Shared Water Supply

Islander_bloke

Good evening everyone,

Looking for some pointers before this goes anywhere. We just bought (3 months ago) a detached bungalow. There was an older property in the sale which we did not buy and got the land separated. Before we went through the purchase we asked the question and got it back in writing from the estate agency that the house we were buying had "All services to the new house are separate from the old house so there would be no issues with that" All good!

That old house has now been sold to be redeveloped and today he turned off the water toby outside his property (still on his land) and that turned off mine! Where do i stand with this as the information i got from the estate agent from a direct question was wrong? The water toby is a definitely a new one so must have been fitted when my house was built 10 years ago as the old property hasnt had anyone in it for 40 years.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Car1980

You don't have a contract with the vendor's estate agent. This was a question to ask the vendor and something that should have been in the information they gave you with the sale?

Islander_bloke

The estate agent was acting on behalf of the seller and was contact with them throughout the sale. If i ask a direct question in writing and receive an official written reply as a buyer i have no reason to question the information i am getting back as so the matter was closed until just now.

davidmcn

Or if it was really important to you, something for you or your surveyor to physically check.

But does it matter that much? Presumably you've turned the water back on?

Islander_bloke wrote: »

If i ask a direct question in writing and receive an official written reply

Was it an "official" written reply? Replies to enquiries are generally the stuff which the solicitors deal with, not ancillary questions to the estate agents.

Islander_bloke

It's important to me as a 3rd party now has control of when my water supply is shut off. As you can appreciate since is a redevelopment of an old property that water could be on and off multiple times. Like I said this matter wasn't important to me as i was told this was not the case with the supply and so the concern was nipped in the bud before the purchase.

Carrot007

Unless you asked the question to the vedor though your solicitor there is no comeback.

It is simple to fix yourself.
1. Dig big hole after supply.
2. Turn off current supply.
3. Install 2 stopcocks where the supplies branch off.
4. refill holes and make sure people know not to use the current one.

Alternativly.

Pay your water company to do the above removing the original stoptap, but this is gonna be costly, unless t here is some other excuse for doing it like lead piping.

Aditional:
Most stoptaps are external and neer the boundry or on the pavement out of the boundry so potentially easy for anyone to turn off your water anyway. just make sure people likely to do it know of the consequenses. Put a nice waterproofed instruction leaflet down their for instance.

davidmcn

Islander_bloke wrote: »

As you can appreciate since is a redevelopment of an old property that water could be on and off multiple times.

Don't they have a stopc0ck within the property? I doubt it's going to be a big issue, especially now everyone is aware that the toby shuts off your water too.

silvercar

Check that you are not billed on a metered basis, if you haven't got your own st0pc0ck, you need to get one fitted for emergency use.

G_M

You should not have been asking the estate agent this question.

It was a matter do be dealt with as part of the conveyancing. So you should have asked either the vendor's solicitor, or, if the vendor did the conveyancing himself, then you should have asked him.

Did you not get from the seller a completed form CON 29? What answers did they give to question 5?

(see sample here)

Davesnave

Part of CON29 is normally a plan showing where the water supplies are in the immediate area.

Or is this a private supply?

Either way, you should always assume that estate agents know little or nothing, because that's quite often the case, and info they obtain from the vendor may be wrong too.

bap98189

Are you sure this is the only stopcock?

If it's anything like my parents house, there will be multiple taps which turn off the water supply. They have one in the pipe which comes up the drive which will turn off the supply to all 3 houses, but if you follow the pipes, they also have 3 separate taps, just after the point where the main pipe branches, each of which turns off only one house.