Terraced house downpipe query

Ipmacs

This I think is a tricky one, I can't find an answer anywhere online so hoping this thread will garner me some facts. 
We lived in a row of terraced cottages, we own ours and our neighbour (end terrace) rents theirs. We don't get along but that's another story.

Our down drain pipe (the one that drains from the shower, bath etc and also our toilet pipe) runs down our wall and into the drain which is on our property. Our neighbours bathroom is mirrored to ours (ie it's on the other side of our bathroom wall) and their drain pipe (shower, bath and toilet) also runs alongside ours and goes into the same drain. Worst description ever but I really hope that makes sense!

All the other terrace cottages have their own down pipes from the bath/shower and toilet into their own drain bits on their own properties, ours seems to be the only one that shares.

The problem lies is my husband is constantly unblocking the drain of hairs and child's hair bobbles. Now I have very long hair but we have one of those plug blocker things and I always pick out any malted hair after every hair wash. Next door have 3 kids and have baths pretty much every night (which is fair enough, kids get dirty, I get it) but my husband has unblocked lots of hair bobbles from the drain which are definitely not mine (rainbow hair bobbles are not my thing ) . So once he unblocks the drain, it's fine for a few weeks but then eventually our patio floods when they drain their bath and the cycle repeats, husband has to unblock again or our patio floods every night with their used bath water. 

Is there any legal way we can insist to the estate agents/landlord to make their own drain connection and  divert the shower/bath downpipe into the drainage? I'm so awful at describing this... Basically we want them to create their own drain connection so their bath/shower downpipe to the drain is on their property. It's getting ridiculous my husband having to unblock it every few weeks and frankly, it's not nice to have someone's used bath water flood our back patio every other night. 😔. When the previous tenant lived there we never had this issue in the 4 years they were there (we moved in when the old tenant was currently living there). 

If there's no way we can legally force them to do it then we know where we stand. We have contacted the estate agents before to ask them but they never got back to us about it.

Obviously, if this IS something we'd be able to insist on, we would wait until the covid-19 situation has gotten a little easier. 

clive0510

how do they get there hair bobbles through the plug hole? unless they throwing them down the loo.

Ipmacs

That was my husbands query as well. I'm not sure how the bath plug connects to the drain, as in, is it a separate pipe? (I'm generally pretty good at DIY but plumbing is my knowledge black hole). I thought it was a separate pipe as it isn't sewage, I think the bath pipes come out above the drain so it sploshes in whereas the toilet one is a direct pipe to the lower drain? I might have that totally wrong though... 

Mistral001

If you bought the house within the last six years and got a survey done before buying it you might have a claim for damages against the surveyor if the problem was not flagged in the survey report.  Apart from that you probably have no chance of getting aything done without offering to pay for the work needed to give the your neighbour a separate drain out of your own pocket.

FreeBear

My drain went through a period of constantly getting blocked and needing a rodding out every two or three weeks. The blockage always occurred in the same spot. Got a camera down there and found a lump of "snot" solidly stuck in one of the pipe joints (old clay pipes). This was catching wads of toilet paper and rapidly building up to a full blockage. A long chisel soon got rid of the offending lump. Not had a blockage since, but that may also be in part due to getting rid of the offending party that was flushing half a roll of toilet paper at a time.

Might be worth you while getting a camera inspection to see if there is anything down there for waste to cling to. As it is a shared sewer, it is quite likely that it is the responsibility of your local water company. Give them a call, explain the problem, and they may be able to do something.

Mutton_Geoff

Drains block more easily if the flow rate is low. Either insufficient fall or a partial blockage as Freebear found.

If you own a pressure washer, they do drain clearing attachments (a hose with brass jets on the end) which is ideal for cleaning out drains.

It's not really your neighbours fault though I would rinse off the hair bobbles and give them back asking them to be a little more careful what goes down their drains. At least you're not having to clean out neighbours turds and sanitary products as I had to in a previous house.

Ipmacs

Thank you all so much for the replies..

My  explanation in my original post is not that great. It's not the drain itself that's blocking its the drain cover and just beneath the drain cover.

 So the shower/bath pipe stops just above the drain cover so water just sploshes into the drain.. Its the cover (and just below the cover) that's always blocking. It's really a minor thing but it's getting tiresome us having to unblock next doors hair and hair bobbles from the drain because if we don't, we have our patio flood with bath water. If the drain cover isn't clear, it can't cope with the sudden flow of water from their bath and splooooosh - All over our patio and it runs right up to our back door. When the drain cover is clear it handles the water just fine. Because this has happened so much its now getting really annoying. 

We did actually pay for next doors gutters to be replaced, when we moved in we identified they were asbestos and ours were connected to theirs - so for us to replace them we'd have to have theirs done too. To save there being a huge issue over it, we got permission from next doors landlord via the estate agent and my husband just paid for them to have theirs done when we had ours replaced. So whilst we don't get along with next door (I'm frightened of the mum that lives there), we're not unreasonable people and for our health reassurance, we just wanted normal pvc gutters so we paid for the front and back gutters on ours and theirs to be replaced. But this issue I feel is different, it's not something we can insist on as it's more of an annoyance than a health issue (used Bath water is gross but is it as deadly as Asbestos? Probably not!!). 

The drain itself (under the patio) is generally fine, we have 2 drain covers on our patio that we regularly pull up to make sure everything's clear (because when we get storm rain, which thankfully in the UK isn't too often) the drain floods right up to the patio level. We haven't had a sewage problem but that's because we try to make sure the drain is clear. 

Mutton_Geoff

Ipmacs said:

The problem lies is my husband is constantly unblocking the drain of hairs and child's hair bobbles

Sorry, your statement of "unblocking the drains" made me think you were removing covers and digging deep. Do you mean you're having to just clean the top of the gulley cover of hair/rubbish every so often?

Eg one of these ..

Maybe just keep a stiff brush and dustpan for the purpose and chuck the rubbish in the bin. It's designed to trap debris to prevent blocking of the drain, so it's just doing it's job.Probably unfortunate that it's on your property but I'm not sure there is much you can do about it.

rach_k

Can you rig up some kind of filter over the end of each drain pipe?  Then you'll be able to see for sure where the hair is coming from.  I'm sure you're right but they would probably query whether you're really catching all your own hair and by covering your own in the same way, you're being fair and showing that you're not doing anything dodgy.  I'm visualising some kind of chicken-wire 'bag' (something with similar sized holes to the drain cover) fastened around the bottom of each pipe, that the water can flow through with no issue but that will still catch hair bands and clumps of hair.  Check them every week and give them back anything that isn't small enough to go through it.  If they're reasonable, they'll understand that they need to sort the problem in the bathroom.  If they're not, having a slimy bundle of hair on their doorstep every week might still encourage them to change!

greatcrested

If a shared drain, the water company may well have responsibility. Next time there's a blockage, call them.

If it's not the water company's responsibility, then in order to make the neighbour liable you'd need to be able to prove it was their fault.

If that were the case, liability would lie either with the tenants who were causing the blockage by putting inappropriate objects down, or with the owner/landlord if the cause was structural.