Moving Manhole outside the house

AdrianC

Shekar wrote: »

How do i find out whether it's a sewerage or just a surface water drain for my property

Lift it. Have a look. If it's sewer, you'll know soon enough.

vqmismatch

My parents had a similar issue and had a sealed cover fitted into the dining room floor. You can't tell its there as it has a very fine edge and takes the scree and floor tiles to match the surrounding finish. Twelve years with no smells, leaks, or bother.

If you wanted to carpet it might be more difficult.

booksurr

why do you think it has to be moved? As others have said it it permitted to have a "double seal" manhole cover inside a property

yes it would require building control sign off if you move it, that is what they are there for!

AlexMac

Not sure what you mean by "putting up a new kitchen" ; whether you are simply installing a few units as a DIY job or having a builder put up a new extension?

Either way, I'd ask your builder; we have just converted a garage to a habitable room and there was a sewage inspection hatch (aka manhole) in the middle of the room, into which several soil-pipes (aka !!!! -pipes) decanted. The builder simply built it up a bit, as the garage subfloor was lower than the rest of the house, added a new removable airtight lid (a standard feature of indoor hatches) and a removable cover in the timber suspended floor above.

He offered to install a removable hatch cover in the floor finish; this can be neatly done in tile, engineered wood floorboards, laminate or even carpet, but we didn't bother, on the grounds that we had had no cause to lift the hatch in the previous 5 years, (and doubted whether it had been lifted in the previous 30).

We were fitting engineered board flooring so we simply took photos and measurements, modified the floorboards' tongue and groove edges of the four boards immediately over the hatch, and will cut across and lift them out in the unlikely event we ever need access in future.

I suspect moving the hatch would cost you a grand or two, but if, as I suspect, yours hasn't been opened since the 1980's conversion, why worry that it might need to be in future?

Our airtight cover does what it says- no smells whatsoever.

And as someone above says, if you have already exposed the hatch, it will be simple to determine if it's foul waste or rainwater; although its location makes me suspect the former!

Either way, I'm suggesting it's no big deal; get a builder's quote on an airtight rim and cover as an alternative to a bigger move.

The drainage search idea above sounds useful, but in practice, may not help. Our one (which I have just looked at as our solicitor always emails us the conveyancing pack and I stick it on the cloud) merely maps street sewers and omits the ones within our curtilege, even though one probably runs under our property from the 19th Century mansions behind our rear, to the main sewer in our street (the former mews).

On the other hand, when I had to ring our water board a few years ago with a question about whether a blockage was on our land or in the public sewer outside, I was amazed to be connected to a kid on an Indian Call centre with detailed maps on screen showing every twist and turn of our underground 19th Century infrastructure! So it might be worth a call to the water board?

Ithaca

booksurr wrote: »

why do you think it has to be moved? As others have said it it permitted to have a "double seal" manhole cover inside a property

yes it would require building control sign off if you move it, that is what they are there for!

It's permitted as long as it's there already.

These days it's almost impossible to get permission for a new application to build over a sewer if it will need an internal manhole cover (even a double-sealed one). All the main water companies now require access to be outside the property.