The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Land Management => Topic started by: woodsleighroc on July 20, 2013, 09:05:24 pm
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the council will dye the water so they will know if its coming from their pipe.
record every conversation/visit with the council as in our experience are they are incompetant unless you are really firm with them.
if your drain was leaking on their land they would let you know pretty damn quick and bill you for any costs. even if rainwater off your field went onto their road, you would be liable.
good luck
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You can get drain dye, which you could use to determine if water from your house goes to this drain. Or of course pop round to your neighbours and pour some down their drain when they are not around !
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It will be worth also posting this question on 'the farming forum' as several of the farmer on there have posted threads about similar issues and the threads contain some useful info and experiences about the legalities and practical ways of addressing these issues.
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Sounds like a good plan to me Woodsleighroc. Probably the only way you will find out who is contaminating your land with what sounds like untreated washing water.
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It's a septic tank soak away pipe don't block it. It will start to back up into the property. Check your deeds carefully as they might explain if its a shared soak away pipe?
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Deeds checked, not a shared soak away. Am worried that if council fix the pipe, and there is waste water from neighbours going into it, then this will contaminate the stream, an even worse prospect than the problem in our field.
Will have to approach neighbours to see if they will admit it. I don't think the council will be too impressed if they find out, and it may cause a fall out with the neighbours. Don't know what to do.
if its a council pipe, id let the council deal with it. falling out with neighbours is a nightmare and not recommended!
have you tried speaking to local farmers/previous owners as they may remember what is there. (farmers are great gossipers)
i couldnt imagine someone would tap into someonelses pipe just for waste water unless they have no land but then nothing surprises me. theres a pipe in our burn where the neighbours have took a free supply of mains water on the sly. we only found out when a digger cut through the pipe and they came round to complain. :innocent:
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If the pipe ends at the burn it will be a soak away, this can be allowed through a licence, this would be with the EA in England or SEPA in scotland. With it being a soak away a dye test will probably not work. The pipe type you mentioned in the original post is also the norm for a soak away.
Is the end of the pipe flowing freely?
If you could send me some pics and a drawing i will have a look at it for you.
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if your drain was leaking on their land they would let you know pretty damn quick and bill you for any costs. even if rainwater off your field went onto their road, you would be liable. good luck
If this is right how can you drain land with a natural slope towards a road?
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if your drain was leaking on their land they would let you know pretty damn quick and bill you for any costs. even if rainwater off your field went onto their road, you would be liable. good luck
If this is right how can you drain land with a natural slope towards a road?
dig a ditch/burn to control the flow of water. if the ditch isnt maintained then the council can do it for you and charge you. this council link is interesting though not in my area. my land borders the council housing estate and they are supposed to contribute to the cost of clearing the shared ditch also though iv never seen a penny ::)
http://www.npt.gov.uk/PDF/landdrainageresponsibilities.pdf (http://www.npt.gov.uk/PDF/landdrainageresponsibilities.pdf)
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Interesting reading :thinking: , thank you shygirl. Any update on this? I'm pretty sure we are receiving excess water from a neighbour, not that we can probably do anything about it :-\ .