Water soaking brickwork from neighbour's leaking toilet

Le73Uq86Uv

Is that your soil pipe?

If so the extension is on your property, get it taken down.

Now what could be causing the leak:

Could it be your wastes from sink or/and bath have been cut off to allow room for extension wall and are discharging into the cavity of the wall?

Also could the foul waste be cracked or not connected correctly and discharging into the cavity.

robgoingcrazy

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Can you at least trace where the pipework goes within your house? Presumably your bog is on the outside wall (you back to that wall when ... enough said). The bathroom sink, shower(?) and bath could all drain into the loo outlet - that's common. It'd be rare for the connections to be made to the thick loo pipe inside the house.... From your earlier photos, I can't see that you have a rear bathroom window... in fact, I'm not sure where your bathroom is... or where the divide between the two properties is, to be honest.... so that explains your username, at least!

I'm guessing you have quite a small (narrow) bathroom, that it occupies half the rear wall, with no window, and that the sink/bath waste is draining onto neighbours property from the lower rightmost of the two pipes over the flat roof. Again, it is possible for a connection in these pipes to come undone in the thickness of a wall (or a similar split/crack to develop).

So, without meaning to hasten your approaching mental meltdown, how are things in the bathroom???? No, I mean, how are things laid out in the bathroom? Is the potty your side, with bath/sink on the dividing wall between you and neighbour? Or set further forward into your house?

Don't get too stressed about this (hah, as if!)... it's gone on for ages and nothing has yet collapsed. If it takes a week for dry weather and a month to sort out, it's unlikely to kill anyone or cause the house to collapse!

Hard to describe without drawing a diagram, but above the kitchen where the drain pipes are, is my back bedroom, the bathroom is in between that bedroom and the front bedroom, sandwiched in. The toilet is against the neighbouring wall, the sink is further away at the "front" of the small bathroom, while the bath taps are next to the toilet, so also backed against the neighbouring wall, but not sure whether the wall inside matches the divide outside as the pipes do seem to go a long way into the neighbouring house!

I am not going quite as crazy now, though this thing has been enough to drive anybody round the bend :rotfl:

robgoingcrazy

Le73Uq86Uv wrote: »

Is that your soil pipe?

If so the extension is on your property, get it taken down.

Now what could be causing the leak:

Could it be your wastes from sink or/and bath have been cut off to allow room for extension wall and are discharging into the cavity of the wall?

Also could the foul waste be cracked or not connected correctly and discharging into the cavity.

I don't think getting half the neighbour's house demolished would help things. The extension was there when I moved in and when he moved in so it's hardly something I can blame him for. My builder said the previous owners probably agreed to it as it would make the building of a second extension for this house easier, if that was ever planned.

I'm not sure there is enough water for it to be entire bath or sink loads, it's just a trickle, but persistent, guess it's a theory though... The water doesn't smell bad or foul, so not sure it could be that?

It's certainly a mystery, maybe it will be solved sometime in 2014!

robgoingcrazy

Somewhat drier today, I checked first thing and there was a patch of wetness in the corner, not as bad as it has been, but there.

Have brushed teeth, showered, flushed toilet several times, and the patch of water is the same, hasn't grown or worsened, so seems unlikely it's working its way down from my bathroom pipes?

Will see how dryish weather is but have visitors today and tomorrow afternoon so can't really turn water off and expect them to "go" in the bush at the bottom of the garden :rotfl:

DaftyDuck

OK, I'm just going to make a wild speculative guess, with no evidential basis for it from the photos. A lack of it, really.

The photo of the rear of house, taken from some distance.

Upper LHS shows 1X loo outlet, 2X sink/bath outlets running to his side. From the position on wall (height) they can't come from your bathroom at the front (no drop); from the left-right position they are on his side. Therefore... they are all his.

Your loo outlet pipe... that's clearly visible, runs to your side. But no sink/bath outlet. The loo outlet is low... has to be, 'cos your bog is further forward, so slowly drops.... Where are the sink/bath outlets? Either they join into the loo outlet within the house (entirely possible I suppose, but I have never met it, and would imagine it would be a botch job, or it runs into his extension and then.... (1) becomes that low pipe coming from his extension (in which case it's a botch, and they might be leaking from inside his bit) or (2) it flow out into his drain and....

So, is that low pipe running from his extension your bathroom sink waste? If not, does the loo pipe burble and gurgle if you empty the bath, leave sink tap running?

If the outflow from sink/bath have a very shallow drop, a slow leak from a joint could well cause this kind of leak... maybe...

(In fact, a quick scan for photos shows you alluded to this in post #100.... )

robgoingcrazy

Not entirely sure, I will have a look, though I do have work I have to do for a living as well lol. I will ask my builder chap what he makes of all the piping and see what he makes of it all when he comes to mend the stolen wall.

Almost needless to say but after the 3-4 hour window of dryness the heavens opened again so back to square one in terms of observation!

robgoingcrazy

Ok, one part of the puzzle seems to have fallen into place, I ran my bathroom taps and then put my ear to the vertical pipe that the big pipe leads to, and the water was rushing through it, so it looks like all water from the bathroom (toilet and sink) goes through the big black pipe, but it needs to get there through the bedroom/wall in between.

It's been dryish overnight, there is still a small patch of wetness in the corner, ran the bathroom sink tap for about 10 minutes and this didn't lead to any increase at all in the wet patch.

Have turned off the water again and drained taps while it's dry and will see what happens! Or doesn't!

JohnB47

I repeat:

JohnB47 wrote: »

I think you need to wait until it's not raining and the ground is reasonably dry before you try turning off your water again. I would go for a dry still day and listen for those drips before and after turning off the water.

Are you going to try this? (This is turning the water off at the stopcock, not running/not running the water at your sink, or wherever).

I have a feeling that you are not remembering the various suggestions made on this thread - perhaps understandably because it's got so long. Why not sit down and write yourself a to-do list of things to try and hence eliminate them one by one. You seem to be jumping from one thing to another without any logical process.

robgoingcrazy

robgoingcrazy wrote: »

.

Have turned off the water again and drained taps while it's dry and will see what happens! Or doesn't!

JohnB47 wrote: »

I repeat:



Are you going to try this? (This is turning the water off at the stopcock, not running/not running the water at your sink, or wherever).

I have a feeling that you are not remembering the various suggestions made on this thread - perhaps understandably because it's got so long. Why not sit down and write yourself a to-do list of things to try and hence eliminate them one by one. You seem to be jumping from one thing to another without any logical process.

??

As I said earlier, the first thing I have done today is try running the taps, that didn't make any difference.

So then I turned off the water at the stopcock and drained all the taps.

I am listening for the drips but I still can't tell if it's coming from the drain right next to where my ear is, it's very hard to pinpoint the exact location soundwise with cars roaring past every second.

I've just had a listen for a while and could swear I can't hear it now, it was still there when I turned the water off, but seems to have diminished. But I can't really trust my own senses at the moment.

Will leave it another while and go and have another observation/listen, there is a bit of a breeze around which might help dry up the water on the slab if the drip has in fact stopped...

I do appreciate your suggestions John, my logic today was as follows:

1) Does the surface water worsen when the bathroom taps/toilet is run? No. -->
2) Where is the bathroom water actually draining out of, through the big soil pipe or by some mysterious route via the neigbour's extension? Seems to all be through big soil pipe for whatever reason so --->
3) Turn of water at mains, drain taps, empty toilet, and see what change that makes to drip/surface water

After the neighbour ripping his bathroom out and all other steps taken this seemed the only logical course of action, if there is a step I've missed or doing this in the wrong order, will welcome any suggestions!

JohnB47

Ok, sorry. When you said in an earlier post 'have turned off the water again and drained taps ...' I didn't realise that you meant turned off at the stopcock. My mistake.

Well, I'm not sure what to suggest now. To be honest, I feel its either his roof leaking or his pipework leaking. I can't see how any of your pipework should be inboard of his extension wall in the first place.

You indicated earlier that your neighbour ripped a few things out and said he found a leak. What was the outcome from that again?