AliG

There is a marker on the pavement roughly 50m away that is within 1m I would say of an extension of the line on the map. The SE is emailing SW to see what they say. He was only supposed to be doing the drainage design!

I looked into this, the various CAT makers seemed to claim that metal pipes either have induced radio waves or you can use a box on the ground above the pipe to induce a signal in a metal pipe. It was not clear how deep it would work up to. Metal detectors generally don't go this deep. I think it probably is as I think that quite a few houses may be on top of it. Our foundations will be very shallow, which we are telling SW. There is not one included in our deeds, but it may be a mistake as the plot was split and it may have been in the original deeds. The original house was built in 1923, there are some ground markers that suggest the main was built in 1898. I have considered this. Looking at all the other plans I think people just built and that was it. But clearly an exemption keeps everything safe and above board. It is not clear if SW are just worried re damaging the pipes (very unlikely) or the possibility of replacing the pipes in the future (looks almost impossible considering how many gardens they go through and how close they are to many houses)

I have given the architect today to see if there is a simple fix. I have looked into ways to find the pipe and a CAT scanner should work as it is cast iron. So I could hire one and at least get an idea of how accurate the map is. But as I say from the position of all these houses along the line of the pipe it cannot be far to one side or the other as they all use the same map line. I measured where it crossed all the plan boundaries and it was a straight line across the map. The main issue is the SW 6m rule. Multiple houses in the vicinity break this rule so if SW are OK with our position I have more time to see if we need to check the exact position of the pipe or if the ground workers are happy. We are only digging down 800mm also, wouldn't take much to did that corner by hand.

That's fair and we might do it to be safe from a digging perspective, I guess the real point is that SW seem to have accepted that the map position is correct. Because it is a built up area and the water main goes through multiple gardens it cannot really be much more than 1m either side of where it is shown as it would be under various houses that all seem to have been built to one side or the other. I have some plans with no addresses on them now. The first is our build. Then we have the recently built extension of the house where we are in the garden. It is less than 1m from the pipe. Then we have a recently built house 1 street over. It is showing 5m from the pipe on the same line. They don't show the second pipe which would be under the corner of the house next door. Then we have an extension behind that where the pipe would be within 2-3m if shown on the same line. The we have 1 street over again where the pipe is within 2-3m of the extended house and 1m of the house next door. As these houses are all along the line of the pipe it is quite difficult for it to be far away from where it is shown on the map.

I went and had a look on site this morning and am still waiting to hear back. However, looking at various recent planning applications, they all use the map position of the pipe and if it varied much from what is shown it would be almost under some people's houses. I found three applications along the line of the pipe. One new house, one street away, had a 12m long wall 5m from the map position, despite the official offset being 6m. One had the pipe between 2 and 3m from various points when it was extended and its height was increased from 1 to 3 storeys. One had the pipe probably within 2-3m of an extension, but did not show it all on the site map. I found two existing houses easily within 1m of the pipe, indeed one might be over it. I have sent this over to the architect and SE as useful info in speaking to Scottish Water. I am hopeful it suggests that there is leeway on the 6m, although it may be that SW simply didn't know about the various other developments. As long as SW accept the position of the pipe as shown on the map I am not too fussed if it is a little closer to the house than shown. This would apply to all these other properties which are even closer. At worst it would be 4m away.

Spoken to the architect. First thing we are going to try and do is ask for a dispensation on the 6m limit as it is only around 1sq metre of house that crosses into this area. Hopefully they will come back to us quickly.

The house is going on an insulated raft and is quite lightweight so I am not worried about the loadings. Will try and get a GPR survey tomorrow. Just annoyed really as we could have simply designed the house to avoid the issue if the 6m distance had been used/known. According to the map we are almost 5m way hence I wasn’t too concerned re being more accurate previously. Unfortunately my mum is what might be described as highly strung and would lose the plot if I told her. She has threatened to just buy another house numerous times already as she has little patience for these things. My parents both believe that they are paying very large amounts in professional fees and they deserve better service for it. My experience is that it doesn’t really work like this and you just have to roll with it frustrating as it is.

True. I’ll be onto this tomorrow. It’s a risky business as it could make things better or worse. It won’t be under the house as it would have to run under the house directly next to us. Considering the main runs at an angle between two houses it will be within a pretty well defined area.

The architect is an old friend which doesn’t help. Also I would rather have a resolution before telling my parents as they find the whole process too stressful already.

Luckily it could as the area closest in only one storey tall and its the corner of a large lounge that we could lop off. I’d rather not be doing this though. I don’t know what MBC would say at such a late point. The frame is currently booked to go up late April.

Had a very concerning email a couple of hours ago. We are due to start work for my parents' house around 1 April. The SE emailed that he had the drainage signed off with Scottish Water The response from Scottish Water also mentioned that the house may be less than 6 metres from their water main that runs through the site. We would have to ascertain the exact position. The architect knew there was a water main on site and said we had to be more than 3m away, which we are. But it is a 16inch main and the distance for this is 6m. He never made me aware of different distances for different sizes of pipe. Annoyingly the house next door is much closer than this, it is over 100 years old. But they just built an extension that is within 1m of this water main according to the map, Typically I cannot get him on the phone as the email came at 630. So I am left to stew about this all night. There is no room to move the house further away from the main. The main is even closer to next door so I don't think it can be redirected, which would be very expensive. We could lose a 1m corner from the house which wouldn't be a big issue, but the frame is already being made so there would be some quite large costs. There is a lot of steel in this area. We could just pretend it is 6m away and ignore it. Thoughts anyone?

I wouldn't think so. Unless you were increasing the size to be able to export more than 4kW

Two current issues - 1. It looks like the local AC voltage rises above 253V in the middle of the day causing inverters to cut out. If this is the case I can ask the DNO to adjust voltage. 2. We had two inverters replaced. It appears that one of the replacement inverters is no working.

I had to do all that at my last place. As it was a like for like swap on the inverters they literally had to just take them down and plug the same connectors back in. As I have been up to the loft about 20 times today trying to isolate the problem I am confident I can swap it out myself if required now. As I have two the same and one seems broken I am going to swap the panels and AC connections over just to check it isn't something else.

It was replaced by the original MCS installer who are based about an hour away. They appeared to charge me for the time required to come to my house then drive somewhere to get the meter then drive back. So a 15 minute job had hours of labour. I was not pleased. I am thinking I might try switching the cables over to see if it is definitely the inverter, but I suspect it is.