Neighbours using my drain

[Harry Bloomfield]

Thanks Rusty. Every time I lift the manhole cover up there is stuff stuck in the drain gully when I know I've not used the toilet as I barely use it other than when I'm caught short in the garden which is like a couple of times a year if that. I end up flushing my toilet to clear it out. I couldn't understand where this stuff was coming from.

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Some while ago, I had similar problems, with next door, the other half of my semi. We have shared rain water gulleys, one each front, and back. We have separated rain water, from grey/soil water systems, with the rain gulley at the rear, on my side of the fence.

When they revised their kitchen a pipe appeared poking through the fence, draining their sink, washer etc., then later a shower drain appeared at first floor level, poking in the rain water fall pipe. The rubbish/grease they were putting down, constantly blocked the gulley, flooding my garden.

It's illegal to discharge grey water, into a rain water system, so I reported the matter to the water authority. They wrote back to them, giving them so many weeks to resolve the problem, or risk court action. It was very quickly sorted. Not quite the same as your problem.

 

[Sunshine32]

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Some while ago, I had similar problems, with next door, the other half of my semi. We have shared rain water gulleys, one each front, and back. We have separated rain water, from grey/soil water systems, with the rain gulley at the rear, on my side of the fence.

When they revised their kitchen a pipe appeared poking through the fence, draining their sink, washer etc., then later a shower drain appeared at first floor level, poking in the rain water fall pipe. The rubbish/grease they were putting down, constantly blocked the gulley, flooding my garden.

It's illegal to discharge grey water, into a rain water system, so I reported the matter to the water authority. They wrote back to them, giving them so many weeks to resolve the problem, or risk court action. It was very quickly sorted. Not quite the same as your problem.

Thanks Harry, even though it's a different problem the information is helpful. I'm currently sat on the step next to the manhole with the lid off waiting to catch the next load of wastewater coming down my pipe so I can film it. I just went inside briefly and missed a run because when I came back, there was bits of poo in the gully which I've flushed away using my toilet.

What gets me is that they had the same access to the shared lateral drain as me. They have their own access chamber to make waste connections to. Why the hell have they used mine!

 

[mrrusty]

The thing is if it was a shared pipe when the utilities took ownership of shared pipes in 2011 it's now theirs not yours. In 2011 the line in the sand was not shared, still private, shared taken over by utilities.i suggest you can't unwind that.

 

[Sunshine32]

The thing is if it was a shared pipe when the utilities took ownership of shared pipes in 2011 it's now theirs not yours. In 2011 the line in the sand was not shared, still private, shared taken over by utilities.i suggest you can't unwind that.

Yes this is what I am concerned about. I'm thinking about trespass though because I need to try and reverse this abuse of my rights because I didn't know nor consented to this.

 

[Sunshine32]

I've come in for the day now and have set up a trail cam down there to record goings on tonight. I'm still tracking the rats down so perhaps I'll get lucky with that too. That was what I initially bought it for but it comes in handy for lots of other stuff.

I've located one broken drain already and that's booked in to be fixed shortly. Went under the groundfloor floorboards and found the insulation from the attic down near the drain on the internal side of the cavity wall. They tend to nick it for nesting and take it down inside the cavity walls and nest at the bottom.

I've turned into some some sort of rat investigator but I've had such poor help from paid professionals I've had to do it myself!

If anyone reads this thread in the future and has a rat problem, I'd defo recommend going online and watching all the pest interceptors videos. You'll likely get diddly squat help from your council pest control department, I speak from bitter experience as they advised I had had squirrels at some past point which was a total lie. They also just put traps and poison down which only pauses your problem until the next lot of rats find their way in and on and on it goes driving you slowly mad with them running through the walls and chewing up the innards of your house. It's normally always a broken or collapsed drain or multiple broken/collapsed/redundant drains. Expensive. So make sure you've got the appropriate insurance, luckily we had.

 

[opps]

I was previously told that sewer rats tend to leave black marks.

I had a customer that had an ongoing rat problem. Sewers inspected, nothing found. Pest control eventually said that the poison might be attracting more. The customer moved out for months and had the foundations back filled with concrete. She figured that it was cheaper than moving and paying stamp duty. All in, 12(?) years ago it cost her over £10,000 (incl new flooring and rent).

 

[Sunshine32]

Jeez that is eye-watering, thank God we took out drainage insurance years ago.

Yeah they do leave black marks which is helpful when you're trying to track their path around the house. It's one of their giveaways. They're using the water pipes to navigate from the front of my house to the back of the house and this grubby black oily substance is all over the tops of the pipes in the attic. It's where their bellies constantly rub over the same spot because they pretty much always use the same path.

We've had the shared lateral drains surveyed by our water authority who also found nothing. It's our private drains which connect into the sewer where the problems are. So we take the brunt of the cost.

Rats eat each other as they are cannibalistic so when you poison one or two or 100 you've just created dinner for the others. Infact a dead rat in your house just attracts more live ones. It is totally pointless poisoning them.

 

[opps]

Jeez that is eye-watering, thank God we took out drainage insurance years ago.

Yeah they do leave black marks which is helpful when you're trying to track their path around the house. It's one of their giveaways. They're using the water pipes to navigate from the front of my house to the back of the house and this grubby black oily substance is all over the tops of the pipes in the attic. It's where their bellies constantly rub over the same spot because they pretty much always use the same path.

We've had the shared lateral drains surveyed by our water authority who also found nothing. It's our private drains which connect into the sewer where the problems are. So we take the brunt of the cost.

Rats eat each other as they are cannibalistic so when you poison one or two or 100 you've just created dinner for the others. Infact a dead rat in your house just attracts more live ones. It is totally pointless poisoning them.

Unfortunately my customer's rats were not sewer rats, so she had to pay out her own pocket.

At the time she had an elderly polish cleaner, she told my customer that sewer rats in Poland occasionally come up via the loo. She put weights over the lid of the ground floor loo and only ever used the toilet in the attic conversion.

Fortunately, the rats never got any further than the foundations. I was there one day, she had just gone on holiday and mentioned that she could hear noises under the floorboards. I told her I would lift a couple of boards in the kitchen. Half an hour after doing so, I found myself having a staring competition with a rat as I ate my sandwich. It was probably only about 30 seconds but seemed much longer. I promptly put the floor boards back and called pest control. They came out, got me to lift more boards so that they could put down about 1.5kg of poison. That was on a Friday, I came back on Monday and could hear the rates screaming in agony. I decided to work at the top of the property for the day. The next day I checked the dumps of grain. It had all gone, but many more dumps of poison, and she still had rats.

I stupidly decided to fill the rat nest holes with expanding foam so that she would not have the fly infestation that the pest control man warned about. Bad move. In the height of summer I went to visit her. I could smell the horrible sweet smell of decomposing rats from about 4 houses away.

 

[Sunshine32]

I've caught mine on film using the trailcam in the attic by putting down liquorice allsorts and peanut butter which they love, especially the liquorice. I first had to prove I had rats because the idiot council pest controller denied I did and said squirrels had visited but weren't there now even though we'd seen them - the rats that is, in the garden and had it on film.

The second pest control guy suspected the whole street had one massive infestation and directed me to environmental health and didn't want the job. We parted with around £200 for those gems of wisdom. I was so frustrated I turned to the net and tried to learn everything I could. It was weird because we hadn't heard them and the saying goes that you know you've got them because of the noise. Well we have most certainly heard them now but not until recently. What I think is that they grow in confidence the longer the infestation goes on for. They are neophobic and have this over sensitive fear system towards anything new but the longer they are here the more established they become. Ultimately if we just left them to it they'd eventually be in the room with us. I reckon that's why people complain of seeing them in their kitchens eating food on the counter. It's not that they've just rocked up, they've been there for a very long time but aren't that scared of you anymore because they've been living with you for ages but just unseen. Essentially they aren't scared of humans any longer, sounds like that's what happened to your customer.

Yeah I'm not going to poison them, it's a horrible way to die and it won't get rid of them anyway. We've got a water leak in the loft and I reckon the rats have chewed through the pipe up there. Plumber coming to fix that too. They do a lot of damage because they have to chew all the time to keep their teeth down which never stop growing. Heard them chewing on the wood above my head in the loft the other month whilst I was sitting on the throne. I'm dreading the extent of the damage!

 

[mike42]

Card on the table I'm only interested in this because I might be in a similar situation but would anyway appreciate your time clarifying something.

If the drain is your private drain why would it go onto your neighbours land as they are upstream of you?

 

[Sunshine32]

Sorry I don’t recall me mentioning the neighbours were upstream of me?

It’s very easy to do if the pipe connections are next to the boundary and you’re excavating the ground anyway for foundations and drainage when building an extension.

I’d advise you to study your deeds and the neighbours deeds for covenants and/or easements with regards to drainage. Take a trip to your council digitally or physically and ask for the building inspectors & planning dept plans for the extension. Then seek legal advice.

Regards to my issue, it’s all being sorted now so I am in less of a panic.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Regards to my issue, it’s all being sorted now so I am in less of a panic.

@Sunshine32 how did it get sorted? If you don't mind us asking, we like a happy ending!

 

[Sunshine32]

It’s in the process of ‘being sorted’ not finished yet. It’s all legal stuff and ongoing so I reckon it’s best not for me to post publicly about it atm.

 

[mike42]

Sorry I don’t recall me mentioning the neighbours were upstream of me?

Oh, I just assumed that because I thought you'd found their waste in your pipe.

Point taken about close to the boundary.