Advice on outside drainage

RoughNeck

I'm looking for some advice please.

We have a new-ish downstairs cloakroom. The waste pipe comes out into our driveway and runs to our drains at the rear of the house. The waste pipe looks hideous. He's also covered it in concrete. The person who did it wasn't truly qualified, but I know that he had to do this because our drain is VERY shallow and he did it to get enough fall for the cloakroom waste. It works, but it's not ideal and we do get some blockages.

We'd like to get it underground if possible, but we'd need to increase the fall first. With the rear drain being so shallow we need to get that lowered. As it happens, we are going to renew our patio and I'd like to get the drain lowered at the same time (I will attempt to upload a pic of this). However, we might not have too much scope of lowering it as the public sewer isn't that deep either. I'm sure there will be some wiggle room, but maybe not too much. I need to get someone with a laser for an exact measurement.

I'll get to the point - if we did want to go down the route of wanting to lower the public sewer, would our water company generally oppose this? I have e-mailed them for advice. I just wondered if anyone else had any experience of this. It's a 1900s end of terrace property, so the sewer is shared.

Jellynailer

How about buildng walls along the sides of the concrete area and lay wooden slats over then top it with some potted plants? 

ThisIsWeird

RoughNeck said:

I'm looking for some advice please.

We have a new-ish downstairs cloakroom. The waste pipe comes out into our driveway and runs to our drains at the rear of the house. The waste pipe looks hideous. He's also covered it in concrete. The person who did it wasn't truly qualified, but I know that he had to do this because our drain is VERY shallow and he did it to get enough fall for the cloakroom waste. It works, but it's not ideal and we do get some blockages.

We'd like to get it underground if possible, but we'd need to increase the fall first. With the rear drain being so shallow we need to get that lowered. As it happens, we are going to renew our patio and I'd like to get the drain lowered at the same time (I will attempt to upload a pic of this). However, we might not have too much scope of lowering it as the public sewer isn't that deep either. I'm sure there will be some wiggle room, but maybe not too much. I need to get someone with a laser for an exact measurement.

I'll get to the point - if we did want to go down the route of wanting to lower the public sewer, would our water company generally oppose this? I have e-mailed them for advice. I just wondered if anyone else had any experience of this. It's a 1900s end of terrace property, so the sewer is shared.

Hi RoughN.
It would help to have a wider pic, ideally with a sketch/plan of the known layout, showing the run of these sewers, and the locations of all inspection covers.
I would be astonished if the public serwer is as shallow as you suggest - that doesn't make sense.
Such public, shared, sewers are usually deeper than that. You say yours is the end terrace, so presumably the first & shallowest, but how does it show a T-junction?
But, if that pic does show the public sewer depth, then I'm clearly wrong, and - wow - that's shallow.
Could you confirm, please, and add further digs and pics?

stuart45

 I don't really understand what you mean by the pipe being hideous and needs to be underground.

Kiran

I assume your new pipe is the one coming in at 90 degrees. If so, that benching is not great, also is the incoming pipe rising slightly? Have you got a depth on the invert level of the main run? Also, what is the distance between the manholes?

Section62

ThisIsWeird said:

But, if that pic does show the public sewer depth, then I'm clearly wrong, and - wow - that's shallow.
Could you confirm, please, and add further digs and pics?

I think the open chamber is the OP's own private one - in the foreground of the other picture.  The public one is up by the lawn.

There are a couple of 6"-8" high steps between the two chambers, so I'd expect the public one to be at least that much deeper.

Having a chamber that shallow so close to shared (public) sewer would make me nervous - it wouldn't take much of a downstream blockage on the public sewer before the neighbour's brown stuff starts emerging onto the patio area.

RoughNeck

Thank you for the comments so far. I will get some more photos as I've not really given an absolute clear picture of the issue. The shallow drain is our drain and it's that drain where the cloakroom waste pipe eventually goes through, but I haven't pictured this, so I will add it later on which will hopefully add some clarity. Regardless, it is very shallow. The public sewer was blocked once, and we did indeed have the brown stuff appear on the patio. It hasn't happened since, but the cloakroom waste does drain very slowly and it does block fairly easily. I've no doubt it's due to the lack of fall to the shallow drain and then into the public sewer.

Kiran

RoughNeck said:

..... but the cloakroom waste does drain very slowly and it does block fairly easily. I've no doubt it's due to the lack of fall to the shallow drain and then into the public sewer.

Is this cloakroom connected to a soil stack? You need air to follow water to allow for proper drainage flows. This applies even if you have an acceptable gradient. 

Eldi_Dos

Some things you could do to improve the drainage.

Rod and run a mandrel between the two chambers to clear out any debris in pipe.

Replace frame and cover on chamber nearest house.
The frame appears older then the cover and someone appears to have used a spade to remove old cover damaging frame in the process.
A new frame and cover will be more tight fitting and stop debris getting in and silting up chamber and pipe.Also better odour seal.

Fit a High Level Cistern in cloakroom, the extra height will improve the pressure and hopefully flow rate through pipe.

Edit:
You can make your own mandrel by tying knots (50mm) in middle of blue rope and pull back and forth scouring the pipe of any crud that has built up.

stuart45

I think the OP is saying that the cloak room drain runs from the front of the house and enters from the back of the manhole and not through the slipper as we first thought. The pipe is above ground further back, so when the patio is renewed wants to dig out the run and lay the lot at a lower level.

RoughNeck

Ok. So I've taken some more photos and also a carpenter friend of mine came over to help and suggest/measure things.

Hideous pipe covered in concrete - this is the waste pipe that comes from the cloakroom. You can see it just about goes under ground where our blue gate is. This then eventually joins the main waste pipe (from upstairs bathroom) on the corner, and runs into our shallow drain.

Shallow drain: Putting my editing skills to the test (!) I've put the direction of flow, noted the kitchen sink waste and the direction to the public sewer. The depth of the shallow drain is about 230mm, touching the bottom of the lowest pipe.

Public sewer: I was surprised, but the depth of this is about 800mm nearly touching the bottom of the main waste pipe, so that does give us some wiggle room.

My friend thinks that we should be able to lower our shallow drain by someway, all the way to the public sewer, without having to make any changes to the public sewer. I just need to find out what the regulations are with the public sewer and whether there needs to be a certain level of fall into it. I hope this helps!