A ‘blue moon’ opportunity whilst we have the, one and only, chance to ever get a digger into this part of the site, so we invest in, well, a blue water tank. This will connect the rainwater discharge from the rear roof slope and the rear extension roof. It is a 1500 litre tank, about the size of 8 standard water butts – not huge, but as big as we can get into the space without major civil works and it will serve only to water the garden. The tank is a shallow dig unit from RainWater Harvesting. The photo shows the tank part-connected – with just the overflow connected to the underground surface water drain.
Tag Archives: Drains
wessex water approval…
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, we have received approval from Wessex Water this week. This is a great relief, but I am a little confused. The manholes that we proposed (because we thought Wessex Water required them) will be too close to the foundations. We have been told to make direct connections into the sewer. This is fine for us – less work, less disruption, less visual impact, less cost. But, given the problems we had with the CCTV survey due to poor access, I am surprised that Wessex Water don’t at least want one manhole to improve their access.
So now we have revised Planning Approval, Building Regulations Plans Approval, Wessex Water Approval, we just need to sort the price out and we may be back on track.
sewer cctv survey
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. Continue reading
sewer update
Hopefully updates will get more interesting! That said, this blog is about recording the problems as we face them – sewers included. I received an email from Wessex Water this week saying that they accept our proposals in principle. Great news! But… Continue reading
back to the drawing board
Having budget costed the sewer diversion, including the £5K bond that Wessex Water require, we are likely to be out of pocket to a tune of £12-15K for the diversion. Frankly, I would much rather spend that (if we had it) on something useful. After a re-think, we make the decision to remove the rear extension. Continue reading
sewers: bad news continues
Found them! Unfortunately they are much, much closer than we had hoped. I have been getting rather frustrated at Wessex Water saying that they have an ‘exclusion zone’ of 2 metres, but now we have found the pipes (show in green in the drawing), it is clear that the storm water drain is located in the vicinity of the foundation. So,irrespective of Wessex Water’s view and approvals, we would not be able to build on top like this in any case. Continue reading
our first major problem…
Sewers!!! The foul and storm water drains run at the back of the house, which we knew. The original record drawing showed the sewers further out in the garden.Wessex Water have written to us to say they are within 3 metres. Not only that their records show that they are deep (approx 2 metres). Their rules prohibit construction within 2 metres horizontally of their infrastructure if below 1.5 metres. Continue reading