Under drive pipe broken

[kiwikris]

Have a gravel drive with clay pipes (i think) running underneath. going into neighbouring property.

It has ruptured twice and he has always blamed too much traffic to my place. The pipes are at least 60 - 70 cm's deep I;ve blamed shoddy workmanship on first fix.

Tonight there is water bubbling to surface and can hear it "running" / dripping and we had a large removal truck on site about 5 days ago would a truck break pipes that far down?????

[flowjoe]

The old clay drains a very brittle and break easily under any form of external pressure if they were not surrounded in a granular fill when installed, you will be covered for this damage under your bricks and mortar insurance so i would recommend you have the system cleared and camera survey carried out to see the extent of the damage.

Depending on the damage it may be an excavation job and there are pleanty of no-dig repairs available but a CCTV survey will give you all the answers.

[kiwikris]

thanx mate. this hasnt happened for about a year or more and we thought the problem had been solved. there is a sort of manhole with a galvanized steel lid and I can hear the water running into it.... The last time it was fixed they dug up the drive a fair way and I thought it had gone back far enough.. The pipes appear to be sitting in and surrounded by sand topped by soil then top course and gravel . . .think it may've been compacted then gravel layed. . . .it's a couple of feet down at least Sppose it's gotta be the truck

[flowjoe]

You shouldnt really be able to hear water running through a chamber, are you sure you havn`t got a burst on your water feed pipe, has there been any loss in pressure to the taps?

[kiwikris]

It's pitch dark at present and will have to look at it in the morning. We don't appear to have lost water pressure at our place and from memory we are on a joint supply from the street front

[matt h]

suggest get camera in and locate damage, can usually be relined, but without being there cant really advise fully. If you had it repaired before then surely the firm you had to do it should come back and re doi t problem is your drains seem to be shallow and without concrete protection are likely to fail with such traffic. I had to use steel pipes to replace a shallow clay pipe run near petersfield three years age, on what was then a cart track.. it is now a highway, and touch wood, there have ben no probs