Advice about foul drainage

phillips101

It's quite a complicated situation so please bear with me.

I live in a ground floor flat, and own the leasehold. I only recently bought it. The council own the freehold, the person above me is a council tenant. 

A plumber has informed me that a pipe going into my back garden from my bathroom is foul drainage, and is draining into the storm drain. I get this, it is a misconnection and is bad, fair enough.

However, the pipe from the bathroom leaves the building _before_ it joins the storm drain. The lease says (and the council confirm) that they are responsible for all drainage issues outside of the property (ie in my back garden too). This would indicate to me that the council have to fix the issue. 

Another point in that favour is that some foul drainage from the upstairs flat joins the drain pipe, and is also emptied into the storm drain. This one is _definitely_ a council problem (they maintain the drain pipes too).

A slight complication is that the misconnection from my property seems to have been a later addition made by the previous occupant. He presumably got everything signed off (somehow). (The misconnected pipe originates in a new bathroom he added. Weirdly, only the shower+sink are misconnected and not the toilet)

A further issue is that when the council (or me) fix the issue, my garden patio will have to be ripped up. If the council do it - who pays to repave my garden?

Anyway. I'd be interested in your views on what I should do about the situation, who you think needs to pay for it / arrange it, or whether it is a real problem at all (it seems to be fairly common according to the plumber).

Thanks for any insight you have!

edwardee

Omg i am having the same problem with the house we just moved into
the ensuit toilet foul drain were misconnected to somewhere, we are over the two year builder warranty and the nhbc warrenty only cover the underground drainage.

Bendy_House

Hi Philips.

I can 'guess' on who is liable for yours, and that's you, since it was caused by a previous occupant. Does 'your' mistake take the same path as the upstairs flat's? If so, surely a shared cost? That's by-the-by, as I don't know.

An obvious  Q - can't the shower and basin waste be simply connected to the correctly-plumbed soil (loo) waste?

Doozergirl

EDIT: just realised this is the resurrection of an old thread by a new poster.  

Your situation isn't quite the same, edwardee, because this definitely all falls to you now, such is a developer's freedom to get anything wrong if it isn't spotted quickly enough. 

Is there no way of moving things internally to connect to an existing point? Presumably if this is relatively new build your soil pipes mainly rise internally?  

Is it a mistake in the underground drainage and an apparent soil pipe actually goes to the wrong place?   Where is your foul being misdirected to, a soakaway?  

(Irrelevant now to the OP who has presumably sorted their problem.  

The council aren't responsible for the outside drainage if an occupier of your flat tinkered with it and connected foul to the storm drain.  That puts your flat in breach, not the council.  

Neither would they be responsible for paying for you to connect onto the foul drain outside the house. 

I'm not sure why anyone needs to dig anything up if there is already a foul pipe in the bathroom.  Presumably the situation upstairs is similar and connection can be made to the same pipe as the toilet.  

If they did need to dig for a new connection for upstairs then they'd pay to reinstate. I think a rejigging of the internal layout is far more likely.)

Bigphil1474

I read it that both flats connect to the same pipe which drains to the storm drain? If so, the council would need to fix the upper flat, and it also suggests your previous occupier may well have just connected up to the council flat drain. Best bet is to contact the council and see what they think IMO.

Bendy_House

edwardee said:

Omg i am having the same problem with the house we just moved into
the ensuit toilet foul drain were misconnected to somewhere, we are over the two year builder warranty and the nhbc warrenty only cover the underground drainage.

A tad more info, please, Edwardee.

Like, anything. Just info. Give us some. :-)

Doozergirl

Bigphil1474 said:

I read it that both flats connect to the same pipe which drains to the storm drain? If so, the council would need to fix the upper flat, and it also suggests your previous occupier may well have just connected up to the council flat drain. Best bet is to contact the council and see what they think IMO.

Best bet is to read all subsequent posts before replying.  

Even better but not always obvious,  check the dates.