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Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:51 pm
by Butty
On a typical housing estate, are there two separate systems for sewers and water drainage? Our house was built in 1999.

I'd guess that they merge into one at some point, though I've no idea.

My reason for asking is that we have a problem with water collecting on our patio, and we want some drainage putting in to clear it. This was a problem last year, but this year with all the rain we are constantly in the garden bailing out the patio so that the water does not sit against the back of the house.

We've had three lots of people out who have all said completely different things in how to resolve this.

One said that we could not connect a new drain (for rainwater from the patio) to the drain where the rodding point was, because that was part of the sewerage system, and wanted to direct all the rainwater under the fence into next door! Another said that he would connect the drain to this rodding point. He had looked into the rodding point to "see if it was deep enough".

Can the drain be connected to the rodding point? Last thing we want is sewage backing up as it can't handle the deluge of rainwater!

A local handyman that we have used before and trust, agrees that we could put the new drains in to join up with the downpipe, once underground. Trouble is, he's never done this before - he has taken advice from a friend in the business who confirms that this can be done, though the handyman is wary of doing this in case it goes wrong on his first attempt.

Any advice on this? (Would pics help?)

Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:28 pm
by Tony McC
The two systems are completely separate. Sewage (foul water) is sent off to the ETW to be cleaned up, while surface water is discharged directly into a local watercourse - there's no need to clean what is already clean water!

The eejit wanting to drain onto next door's property should be shot with balls of shit, because he's a danger to our trade. The handyman should be given a wide berth - if he's never made a sewer connection before, why allow him to practice on your property? Would you allow someone to service you car if they freely admitted they'd never done it before but they'd had a bit of a chat with someone down the pub about it?

The rodding eye is an access point at the end of a pipeline. In theory, it can be replaced with an access chamber and your new drainage fittings connected to that, but first, you have to make sure that the RE is on the SW line and NOT the FW line. Just how you differentiate between the two is explained here.

If it's a FW line, then you need to look for an alternative access point, but if it provces to be SW, then it's a relatively simple matter to remove the RE fitting and replace it with an AC. If you look through the drainage pages on the main site, you should be able to work it out. In particular, familiarise yourself with the procedure for installing an IC (just a slightly bigger version of an AC) into an existing line, as shown here and the installation of a linear channel system, as shown here.