Hello

[willow2020]

Hello all. I want to ask a question about water pipes that cross my land to serve a neighbour. The property is in Scotland. Which is the correct board to post in? Thank you.

[ULA]

Hi and welcome.

You can remain in this forum or use Housing, Property and Neighbours forum or the one dedicated for Scotland. The reason for the latter is that we predominately provide support based on English and Welsh law and although there are may similarities with the law in Scotland there are some differences.

If you want to move to one of the other two forums just post that up and I can move the whole thread so you do not need to start a new one.

[willow2020]

Thank you. Can you move me over to the Housing and Property one please. Maybe more folk will see it in that one.*

[willow2020]

Scottish Law help please.

We have an issue with next door and a burst water pipe which runs through our garden. Last August, there was a tiny wet patch with bubbles coming up. I spoke to the neighbour and advised him there was a burst in the pipe but he said they were suffering no loss of pressure so it could not be theirs. It is theirs and it burst before when the third lady owner had the house. That was many years ago but it seems to be roughly the same place this time.

My husband also told them to get it fixed and let them know we were away on holiday for a fortnight so there would be no problems with us needing water or them accessing the garden to fix it. We got home and still it was not fixed. My husband spike to them again but they refused again saying they had no problems at their end. We are now in the situation that the small puddle is a big flood which is not draining away due to the contestant bad weather. The ground outside the back wall of our house is saturated and I reckon this is the cause of the damp marks on the inside of our walls at skirting level.

Today I phoned the chap who had done work on our drains before but he does not do water supply work. It cost me a call out fee but at least we are now certain it is not a drains issue. We also share a septic tank (on our property) with next door and over the years they have caused problems there as well - shoving all sorts down the loo and sinks etc. that septic tanks do not like.

I then phoned Scottish Water but as the problem is beyond the toby on the street, they don’t want to know nor offer any advice. We would like to know whether we can a) cap the pipe at the burst to prevent further damage to our property and b) make them pay the bill if it is us that calls in a plumber.

[45002]

Sorry, cant read the above post as there are No Paragraphs !

[willow2020]

Is there a way to edit my post? Everytime I pressed return key for a new line, this happened so I kept on typing.
*

[des8]

Is this a shared supply pipe?

[willow2020]

Sorry for late reply been at pubquiz. No it’s not exactly shared, no.
The water pipe arrangement for 2 pairs of semi-detached bungalows is weird.
The main supply is under the pavement on the main road. Turn right off that road and up the lane sit two blocks, ours which is parallel to the lane and the other which sits at right angles to it.
The lane is the traffic entrance at the backs of the properties. The other side is a pedestrians only path into a park. The other block next to ours, their front doors face the park. Ours look directly over the path.
The water pipe for all of us comes up the path side right to the end and turns under the dyke up the garden of our next door neighbour in the other block.*
From outside their back door, a branch goes off to serve the furthest away house of those two. Another two branches come towards our block. Our*house is served by a short branch which feeds into our house on the gable end and the huge long branch which serves next door runs the whole length of the back of our house and across the boundary to the end of block where it then feeds into next door.*
So although the burst branch goes right through our property, it is not connected to our house and we don’t draw water from it. The toby that controls all this network of pipe is in the garden of the neighbour in the other block where everybody’s supply comes in.
I hope that makes sense.*