Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 August 2006 20:22:52
Well, we found out what the funny white stuff was. It came out again one Thursday in July. Its disintegrated toilet paper from the drain, and until a few days ago it was all over
One of the reasons I've been a bit out of circulation recently.
I live in the bottom half of a house. There is a small back garden with a concrete platform with two drain covers in it. Both these drains had overflowed - the lid lifting off - spilling waste over the concrete and into some plants. There was an underlying backdrop of mashed-up toilet paper, with some extant turds, but the worst was lots of horrid bits of something like small squares of cloth. The toilet paper breaks up when wet but this stuff doesn't. And its not mine either. And little plastic straps that might come from sanitary towels. The people upstairs are putting something they shouldn't down the drain. And I know they like to eat sweetcorn.
I pottered around trying to work out how to clear it and failed.
Hot day, horrid, smelly.
On the Monday morning I called the local water and sewage people (maybe its their responsibility, maybe it isn't, but if it isn't they can tell me whose it is) and they said someone would come round in 4-6 hours. The first phone call was just after 11. I took special care to tell them exactly where the house it - you can't see our front door from the street, anyone driving has to get out of their car and walk to it. I asked them to be sure to leave a note for the people who would come round to tell them that.
I called back at 12 and they confirmed it would be within 4 hours, and that they had the proper address, and my mobile number. No-one came. I called back at 5.15 in the evening and they apologised and the bloke left me on the phone for 14 minutes while he rang someone else top find out what happened. They said that the address doesn't exist. I told him how to get there. He said the house was on their map system and he would fax it to the contractors who do the field calls. Someone would come in less than two hours. I phoned back at 19:52. Apologies again. Someone would come round very soon. At 20:30, half-past eight in the evening, they phoned me and told me they could not come round because the address did not exist. I told them, for the third time, how to get there. They said they would be round in the morning.
So, I missed a day's work at no notice whatever all for nothing. In the morning I got a a call from the bloke driving his van. He couldn't find my address. I went out into the street and waved him in. He said he had been given none of the messages telling him where the house is. The 4-hour call-out had taken 22.
Anyway, he looked at the drain, pulled up some covers, messed around with a rod. Cleared it. Took about 15 messy minutes. And off he went again.
I set to cleaning up the shit. Its not fun, clearing up other people's crap.
After a while I noticed that the drain was filling up with dirty water again. OK, I thought, now I know how its done, I will go to the shops and buy some rods and do it myself. So I did. Yes, there is a knack to it, no, I don't have it. What took them fifteen minutes took me an hour. But I got it flowing in the end. The cleaning up was as bad. In the end I put in three hours of rather heavy work out of doors on one of the hottest days of the year so far,
What seemed to be happening was that the drain had some restricted flow of water. So once it was unblocked it would flow away slowly, but if anyone put any waste in that did not flush through a small gap, it would block again. So there must have been an obstruction of some sort downstream of my back garden. But I had no idea where it could be.
Nearly two weeks went buy and another Saturday came round. And the drain overflowed again. I tried to clear it, failed, and called Thames Water again. Two blokes arrived - this time they knew where to go - rodded it, and left. I asked the woman upstairs to stop flushing cloths down the toilet. It blocked again. I called Thames Water again, the same blokes came back, had another look. We tried to trace the drain. I'd thought that my own toilet didn't empty into this drain - its on the other side of the house and none of my shot was visible, honestly - but I was wrong. What seems to happen is that both WCs and bathrooms empty into the same stack on one side of the house, that comes back again in a drain under a concrete floor, it meets the waste from the kitchens under the first manhole cover, about three metres later it gets to the second manhole, turns right, and passes back under the house again - beneath my living room, the room with the broken floor. A bit more rodding & off they go again. While clearing up I tried experiments with buckets of water and found that it took twenty minutes to empty the drain once I'd filled it with water from about ten buckets. I also find that I can put six rods in - presumably about 6 metres - and then I can't push a rod any further. So something blocks it about 6 metres away, under the floor of my living room. This floor is already broken and I can see bare dry earth at that point, if there is a pipe it is buried under the ground. I don't look for it.
I talked to the people upstairs, who were not exactly happy at this. It turns out she rents the flat from Hyde Housing Association, who rent it from the upstairs leaseholder, who I hadn't seen for months. I needed to get in touch with her urgently anyway because we jointly own the company that owns the freehold and we haven't been able to submit accounts (income=0 expenditure=0) for over a year because she hasn't filled in the right forms. I am pleased at hearing this. Hyde, surely, employ people who know about drains? Even if they are not responsible for fixing this drain, they will know who to talk to, how to go about getting it done. I'm completely ignorant about the whole thing so far. She phones Hyde emergency maintenance.
Hyde bloke comes round about 5pm and looks at it. Says it needs a jet, and they have someone who can do it. I say thanks, sign his bit of paper, and off he goes. I call Thames Water again. Same two come round sometime about 9.30pm. Get out all the jetting equipment. Pumps and stuff and bright lights - its getting dark out there. Before they start the jetting they use the rod again. Then one of them notices something. There is a soft crunchiness. We look inside the house, at the floor. Its getting wet. He pokes around with his (gloved) finger and finds a hole in a stoneware pipe just under the ground. Dirty water is coming out.
So now the problem is inside my house. The drain pipe has broken and if we use the toilets the solid waste will end up in the garden, the liquid will pass through into my floor, where a muddy puddle is rapidly developing. The Thames Water people now say that as there is a break inside my building it is obviously my responsibility not theirs, and rapidly leave. Though they did leave me a large plastic bottle of pine-scented disinfectant for the smell. Its half past ten on Saturday night and there is sewage in my living room. They won't come back, and there is no-one I can manage to phone. So I go to the pub.
On Sunday lunchtime, after taking the service at church (something I could hardly get out of) I try to phone Hyde. Leave a message. I also call a commercial drain clearing company who say they can come round on Tuesday. To which I agree, as there is nothing else I know how to do. Other than ask everyone not to use the toilets.
On Monday I phone Hyde and they pass me around the usual three or four desks, including "InPlace" which turns out to be a sort of sales organisation who know nothing about it at all. Two separate people tell me that "we don't have any property at that address" Surprise, surprise. One of them thinks my postcode is in Loampit Hill. It isn't, but there is an address there that used to get pizza when we used to be silly enough to order it. When I get though to a Housing Officer, they say its the responsibility of the freeholder. I am the freeholder, if anyone is, and I don't know what to do. They can't give me advice. I try to tell them that they have a potential health and safety problem in that their tenant - a single parent with two children who seems to have petty significant problems of her own - is living in a house with sewage inside and out and that I've asked her to not use the toilets. It doesn't seem to go anywhere.
Tuesday, another bloke comes round. Quickly finds by digging in my living room that the drain under the floor meets another. larger drain, with no manhole or inspection access. The larger drain is capped at one end and heads off at right-angles again on the other, back under the house, pointing at the place where the first drain comes in - it does a U-turn. So we need to find where this drain goes to unblock it.
And so starts a fruitless search, that had me in and out of neighbour's houses while the drain blokes are digging and tearing up even more of my living room floor. (which isn't hard because the joists are rotten) At one point we actually dug up next-door's back garden and found that they had a drain blockage too. We thought we'd won then, because their drain was coming out from the direction of my house. In fact the spot we dug is only just over two metres from the stack that has my foul waste in it - the waste that goes under the house, does a U-turn, and comes back again. But it turns out that that drain also dead-ends more or less on the borders of my place, as if it did go there once but does no longer.
The maintenance people phone the council, who say they know nothing. They phone Thames Water, who say we are not on their digitised maps. I phone Thames water. Get through to so-called "Asset Data Division" who manage to tell me that they know nothing about our drains. So we don't know where the blockage is and so can't even tell me if it is my problem or theirs. Except that their people had left and I needed to put on wellies to walk though my living room to the back door, so its my problem in practice if not in theory.
The woman upstairs didn't stop using her toilet, and her waste, including at one point a disposable nappy, continued to arrive in my garden.
So, unable to find the blockage we decide to divert the drain into the one that goes behind next door - that is only two metres from my toilets. With permission from the owners of next door. The whole job will involve clearing a side-alley full of rubbish (in the end we filled a whole skip) digging up and replacing concrete inside two gardens, digging out the broken pipe, blocking the old drains and the larger old pipe with concrete, and installing a pump under the kitchen to ensure that water from there can get out to the new drain. And the whole will cost over four thousand pounds - with VAT on top.
And I'm still having to phone Companies House to try and get them not to sue us because the woman who owns the other half of the company that owns the freehold hasn't filled in the forms which means that I am the sole director so I can't be the company Secretary. And now, to make her life happier, I have to tell her that the company she owns half of is liable to pay all this money and that I am having to pay for it myself.
So I call up the bank and get an extension on my mortgage to pay for all this. Something I could have done ten years ago but deliberately didn't because I am half-convinced there will be another house price crash and I'll never be able to pay the mortgage off. Yes it is one of those stupid endowment policies.
The work took them till the following Monday - the start of this week.. So now I can use my toilets. And there is no new sewage arriving in the garden. And - I hope and pray - someone is coming on Monday to fix the floor in the living room.
Perhaps I'll be able to get the kitchen fixed with the rest of the money I borrowed. If I don't spend it all first. Though if anything my nervousness of builders and plumbers and the like is even greater than it was. It takes so long to do anything. There is no way to know if it is done right. You just have to take people's word for it. Presumably the people who made a total balls-up of the house I live in all those years ago before I moved in are still out there somewhere, or their equivalents are.
But I still don't know where the original blockage is.
I still have a capped stoneware pipe under my house that is open to a sewer at the other end. Wherever that is.
I still have disintegrating floors in the kitchen and my bedroom.
The house still smells of a mixture of mould, mice, and excrement.
I still do not know how, if at all, I can get half the money I spent paid back to me by the other owner of the building.
I still don't know if the responsibility is really ours or Thames Water. Ands as they say they don't know and they are the only people who can know, I don't know how to find out.
I still do not know if the Inland Revenue will wind up the company and take the freehold away. Though presumably not any debt it might owe to me.