Buying a house with a Build Over Agreement

ceth222

Buying house with Build Over Agreement 

I’m in the process of buying a house in the South East of England and the seller has shared a Build Over Agreement they have with the water company. 

It shows that there is a sewer running underneath the extension built by the seller in 2019. The agreement approves the extension build, subject to the owner:

“To allow the Company access to the Land and the Building at all reasonable times … for the purpose of cleaning, servicing and repairing the Sewer and for those purposes the right to break up the floors of the Building but only where all other means of accessing the Sewer have been fully considered and that accessing through the floor of the Building is the only practicable means of undertaking the works …”

It also states that we would be required to:
"pay to the Company such costs as it incurs in carrying out the works which includes:
* Any damage caused to the Sewer by the building
* increased difficulty in carrying out works due to the building's existence”


Is this common? Presumably it could be very costly for us if they did require access and needed to break up the floors, never mind the hassle. Is it something we simply get indemnity insurance for? 

The posts I’ve found online in relation to this type of thing are where there is no agreement in place, for older extensions. I’ve asked my solicitor for advice too of course but wondering if others have experience with this and how they handled it during a house purchase

Slinky

We had a build over agreement with our water company when we built our extension. Although titled a build over agreement, we weren't actually building over the main sewer for the street, it just passed the corner of the building at a 45 degree angle. The building inspector came out and looked before the builders filled in the footings. The footings were built to go lower in the ground than the sewer to alleviate any possible pressure against the pipe, and gravel and shuttering was put in place between the vertical structure and the sewer to allow any small movement.

We had a similar sort of wording to your agreement as far as I recall, but in our case any work would always have been accessible to the water company without damaging our brickwork.

I think you need to find out just where this sewer lies and assess the surrounding area for the reality of whatever access may be required if there was a worse case scenario. Do the vendors have photos of the work? We took quite a lot of ours.

I doubt you'd get insurance for this, but we never bothered to try.

Dustyevsky

We did this. The bit about coming in and breaking up the floor was hilarious, especially as it was heavily reinforced and tied strongly to the foundations, with an extra-heavy reinforced bridge over the sewer itself at a depth approaching 2m.

I asked the water co about this in the days when it was easy to speak to humans. The answer was they'd methods of re-sleeving without going to such lengths. In our case, the chap  added they could/would do other workarounds too, if required. Demolition is a last resort, and probably used only where something dodgy building-related has caused the problem in the first place.

No one queried the build-over paperwork when we sold in 2009.

BarelySentientAI

ceth222 said:

It also states that we would be required to:
"pay to the Company such costs as it incurs in carrying out the works which includes:

* increased difficulty in carrying out works due to the building's existence”

That's the bit that would worry me. 

They're not going to demolish the house to fix the sewer - at least not unless it's the house that's causing the damage.

Claiming that some work is "more difficult" because they can't just excavate directly from above seems like a very easy way for them to demand money from you.

FlyMeSomewhere79

I sold my house last year and our utility room was an add on that some one built at least 20 years previously and there was manhole covers in the floor.

We had to pay for £90 build over insurance policy for our buyer.

The water board have never needed to access it thus far though. It is quite common I think because some years back the manholes were classed as your own personal access and then a few years back the law changed to take them back as water company access rather than your own private access. I think they realise that many older houses have things built over the top of things because it was allowable back then.

Albermarle

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

I sold my house last year and our utility room was an add on that some one built at least 20 years previously and there was manhole covers in the floor.

We had to pay for £90 build over insurance policy for our buyer.

The water board have never needed to access it thus far though. It is quite common I think because some years back the manholes were classed as your own personal access and then a few years back the law changed to take them back as water company access rather than your own private access. I think they realise that many older houses have things built over the top of things because it was allowable back then.

We have an internal drain cover/manhole in an extension built 25 years ago.
However it only accesses the house sewer and not a main sewer, so not the same issue as a having a build over agreement I presume

Dustyevsky

Albermarle said:

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

I sold my house last year and our utility room was an add on that some one built at least 20 years previously and there was manhole covers in the floor.

We had to pay for £90 build over insurance policy for our buyer.

The water board have never needed to access it thus far though. It is quite common I think because some years back the manholes were classed as your own personal access and then a few years back the law changed to take them back as water company access rather than your own private access. I think they realise that many older houses have things built over the top of things because it was allowable back then.

We have an internal drain cover/manhole in an extension built 25 years ago.
However it only accesses the house sewer and not a main sewer, so not the same issue as a having a build over agreement I presume

No, and regulations wouldn't let someone put one there at all now, even an airtight type.

Albermarle

Dustyevsky said:

Albermarle said:

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

I sold my house last year and our utility room was an add on that some one built at least 20 years previously and there was manhole covers in the floor.

We had to pay for £90 build over insurance policy for our buyer.

The water board have never needed to access it thus far though. It is quite common I think because some years back the manholes were classed as your own personal access and then a few years back the law changed to take them back as water company access rather than your own private access. I think they realise that many older houses have things built over the top of things because it was allowable back then.

We have an internal drain cover/manhole in an extension built 25 years ago.
However it only accesses the house sewer and not a main sewer, so not the same issue as a having a build over agreement I presume

No, and regulations wouldn't let someone put one there at all now, even an airtight type.

Yes I realise that it would not be allowed now.
It was supposed to be airtight, but there was a faint whiff from time to time. Luckily it was only covered by carpet/underlay, so I put some plastic sheet between the drain cover and the underlay and it has been fine ever since.
Looking back I am not sure why we even needed it, as there is one in line outside only about 1.5M away.
There was one there originally ( it was a garage) so maybe it was easier just to leave it in place.