Help with indemnity insurance and a cracked sewer pipe

Cordjeans

Hello! New here, but I've found so many of these forums helpful I thought I'd join in.

We're trying to buy a house where there is a first floor extension, build end of 1980s with planning permission etc. As it was pre 2011 it did not have build-over agreement but covers a public sewer. The sewer only contains next door's sewage, they are the first in the line, the goes on to serve 4 other neighbours after the house. The house has an accessible man-hole cover.

Current owners have indemnity insurance and we got to point where we were happy to take indemnity insurance ourselves and proceed, but thought we ought to have the drain CCTV'd to check the condition.

Drain CCTV report has come back and has said overall a good condition, but there is a crack that they have advised would be good to have repaired to stop it causing problems/ getting worse. And advised that we would need to contact the water company responsible for the public sewer to do this.

by contacting the water company to get this done, do we invalidate any indemnity insurance? as water company have then been made aware the sewer is under the extension.

To proceed with purchase we ideally want both indemnity insurance and the crack to be fixed! Is it possible to do both?

nuggets of wisdom and experience would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

G_M

If it's a first floor extension, what's the problem? I assume the drain is underground beneath the overhanging extension...?

Cordjeans

sorry! error when typing, I meant single story extension.

Doozergirl

If the house is 1980s and the extension built before 2011 then there is no need for a build over agreement and therefore no need for an indemnity policy to cover the lack of said agreement.

The policy isn't covering anything with the water company so there is nothing to invalidate.

Feel free to contact the water company.

TrickyDicky101

The water company may have its own ideas about the priority that should be given to replacing a cracked (but still functioning) pipe. Even if it is contacted promptly, I wouldn't expect a swift resolution.

EDIT: to add, our house is the last served by a lateral drain covering 4 properties (it only served our downstairs loo, thankfully). The pipe had broken and when we moved in in 2011 we found the downstairs toilet blocked immediately. Anyway, it took fully 3 years before our water company got the pipes replaced. This was after they were called out at least 12 times over the 3 years to unblock the pipe (so it was costing them money all over the 3 years and it still took them that long).

EachPenny

TrickyDicky101 wrote: »

The water company may have its own ideas about the priority that should be given to replacing a cracked (but still functioning) pipe. Even if it is contacted promptly, I wouldn't expect a swift resolution.

Yes, most sewerage undertakers adopt a 3-stage assessment process:-
1. "Cracked" - the pipe has a crack, but no movement can be detected (very rare to not find at least one of these in a (non-plastic) pipe run)
2. "Displaced" - the pipe has cracked, and begun moving so the bore of the pipe is no longer circular.
3. "Collapsed" - the displacement has reached the stage where significant amounts of surround/bedding are entering the sewer from outside and/or the sewer is likely to block.

There is normally a progression from 1 through to 3. But how long that takes will depend on the type of pipe, bedding/surround type, flow, presence of tree roots etc. In many cases you will be talking about a timescale of 100+ years.

Whether or not a water company will do anything depends on the stage reached, and the risk resulting from a total collapse. A sewer serving hundreds of properties which would cause flooding and pollution if it collapses will be given high priority. One which would only see one property mildly inconvenienced will go on the end of a very long list.... long after those where the damaged pipe is being blamed for causing structural damage to the property.

The latter point is the one the OP needs to be aware of. An eagle-eyed mortgage company employee might see the words 'cracked sewer' and make the leap to future 'subsidence'.... which could really muck the OP's plans up.