I had high hopes that Friday 4 December would finally see the completion of remedial works to make the drainage building regs compliant. Such an optimist! When the drainage crew arrived I was able to greet them like old friends - this is the third time they have been here to deal with drain problems, so they know the house, the issues and me..
I was asked to fill a bath with cold water for the water flow test while they put the camera down to check all was well. All was not well. They spotted a blockage further down the line and had to rod it through (thankfully the garden rodding access worked) to clear it before I could pull out the bath plug. With the first blockage cleared, the bath water was released and seemed to be flowing away without a problem. But then, the water started backing up - another blockage. This time, they couldn’t clear it with rods, so had to bring the high pressure water jets through the house and into the back garden.
I know the drill by now. Upstairs to find the old sheets I use when decorating, spread them out on the floor between the front and back doors then wait for the tank to full with water from my outside tap so they can turn on the high pressure hose, stick it down the drain and try to disperse the blockage. This time, it didn’t work. Water levels in the outside manhole continued to rise and no amount of jetting or rodding could clear the blockage. My heart sank. I was in a worse situation now than when they arrived to do the water flow test...
However, there was a bright side to all this gloom. Water pressure in the main drain under my house was so fierce, water had appeared in the front garden seeping out between brick paving, It thad come up a concealed vent pipe, in the process revealing the location of the original Buchan trap at the junction of my drain and the public sewer. We cleared away the bricks that had concealed it for decades and revealed the grating cover...
As you can see from the diagram above, the trap has a big U-bend which fills with water to prevent rats and smells getting out of the public sewer and into houses. It also fills with any solid waste material which is too heavy to be pushed through the upside of the U bend when sinks are drained or loos flushed. The accumulation of debris eventually obstructs the passage of any waste water causing the drain on the house side to back up and eventually overflow at the lowest opening.
This is what must have happened at my house. I think that small bits of building material must have got into the drain during the building work, gradually been swept along the drain causing natural waste to back up behind, resulting in the frequent blockages I’ve experienced this year. Every time the drain has been jetted through to clear these blockages, it pushes the sold material closer to the Buchan trap and, in the process, takes off some of the natural scale build up from the inside of the drainpipe which then drops into the drain, gets swept along and exacerbates the obstruction problem. Eventually, the solid material gets swept down into the Buchan trap U bed and gets stuck...you know what happens next.
With the location of the Buchan trap revealed, the drainage people had another go at clearing the blockage by rodding and jetting down the vent pipe at the front of the house. Still no luck. In the end, they bought in a tanker that empties septic tanks, and sucked out the waste water with a giant hose. Although the obstruction wasn’t cleared, the main drain under the house was emptied giving us a bit of capacity to use the toilet, wash our hands and use water sparingly over the weekend.
I was told that the only way to clear the obstruction would be to dig up the front garden, take out the Buchan trap (and with it the source of the obstruction) and replace it with a straight run of pipe into the public sewer. The man in charge offered to do this “at cost” the following working day (Monday 7 December) for a sum of £672 assuming there were no problems. What choice did I have? No time to get other quotes over the weekend, and no time to loose as the waste will be building up again in the drainpipe over the next two days.
However, a passing remark from the drainage man on site reminded me I had taken out plumbing and drainage insurance in October due to all the problems I’ve had this year, so I checked with Homeserve (the provider) explained the issue in detail and they agreed to send a team on Monday to sort it out. The man in charge was advised accordingly.
Come Monday, a man and a van sent by Homeserve turned up to try to unblock the drain and, of course, he couldn’t. But apparently, its the insurance company’s “process” to try unblocking before doing any other work...so I had to wait for him to make his report recommending the removal and replacement of the Buchan trap before the insurance company would authorise that work. Before he left, he mentioned that he thought the problem was on the other side of the front boundary, in which case the insurance company would not foot the bill, it was the responsibility of Thames Water.
In an effort to be proactive, I contacted Thames Water via its Facebook page, explained the problem and after answering several questions, they booked in an engineer to deal with it within 48 hours. In the meantime, we had to limit the use of water as much as possible to reduce the risk of sewage flooding.
No one arrived on Monday, or Tuesday so I chased up Thames Water on Wednesday and was told they had needed “to replan this attendance due to a lack of available resources...we still plan on coming as soon as we can.” On Thursday, the Insurance company returned to replace the Buchan trap if it was in my front garden. However, as suspected, the trap is on the public side of the boundary so they couldn’t touch it. However, they did manage to clear the blockage using a giant plunger down the Buchan trap vent pipe. This will keep us going until the next bit of sold material gets stuck in the trap as it inevitably will...
They had also been in touch with Thames Water to request action and had been told it would be dealt with in 24 hours. Thames Water subsequently asked me later in the day whether they had attended to my job and when I answered no, I was told “not to worry, we’re due to attend today”.
By 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon, I was still waiting from Thames Water to arrive in time to do the work before it got dark. Another chaser to Thames Water produced the reply “an engineer should be with you today. They do work late so there is plenty of time for them to arrive...I’d be very surprised if they don’t come”. No one came.
I sent another another chaser to Thames Water at 6pm and woke to a reply at 1.33 am on Friday morning saying “we were a little behind due to a complicated job, but an engineer has been allocated to attend today. I apologize for the hold up.” As I write its nearly 2pm on Friday and still no sign of Thames Water engineer. When people use the expression “loosing the will to live” I now know what they mean...will it ever happen?
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