Well this was fun. Trying to find access into the sewer was always going to be difficult. We have no manholes within our boundary. Our immediate next door neighbours do and the plan was to launch the CCTV survey from their manhole.

When the CCTV surveyor arrived, we quickly discovered that this would not be possible, due to the direction of the pipe (we needed to go upstream). So the search was on for an alternative launch. Fortunately for us, most of our neighbours were in and were okay with letting us search for manholes. We found one at the very end of the road (see drawing). Could it be any further away! It was almost 45 metres away from our boundary, so the surveyors needed to run the camera in the sewer for some 60 metres to get to the other side of our boundary.

Amazingly, they got to approximately 55 metres in – not quite to our far boundary, but just beyond the construction area. Hopefully this will be sufficient for Wessex Water. The good news is that the sewer is in good condition, so we should not need to replace them as part of our building works. Phew!

The CCTV DVD will be sent to Wessex Water along with our application to build near their sewer.