Hi all. Problems with a shared water supply in the south east.

[jimboAtakus]

Very glad I found this site, and apologies for jumping straight in with an issue.

We've been in a bit of desperation recently regarding the water supply to our house (and neighbors).

We are a run of four houses where the water supply is shared. the houses used to be all part of the same social housing company (back in the 60s) but ours had since been sold off (the other three are still held by the social housing company).

Because they were built to be cost-effective they have this shared water supply (old galvanized pipe) which in some stroke of madness they decided they would run down an alleyway to the back of the houses and under the various properties. Most of the houses have been extended since including over the old supply.

So we are one house among 4 each of the others owned by the same company. The water company has been doing work in the area to improve the pressure, which appears to have caused a leak (the water company detected it and put letters through each of the house's letterboxes including ours). We have been trying for months to get it resolved sensibly with the housing company. It took them weeks to send someone out to discuss and then just said they would have to talk to their legal team.

Due to the way our house sits between two of theirs (with the pipe running under our and the next property) we cannot do any work without their engagement (it would be onto their property after all). However, after months of chasing they have now replied with a statement saying we have to get it fixed at our full expense, they will not contribute to the fix and we should hurry up because we have taken so long.

We only have access to a tiny bit of pipe (about 3m max) before it is under all the properties (a subsequent +15m or more on our side and 20+ on the other side) We can hardly hear the leak but one of their properties it sounds like a flood all the time.

I had hoped we could band together split the cost (as is expected with a shared supply from what I can understand) however their most recent stance is making me think we need to take a different course of action. I am now in the mind that I should take our house off the shared supply (by paying the water company many thousands - their prices have gone up recently and its likely to be over £8k) getting our own line off the main road and routing into our house. But I'm not sure if this will remove our responsibility for the bit of pipe left going under our property to their house or not (forcing them to actually deal with it).

Help! Any advice here would be heroic.

Jimbo

[echat11]

Hi Jim

Welcome to LB

Have you got Legal Expenses Insurance under your Household Insurance?

Have a read of the following, does it help?

https://www.boundary-problems.co.uk/...20your%20needs.

[wales01man]

Do you know exactly where the leak is under your property?

[Pezza54]

If the leak is on a shared watermain on private property the property owners that the water pipe serves are equally responsible for the maintenance and repair of the pipe.
If the leak is on a pipe branch that serves an individual property then that individual owner is responsible.
You should contact the water company for assistance. They may be able to pinpoint the leak and offer a subsidised quote or estimate.to repair or replace pipe
Although the water company is unlikely to admit it, they have the capability to raise water pressure to cause a leak in old pipes and even new plastic fittings (as I found out when a new plastic mains fitting burst and shredded with the sound of a popping balloon-flooding the room below -the water company was working in the road at the time but denied any wrongdoing )

You said you can hear the water leaking from one of the properties. There is a good chance the pipe is leaking in the void under the ground floor and the flooding sound is coming via an air brick. If you are able to put your ear to the air brick and the noise increases you have found the leak

[echat11]

You should be able to find the leak, by testing the water pressure of each household (all 4 ) using the same method.

Also send the water company an Subject Access Request, they have 30 days to provide all the data they have in your name.

https://legalbeagles.info/library/gu...ccess-request/

[jimboAtakus]

Thanks all. I should have posted here earlier but we've been working (so far unsuccessfully) to get to the bottom of things.
ECHAT11 Thanks for the flag on house insurance! This was a great call and had not crossed my mind, as it stands we do have some legal cover included. We have contacted the insurer but yet to hear back. . . . (alas more waiting). Its not clear if this legal cover includes remediation for work done or just damages . . . more to follow, but thanks again.

Sadly we don't know exactly where the leak is WALES01MAN PEZZA54, which has been part of the issue. A good portion of the pipe(I would say 80%) is either under our house, or under and neighbours outbuildings (our neighbour's property obviously owned by the difficult housing company). The housing company did a gas test, saying it was definitely in the ground under our building (and therefore we are fully responsible).

Obviously some big issues with this:
- They only tested our property,
- They admitted it could be anywhere under our property (this includes the section of pipe that only supplies their building - which i think according to the shared documents actually means it is all their cost to fix . . . )
- They have refused to engage at all, the problem with this is the pipe enters their property under their building (after being under ours) so there's no way of us just fixing our bit of pipe (even if we could get to it or lay a new one) as we need their cooperation to connect up to the bit on their property (and one would assume the running of the new bit of pipe on their property would be 100% their responsibility . . . right?)

Admittedly a portion of the pipe goes just to our property, and where it comes in through the foundations it is wrapped in a protective insulation (which could be sending the gas test gas in misleading directions).

Fortunately we have found the easement in our deeds which clearly gives them right to access water through our property, but somewhat amusingly in a frustrating way, clearly states that they should be paying at least 50% of the cost to maintain or fix. Which was met with heavy eye rolls.

ECHAT11 - Finding the leak by testing the pressure is an interesting one, I had not though about this either. How accurate would you expect that to be? The property supplies are only 5-7m apart, is that enough to identify a leak assuming it was between the properties?

PEZZA54 - we've had very little input from the water company (previous visits have essentially been an engineer saying 'its not our responsibility') is there an approach with them you would recommend.

"You said you can hear the water leaking from one of the properties. There is a good chance the pipe is leaking in the void under the ground floor and the flooding sound is coming via an air brick. If you are able to put your ear to the air brick and the noise increases you have found the leak"

So to elaborate, the noise is very loud in our neighbours, and we can hardly hear it in ours (if you put your ear near the pipe you can just about hear the hiss).
It's worth saying we've replaced much of the pipework in our property for new plastic pipe (less to vibrate - but we do have the original steel pipe coming in that we can see / touch) but it does sound like its just under their property (with how loud it is). I thought this was a dead giveaway at first but clearly not. Is there a situation where it could be much much louder in one place, but actually be leaking much closer to another point (where it's hardly audible).


Thanks again everyone