Thames Water OSV exchange leak

thetcutkid

Hi,

I'm really not too sure where to post this so apologises if this is not the right board and mods please move it as required...and further apologises, this is a bit of a long read.

A church local to me has spent a six figure sum on a complete refurb of their church hall. I recently visited the hall to help with some general cleaning and put up some coat hooks etc. small things that needed doing so that when they are allowed to resume gatherings the hall is ready.

Just as we were about to leave, a colleague, stacking a few chairs away, stepped into a large pool of water approx. 1m square and maybe 5-10mm deep. We found a mop and a load of old towels while someone went to turn the stop !!!!!! off inside the building but it quickly became apparent that as fast as we could get the worst up, the water was coming in under the skirting board at an alarming rate.

We went outside the building and around to the back corner of the hall where we found an old copper pipe, maybe 10mm in diameter, sticking out above ground with water pouring out the end and pooling around the back corner of the hall. The area between the pipe and outer corner of the hall was covered in old rubbish (rotten wood, an old dustbin lid etc) that looked like it had been there a very long time, so I cleared this and then tried to make a rudimentary channel in the loose soil with the side of my foot to try and direct the water away from the hall while someone else went to find a hose pipe with a view to connecting one end to the pipe and the other into a nearby drain.

When he returned, the diameter of the hose was too small to get over the pipe, however, on one end was a Hozelock connector so I took this off and rammed it as hard as I could onto the copper pipe and although it didn't stop the water completely, it dramatically slowed the flow.

With the immediate panic over, someone who lives next door to the church said that at 8am that morning, Thames Water had been in the street replacing water meters (we subsequently found out they were doing 'OSV exchanges', OSV being an ‘Outside Stop Valve’ which sounds more like a stop !!!!!! than water meter to me) so we went outside to the street side of the boundary and sure enough, there was a freshly dug hole with plastic fencing around it with the details of the contractor and the works reference number etc. I took all this info down and phoned Thames Water there and then.

I have to say that they were very helpful on the phone, concerned and willing to get someone out as soon as they could and during the conversation the advisor said "...it was too much of a coincidence for this leak to have happened a few hours after they had been working outside the property...".

I then had to leave but the neighbour was given as the contact point and later that afternoon someone from Thames Water came out and turned the supply off to that pipe and said that they have to wait 2 weeks before permanently capping it off in case turning the supply off has affected  anyone else.

Given that the hall is not currently being used, in some small way we were lucky because if my colleague hadn’t stepped in the water, we would have locked up and left with no planned return date so it might’ve been weeks before the leak was discovered.

Given the cost of the refurb, the church secretary has written to Thames Water to express concern as to what damage the water may have done, with perhaps some problems not becoming clear until a few months on. I think their main concern is the floor, which was also replaced at considerable cost although, fortunately, it’s now vinyl - whether this will lift in that corner I don’t know. Neither do I know whether the sub floor is concrete or timber.

On receipt of the letter, Thames Water phoned the church secretary and asked whether the church was going to make a formal claim but the secretary said that problems may not manifest themselves for some time so it was obviously difficult to say.

Thames Water said they would forward a claim form anyway, just in case.

However, later that same day, Thames Water emailed the secretary and said that following their conversation that morning, she had spoken to one of their ‘network service technicians’ who advised her that the cause of the leak was “…an uncapped, private, redundant, supply pipe…”, “…this was not something we (Thames Water) had caused and was in the private boundaries of the church…”.. 

They went on to say “…the reason this leaked was because when we (Thames Water) had undertaken an OSV exchange and turned the water back on where the private had been cut but not capped off a leak occurred…”.

That’s an exact quote from the email, not my bad grammar !!

They concluded by saying that they have confirmed they are not liable for causing the leak and suggest the church speak to the builders who undertook the work to understand “…why they hadn’t capped off the cut private redundant pipework directly after their work…” and “…as they have now established this was a leak from private pipework…” they will not be able to send a claim form. 

The first thing that springs to mind is that when I went round to the back of the hall, the pipe spewing the water everywhere looked very old, very tarnished, slightly green in colour – nowhere were there any visible signs of it being freshly cut away from something, it looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. It was actually slightly obscured by a large weed growing around it with no signs of disturbance, so I don’t think it entirely fair to suggest that the builders created this problem.

I don’t know the full extent of everything the builders did but the church secretary has confirmed that they did remove a water pipe that was surface mounted on the internal wall of the hall but this was done months previous to the leak occurring when the builders were still on site.

The builders have been contacted for their opinion and the guy who oversees church premise in the area will also be going to have a look on site.

The bottom line is that there was no leak until Thames Water did their ‘OSV exchange’ outside the property. We  had been in the hall about a week previous, stacking tables in the same corner where the leak was discovered a week later and it was completely dry. The church also paid for commercial cleaners to come in and deep clean all the chairs stacked along that wall and they hadn’t reported seeing any water either.

In my opinion, no one had interfered with that pipe (at least the part that was above ground) for years.

This leads me onto a couple of questions.

Is fair to say that Thames Water cannot be expected to know what is on the end (or not !) of every pipe connected to their network when they are carrying out maintenance ?

If the old OSV that they replaced wasn’t connected to the pipe in question or was ‘shut off’, if they then installed a brand new OSV, connected it to the nearest pipe and switched it on/opened it, do they have some responsibility for (a) not putting the OSV back in the same 'off' state as the old one and (b) for first finding out what the pipe they are hooking up to the OSV is actually connected to at the other end ?

I appreciate some may say, well what’s the problem here, no damage done, you caught the leak in time and perhaps averted any serious damage but I'm a little surprised that Thames Water have completely waived all responsibility for causing the leak.

I also wonder whether the church will be billed for the water that was pouring out of the pipe for four and a half hours.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thanks for your time.

 

 

 

 

 

davidmcn

Are you asking here simply out of academic interest, or because the church actually wants our advice?

neilmcl

As they say, it's a private supply pipe on the church's side of the boundary and as such is entirely their responsibility. It may not have been connected at the time the builders cut the pipe but that doesn't mean that it was never connected in the past or couldn't be reconnected to the mains supply, as is the case now, in the future. The builder's should've dealt with it correctly and not assumer that it was a "dead" supply.

Aylesbury_Duck

I'm not surprised TW have not taken responsibility for it.  A domestic equivalent would be if you had an assumed redundant and uncapped  pipe in your house or garden arising from an extension/house adaptations, and a change to the water company's supply caused that pipe to carry and subsequently leak water.  In that case, I can't see how the water supplier would be responsible, either.  They can't be expected to survey all possible live and dead connections on the off-chance the building owner has bodged some plumbing work.

thetcutkid

The church have not approached me to get any kind of answer on this, I'm a personal friend of the church secretary and she's kept me updated on what Thames Water have said etc and I was just interested to know if there was any kind of legal stand point.

I guarantee you that the no one had touched the end of the pipe that I saw in decades.

Aylesbury_Duck

thetcutkid said:

The church have not approached me to get any kind of answer on this, I'm a personal friend of the church secretary and she's kept me updated on what Thames Water have said etc and I was just interested to know if there was any kind of legal stand point.

I guarantee you that the no one had touched the end of the pipe that I saw in decades.

The fault lies with the builder/plumber that bodged the work decades ago, then.

thetcutkid

Fair enough, just trying to understand Thames Water's responsibility, if any, in all this.

Thanks for your time.