Pretty Mouth

Thank you both for your replies and information. patp, I had considered a sealed manhole or inspection chamber, but I suspect it may no longer be permitted. Thames water (not our regional water company)refuse them according to this guide: https://www.thameswater.co.uk/-/media/Site-Content/Developer-Services/Guide-to-building-over-or-near-a-public-sewer.ashx?la=en PeterW, the extension will be in Coventry, so Severn Trent - we will indeed need a build over agreement. I will contact ST and ask them for guidance, hopefully they will be happy with the sealed access point at the base of the stack. I'll report back with any info.

No replies? I suspected this may be the case, I've searched high and low for answers , but no luck so far. My thoughts: The main sewer has rodding access via the downstream manhole, and the external gullies will be roddable, so no need for concern there. The branch from soil stack to sewer may or may not be considered roddable via the access hatch at its base. My understanding is that the rodding equipment can make its way around the swept bend at the bottom of the stack. This must have been acceptable at the time the 1st extension was build 30 or 40 years ago, but would building control deem this acceptable now? Can anyone confirm this either way? The toilet branch (I not 100% sure if this goes directly into the sewer, or joins the soil stack branch) is probably not considered roddable as the toilet would need removing to gain access.

Hi all. Let's begin with rodding access... The extension I'm planning to build will be located over a shared sewer, and (amongst many other things) I am concerned about providing enough rodding access to keep building control happy. 1930s terrace in a row of 4 houses Existing extension to rear 3m X full width of house (approx 5m) Sewer pipe (combined sewer/rainwater) runs parallel to, and approx 3.5m from rear wall of original buildings (according to drain survey). Manhole access approx 10-15m downstream of the property We want to extend a further 3m into the garden, again full width of the property. This would leave the sewer running beneath the middle of the extension, without any room for a manhole externally. At the moment there are 3 points connecting to the sewer - a soil stack, a downstairs W.C. and an outside gully. Currently there's no rodding access to the W.C., there is a small access hatch at the base of the soil stack but I don't know this counts as rodding access. We plan to move the WC, put a shower where the WC is now, lose the existing gully, and install 2 new gullys outside. The outside gullys can be roddable, but how can I provide rodding access to the WC and soil stack? What are my options? Apologies for the low quality diagram. Red is existing points, green will be new points.

Wow, what a welcome! Thanks so much for all your ideas and suggestions, there's a lot I hadn't even considered. I'll be honest, I'm still at the "can this extension be done at all?" stage of the design! The Mitchells - I'm based in Warwick, but the extension will be in Coventry where my sister and her fella live. Ferdinand - thanks for the blog link, that's my evening reading sorted then! I will try to document the build here as it progresses. JS Harris, sorry to hear your father had MS too, it's a terrible disease. My sister's house is 1930s too, so I expect the same problems you found will apply here too.

Thanks for the welcome, Temp, and thanks for the info too - I'll pass it on to him. Interesting, I just googled HBOT and it's the same kind of treatment you would get if you had decompression sickness AKA the bends! (I scuba dive so have an interest in these things)

Hi all, and thanks for adding me to the forum. My brother in law has progressive MS and now struggles greatly to climb the stairs - in time he won't be able to manage it at all. We hope to extend to the rear ground floor of their house to create a living space for him. The budget is limited, so I hope to take on much of the work myself to try to keep costs down. I'm currently at the design stage, and there are a number of things that I'm not sure about, so the advice of the forum would be greatly appreciated. I work as a S/E handyman and domestic electrician, but have previously worked in construction for a number of years (with a large gap in the middle while I went travelling) and have done a bit of everything. Cheers