Major Problems With House

Fergie101

Hi All

Im looking for some help and advice,

I purchased my home in 2006. The house was build in 2003.

I had a major leak in my house from the shower. Ive had issues with leaks here and there from the shower during all my time in the house , and there was previous work done on leaks as I can see work in the ceiling in the hall.

This time the leak was massive , and it all came down through my kitchen.

I got a plumber out to have a look at what was happening.

The shower run off pipe runs to the back of house and runs into a big pipe that also runs in the toliet and bath in another part of the house.

When he removed this pipe , and the whole thing was blocked up with the worst stuff you can think of !


There was no access drain cover for this pipe , but around the house there were others and he opened them up and he could see they were all free and not blocked. This pipe ran around 2 foot down before turning 90degrees under the house. He said he couldn't get drain pipes down at that angel.

He told me he felt that this pipe ran under my house and out to the sewer. However out on the street there was no man hole cover to open either. He told me to contact a drain cleaing company to have a look at it.

I got a drain cleaner out on Friday morning.

The drain cleaner removed tons of terrible stuff , mostly stuff that wouldn't dissolve but after cleaning it out he was only pulling out pure black water (he called this) and stones. He said this was generally a sign of broken pipes. He thought that at first this could be a huge job as he also thought the pipe ran under the house out to the sewer. He said he thought I would need to dig up my kitchen floor to get it fixed !

I asked him why there wasn't an access drain at this pipe and he agreed he was very odd. He looks into my neighbour yard and on their pipe they had an access drain , so he was really stumped as to why my house didnt have it.

He set off to investigate and he would call me back.

Around 15 minutes he ran he and told me that from his experience and he said he was almost 99% sure , the people who installed the drain had installed this pipe under the house into my radon stum. All the waste coming from my toliets ,shower and bath had been settling under my house for the last 9 years !!!

He had a look at another drain and he said he could see where this pipe should of been connected but for what ever reason it wasn't.

He said its not as bad as having a broken pipe under the house and he could rework the pipe to run into the access drain down into the sewer.

I am going to contact my house insurance on this , but this is a major health and saftery issue Im sure. It was a badly construcuted house anyway , but this just takes the biscuit.

Is there any building control or council I should contact ?

Im not sure if the building company is still around but surely this is pure negligence ?


Thanks for reading (and please ignore the grammer/spelling mistakes)and looking forward to any advice you may have.

F

engineermike

Hi,
I'd say your next step - whether trying to claim from a policy / bond or recover from your builder is have a drain CCTV survey undertaken to see exactly what was done.
Its difficult to envisage 9 years of 'black water' draining to your radon sump and not having serious sewerage smells about the whole property.
Mike F

Fergie101

Hi Mike

We have had smells . We are some what lucky that this toilet was mostly unused as we always our en suite or downstais toliet.

Fergie101

Great ....my house insurance company have told me that faults due to building neglience are excluded from any cover !

the_syco

Did you get a surveyor to look at your house before you bought it, and was any of this listed in their report?