Costs to replace shared water supply

stattman

Dear Forum,

I live in a 1950s semi-detached in Leicestershire and recently found out that my mains water is supplied by a pipe coming from next door. Having checked the water company pages it seems there’s an option to have a dedicated supply but would need to pay a certified company to lay pipe work to the boundary. Given it’s about 10m from the boundary to the expected entry point I would like to get a rough idea what would be a reasonable cost to do the work. Thanks

rob7475

We've had this done just a couple of weeks ago. Yorkshire water charged me around £300 just for the application and survey. They then charged a further £1300 to connect the new pipe I had run in to their mains at the front of the house (they also charge an extra £300 for a meter but we already had one so avoided this).

We then needed a contractor to run in a new 25mm pipe from our boundary to the rear of the house. I struggled to find contractors to come and quote for this but managed to get 2 quotes. One was £1850 and the other was £950. We went with the cheaper guy. Our pipe run was about 13 metre and they moled it down our shared drive and entered the house where the old lead pipe was. They connected up inside the house and provided a new stop tap before capping off the old lead supply.

All in, it cost us just over £2.5k. We needed it done though as we are adding another bathroom and the water flow through the old 2" main was poor and wouldn't have coped with another shower running.

ThisIsWeird

rob7475 said:

We've had this done just a couple of weeks ago. Yorkshire water charged me around £300 just for the application and survey. They then charged a further £1300 to connect the new pipe I had run in to their mains at the front of the house (they also charge an extra £300 for a meter but we already had one so avoided this).

We then needed a contractor to run in a new 25mm pipe from our boundary to the rear of the house. I struggled to find contractors to come and quote for this but managed to get 2 quotes. One was £1850 and the other was £950. We went with the cheaper guy. Our pipe run was about 13 metre and they moled it down our shared drive and entered the house where the old lead pipe was. They connected up inside the house and provided a new stop tap before capping off the old lead supply.

All in, it cost us just over £2.5k. We needed it done though as we are adding another bathroom and the water flow through the old 2" main was poor and wouldn't have coped with another shower running.

Yikes!
It used to be the case, I'm pretty sure (it was for me, 20 years ago), that if you had lead pipe, then your WB would connect it FOC if you laid a new MDPE as far as the street stopcock.

rob7475

That is still the case. Our problem was our lead pipe ran to a private water main that was shared by the houses on our street. The private water main runs through the gardens and is a 2" cast iron pipe. Yorkshire water won't touch the private main so our only option was to have a new connection to the Yorkshire water owned 4" main that runs along the front of the house.

ThisIsWeird

stattman said:

I live in a 1950s semi-detached in Leicestershire and recently found out that my mains water is supplied by a pipe coming from next door. Having checked the water company pages it seems there’s an option to have a dedicated supply but would need to pay a certified company to lay pipe work to the boundary. Given it’s about 10m from the boundary to the expected entry point I would like to get a rough idea what would be a reasonable cost to do the work. Thanks

Is the bitinbold correct? I was able to dig the trench myself, line it with pea-shingle, drop in the MDPE, and the WB fellow popped out and nodded 'ok'.

So 'all' you'd theoretically need would be a fellow with a mini-digger, or possibly a mole.

Niv

ThisIsWeird said:

rob7475 said:

We've had this done just a couple of weeks ago. Yorkshire water charged me around £300 just for the application and survey. They then charged a further £1300 to connect the new pipe I had run in to their mains at the front of the house (they also charge an extra £300 for a meter but we already had one so avoided this).

We then needed a contractor to run in a new 25mm pipe from our boundary to the rear of the house. I struggled to find contractors to come and quote for this but managed to get 2 quotes. One was £1850 and the other was £950. We went with the cheaper guy. Our pipe run was about 13 metre and they moled it down our shared drive and entered the house where the old lead pipe was. They connected up inside the house and provided a new stop tap before capping off the old lead supply.

All in, it cost us just over £2.5k. We needed it done though as we are adding another bathroom and the water flow through the old 2" main was poor and wouldn't have coped with another shower running.

Yikes!
It used to be the case, I'm pretty sure (it was for me, 20 years ago), that if you had lead pipe, then your WB would connect it FOC if you laid a new MDPE as far as the street stopcock.

I can confirm Wessex water stopped doing this as I had to pay to have mine done a few years ago. 

In my case it was just replacing the lead pipe with new, I had to use an approved contractor to do it and it cost ~£1k. In my case WW did not require any fees, although @rob7475 sounds like a very similar situation to the OPs.

stattman

Thanks Rob and all for your replies. Really helpful and will see how I get on with Severn Trent