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We have an outside tap (temporary) situated not far from our boundary boxes. Our house 32mm MDPE supply is ready to connect. It can’t get to the boundary boxes (yet) as there is a caravan in the way. What advice please for connecting, potentially to this outside tap (a 15mm copper pipe)? And what should we lag the MDPE with - it’s going to probably be overground for these 5m all winter. Thanks

4 coats as that's what the Dulux trade person told me. 2 wash coats with the cheap stuff and then 2 top coats with the more expensive stuff. Sprayed the wash coats, rolled the top coats. Everything is brilliant white. Very hard to see where you are have done after 2 coats though.... I can't imagine we'll be bothered about touching it up - it'll be like the Forth bridge....

Painting commenced on 6th March and was finished about two weeks ago. I heavily underestimated the time this would take. By about 4 months. White everywhere so it was hard to tell where we were at after the first two coats. Our favourite whiteboard "spreadsheet" tracked progress and filling it in gave great joy.

+1 for the @JSHarris approach. We prepared our own drawing with help from people on this forum, in particular @dogman. Some of the wording is fairly standard and it is good to understand the specifications in the building regs for when you come to make on site decisions. Tbh, doing it ourselves saved alot of fees to the architect. But i suspect it has cost us in terms of a few mistakes we made, that might have been picked up by a professional person. Silly things but material - will be fine for our next house ?

It was a new bung. But one of the plastic ones not a metal one. I had a go with the vaseline but couldn't get the Horobin air test thing to work at all. Pressure dropped slowly but too much over about 3 minutes thus suggesting a leak somewhere. And this was in a test pipe with no joints! However, at the suggestion of our tiler we bunged the end of the 110mm pipe (this time with a far more solid metal bung) where it joined the manhole, tightened it good and proper, filled the entire system up from the inspection chambers until the water level was above all the pipes and joints, and then left it for a few hours. Minimal fall in water level (some evaporation on a hot day possibly) so we are happy that our drains are all good. Took some photos for the building inspector in case he ever asks. Some local builders across the road maintain they have never done a drain test using air testing in 20 years of building new houses..... A bit unconventional in the end but we feel confident enough to back fill now.

I have a 100mm bung to seal into a 110mm pipe to pressure test my drain. Can’t get a good seal. Get leakage around the edge. What should I use to make a good seal? Thanks

We have trees almost overhanging our flat roof. A lot of leaves shed in autumn. Blockage risk seems pretty high so the bottle gully with a grid and a spouted downpipe seems like the way to go. Maybe not as neat but infinitely less risky with the leaves and will all be at the rarely visited rear of the house. will post photos when we get to ordering and laying. Thanks for all input and advice. Very helpful ?

Sounds like we will have the same problem with the trees. What does this look like underground? 90 degree bend going into what? A gully before it? Like this (courtesy of pavingexpert.com)

We are surrounded by trees too so crud is a definite (got plenty already, dripping of the edges of the roof, as no gutters yet!). So a shoe over a gully? Like this? Over this sort of thing? with a silt bucket thing in which presumably needs emptying regularly. Or this (below)? A simpler (cheaper) gully. Both options (if I use a spout) seem to require the grid on the top to catch the crud and with pine needles and small debris being most of my crud I am not sure whether this is sufficient? Do I then need to open up the gully top regularly to clean it out? Was trying to be low maintenance but accept that direct access may result in increased crud (even with a hedgehog in the gutter). Will either of these options filter out sufficient crud?

Just getting round to looking at guttering and downpipes. What is the consensus for how to connect the downpipes to the surface water drainage? For a single system (ie no foul water), draining to a soakaway. Connect via a spout over a gully / hopper (with or without rodding access) OR a direct connection into the surface water drain (a 90 degree bend at the base of the downpipe connecting straight in?). The latter seems neater - any issues to be aware of?

Berkshire have been issuing permits to residents only for a few years now so we can't use the tip in Reading. Our local tip is Benson in Oxfordshire. It has been charging for pretty much all waste (except black bags and green waste) since October 2018. I am on first name terms with a couple of the guys there having done so many journeys with black bin bags. But I haven't been blacklisted yet ? . But they don't take plasterboard. The High Wycombe tip, also less than 10 miles away, comes under Bucks. They started charging for everything from 1st April this year. I spent most weekends in March taking plasterboard and excess timber / OSB. Since then I have burned a little bit, freecycled lots of pallets and used my waste collection services carefully. Going to lose the tile off-cuts somewhere beneath the backfill around the house. Trying to minimise skips but have still had 3 plus 2 x 1 tonne plasterboard bag collections. Our tacker didn't seem to care too much about waste, and some spoiled outside in the poor weather in January. I remain horrified at how much waste is generated from building our house. At least the cardboard packaging and pallets can be easily recycled. But there is a lot of plastic packaging.....

Ah ha. Yes we have all this on our land. So not public then. Inspection chamber it is. Thanks

I might be misunderstanding the regs here but this manhole connects to the sewer. We are the first house on it but I guess others connect to it further down. Looks like the min size for a manhole serving a sewer is 1200 diameter or 1200 x 675 ( note 7, table 12, H1Bldg regs). Can I have an inspection chamber (a bit smaller) where I connect to the sewer? If not, does a plastic manhole of the required dimension exist?

That old pitch fibre pipe was definitely a bit flat in places......

We were going to replace the lid obviously but thanks for the brutal honesty. I knew it looked a bit tired but didn’t know how easy it would be to replace. A plastic one? Will check it out.

Pipe at top of photo Is from caravan and only temporary. Pipe on right from above angle is the one we are talking about (white plastic bag handle sticking out of it to pull out the stuff we stuffed in to block it up).

So pull everything out at the manhole then? We are convinced about replacing the pipe, just not sure how to go about the manhole connection bit. Chip away at all the cement around the existing to get it out and then re-cement the plastic one in? Followed by the proper benching etc as the existing may get damaged I guess? A relatively “simple” job just got a bit trickier ?

It’s the same stuff all the way back to the manhole. Any suggestions please?

Thank you @JSHarris and @PeterW. Now going to dig it back to the manhole and see where it joins into clay as it is a clay pipe into the manhole.

Been digging to find drainage from old bungalow so can connect into that rather than breaking another pipe into the manhole. Found this sewage pipe? What is it? Can we connect a modern plastic pipe 110 diameter to it? cut through it with a reciprocating saw. Slightly flexible and smells like bitumen? outer diameter 125mm

Having looked at levels it looks like we’ll need to encase the foul drainage pipes in concrete (our cover is less than 600mm. I have no issue mixing up some concrete but how do you hold the pipe in place? Could some holes through the expansion boards at the joints work? How do the pros do this? Its not a long length of pipe to do (foul waste only at the mo. The surface water drainage is another problem for another day)

Just starting to dig to find the drain pipes that poke out of our MBC EPS slab foundation (thank goodness we took photos a year ago ?) and wondering how to best finish up against the EPS when getting back up to finish ground level. we have put some rat mesh over the EPS. Can we simply back fill with some spare MOT type 1 and bits of rubble or do we need to line the EPS with something? Finished ground level will be at the bottom of aluminium trim. Probably going to have some paving round the house in places but not everywhere.

We used 12mm shuttering ply as it was the cheapest. The stuff that was sourced from China looked smoother than the stuff from Brazil. Ultimately it’s all hidden under plasterboard. We put it in on walls where extra strength needed (over pocket door frames) or extra noise reduction or where fittings like basins would be hanging.

Yes. There is some concrete (dumped after the slab pour) to get out of the way. No way am I hand digging. Thanks for tips. Good idea to put the plans to the BC guy. Will get level checking pronto. thanks @PeterStarck for the pressure test info. Will look at that. I also recall @Russell griffiths Mentioning a chamfering took ages ago on another post so will look at that too. thanks all. Looks like we’ll be able to do it, with all your help ? photos will follow over the next few weeks....

We have three pipes poking out from under our MBC slab to carry foul waste away. Existing manhole is less than 10m from the furthest point. We have had a drainage design done. Got an access point, inspection chamber and some pipe work to fit and then re-using the old connection at the manhole. What pitfalls potentially lay ahead if we have a go at this ourselves? Any advice please? (I should add that HWMBO did the caravan drainage so we have some “previous experience “ but that wasn’t building control inspected or for our forever home!) Are we mad to take this on?