If you are enlarging or enlarging your home, you will still need to determine if there are any pipes/sewers under or near your location. If there are pipes within 3 m of your proposal, you will need permission from Thames Water. When we carry out our measured site surveys, we will locate all the wells on your site and measure where they are in relation to your property, we will also raise the wells and note where the pipes are flowing, with this information we can apply to Thames Water for you. A construction agreement is required by water companies for all construction work through public sewers or within 3 m of a sewer. This obligation is even anchored as a federal government in the deeds of some more modern real estate. Most build-overs do not require a CCTV investigation, so we can give our approval immediately. However, if your sewer is not in the house or your diameter is greater than 160 mm (6 inches), we will order a CCTV inspection before construction once we have accepted your design. If you are entitled to a self-certified agreement, simply complete the online questionnaire and start your work immediately (provided that your work matches the description you provided in the online questionnaire). A self-certified agreement is free of charge. It really should be a construction agreement or close construction agreement.
Since the water company owns the piping plant if your extension is built within 3 metres of a sewer pipe or directly above the pipe, you will need to obtain permission for Thames Water`s work. We recommend that you route piping around any proposed building or extension. If you can`t, run all the pipes and fittings under the building so that they are accessible for repair. If any of the plants are outside your borders, please read the artwork near our pipes. If the sewer is not usual and / or has a diameter of more than 160 mm, we will not grant the permit until we have carried out a video surveillance investigation before construction. You can then perform the approved work. If the extension is above a sewer pipe, you need to have a break in the foundation and install a concrete lintel to fill the gap in the foundation. The main requirement for this is that if the drains become clogged, Thames Water needs access to the sewer pipes and they also want to know that measures are being taken to protect their pipelines. Depending on the workloads, once an application is decided, it will be issued within 2 weeks, so you won`t have to add big delays to your build. You can also consult the public sewer file free of charge at our offices listed below or by visiting your local authorities. The form consists of five pages and all fields marked with mandatory fields must be completed before submitting. In this handy guide, you`ll learn when to need them, how long they last, and what the costs are, as well as design tips for building over a public sewer.
Changing the design of the extension to avoid the sewer is an option to ensure that the new building is at least 3 m from it. This is usually the simplest and cheapest option, but it`s only really doable with extensions where your original design didn`t reach too far into the 3m area, so a small overhaul can solve the problem. However, such changes may also need to be notified to the local planning authority. And without the required approval documents from the water department, the building inspection won`t sign the important certificate of completion you need when it comes to selling or reprogramming the home. The biggest cost is when one of your new walls passes just above the sewer pipe, if this is the case, you may need to have large foundations and floor beams instead of traditional strip foundations that add a reasonable amount to the flooring package and slightly increase the length of the construction. Any excavation work within 3 meters of a sewer or public drain requires a Thames Water Build Over agreement. Given the density of construction in London and other cities, this likely means that any work you wish to do on your property, including excavations, will likely require Thames Water`s review and approval. Nor will we allow pumps, hoses or sewers to be built. Please do not make payments if your nearby sewers are not allocated as they may be privately owned and we will have to refund your payment, which may delay your work. A Build-on-Investment Agreement (BOA) may be required if you are building an extension of your home.
This is a legal agreement between you and your water company that ensures that your work will not only negatively impact a public sewer under or near the boundary of your building and that they will always have a way to access the sewer if repair and maintenance work is required. Our goal is to complete an initial technical assessment within 21 calendar days. If we are unable to do so because we need more information from you, we will work with you to obtain approval as soon as possible. If you are building within three metres of a public sewer or one metre of a public side drain, you will need our approval before starting work. With the risk of ignoring or ignoring a Thames Water construction via an agreement that signs an injunction or non-construction regulations, and with the cost of obtaining the agreement between £299 and £1,300. We thought it would be useful to look at this topic in a little more detail to make sure it is not overlooked in your construction proposal. We may need to do additional research for sewers with a diameter greater than 375 mm. This may delay approval. Learn more about the process. Before the start of construction work on the site, the authorization of the water supplier must be obtained.
However, there is a potential catch; Even if a sewer pipe only serves your property and is therefore classified as a private drain, if you want to build within 1 m of the border where it leaks on your land, some water companies still need a construction agreement, so it is worth checking with them. You will need to fill out a form, which you can find on the Thames Water website. You`ll also need plans to show where the drain flows and where your extension is in terms of sewer pipe. If there are pipelines near where you want to build, it can affect the design of the building. In addition to reviewing the local authority`s building codes, it is important that you work with us to ensure that the piping is protected and that our access to it is not restricted. Taking into account the impact of new foundations and current building codes that stipulate that new foundations must be at least 1 meter deep. The depth of these foundations and the extra weight of the new structure can lead to cracked drains or pipes, which can lead to flooding of wastewater. Having the drainage design checked in advance via a drainage examination should also eliminate the risk that the extra weight of your new extension could cause the sewer to collapse, cause structural damage to your home, block poor drainage of other properties, and turn your garden into a cesspool! In other words, it is a reasonable precaution. Homeowners are responsible for the water pipes that run within their property line – these are called utility lines.
You can ask for the agreement during construction or even after the completion of the work. It simply means that you cannot have the extension of building control signed unless this agreement is in place. We need to know about construction work located above or near a public sewer for: However, many previously private sewers do not appear in our records. So if you`re asking to build on top of or near a sewer, you`ll often need to provide details about nearby sewers and wells. In cases where Thames Water engineers deem it appropriate, they may request an on-site visit to inspect the sewer or drain, or they may even request a closed-circuit television (CCTV) investigation. This involves channeling the drain or sewer using a small camera, confirming the course of the sewer or drain, the condition of the sewer or runoff and, finally, determining whether they are currently sufficient given the changes that the proposed structure will have on them. .
