended but I am not sure if its illegal as such, if anything goes wrong with it then they would take whatever steps needed to access it at your cost. I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole personally, if nothing has gone wrong with it it in 34 years the odds of it needing attention could be staking up!

BobQ

I live in house with an extension that is built over shared sewer serving a few houses that connects to the main sewer. The extension was built about 22 years ago and at the time the building regulations required the sewer pipe under the extension to be exposed, encased in about 12" of concrete and have an inspection manhole installed in the extension. The reason for the concrete was to ensure that the weight of the extension did not damage the sewer. Since that time there has been no trouble and never been a need to open the manhole.

So I would say that its not necessarily a problem that an extension is built over a sewer, but if you plan to buy you should confirm with the Council if the extension needed planning permission and/or Building Regulation approval, if it got it, what conditions if any applied to the sewer and whether anyone checked it was followed.

If it needed no regulation you might want to arrange for a camera inspection of the sewer to check for any problems. Or you might want to walk away!