Water Supply Cost

[iMCaan]

(apologies if this is not the right place for this post)

 

Just received a quote for new water connection to a self build detached house, shockingly it's £5.5k from Yorkshire Water. The house is fronting onto a street in a residential area. The plan shows the water mains are on the other side of the street and approx. 19m of excavation is required. Is this realistic cost £5.5k, which includes £1.5k  Council & TM (not sure what TM stands for) Charges. What are you're thoughts on this. Anyway to get a new water connection for less?

 

Thanks

Edited November 29, 2023 by iMCaan

[Conor]

TM is traffic management.

It's a full road crossing on a made road. Presumably open cut?

Presume this is a new site and not a replacement dwelling with an existing connection?

[iMCaan]

 

Yes, full road crossing on a quite a wide road. Not sure what you mean by open cut. 

There used to be houses on site before I purchased the land that were demolished in 80s by the previous owner. 

 

 

 

[Conor]

Hmmm... Have a look around and there might be existing connections at the front oft he site. If 1980s then they'll be small metal boxes, sometimes with Water written on the lids. Your plumber or builder will know what to look for. Likely they'll need to be dug up and replaced with modern meter boxes, but that will be much cheaper than a new pipe across the road.

[iMCaan]

Thanks Conor, I'll speak to the plumber.

[nod]

We where given a rural grant so only cost was about £300 including traffic management 

We have the electricity supplied booked about 12 meters across a road 

£5500 We had one quote for £25000

[Canski]

Ask if they can mole the pipe. Saves some disruption and can work out cheaper. 

[LnP]

I just got about 15 m of 25 mm MDPE water pipe installed by moling for £785+VAT. That included making the connection to the main in the street. It also included bringing the new pipe up into an existing house and connecting it with new shut-off valve and drain. No road crossing though. 

[iMCaan]

17 hours ago, Conor said:

Hmmm... Have a look around and there might be existing connections at the front oft he site. If 1980s then they'll be small metal boxes, sometimes with Water written on the lids.

I had a look around, there's no metal box. My neighbour's supply is a meter away from the boundary fence, they too don't have a metal box.

When we dug the trenches for foundations, we did find a disconnected gas pipe but not water pipe. This is where the drive would had been for the old house. The neighbour's water supply too is next to his driveway. I'm quite hesitant to start digging there close to the footpath for water connection just in case I find live gas line intruding into the garden.

 

Gas connection including trench in garden was ~£600 - adjoining footpath with 13 meter trench in garden.

Electricity ~£1800 - adjoining footpath, no trench in garden

[Canski]

10 hours ago, LnP said:

I just got about 15 m of 25 mm MDPE water pipe installed by moling for £785+VAT. That included making the connection to the main in the street. It also included bringing the new pipe up into an existing house and connecting it with new shut-off valve and drain. No road crossing though. 

Did you have 2 separate companies for this ? One for the moling and one for the connection ? I'm interested if you did as my DNO for the electric connection have taken 12 weeks and are still unable to be able to get me a  quote for moling.

[iMCaan]

Yorkshire Water informs me that the water supply for the demolished houses would had be disconnected from the main pipes on the other side of the road. it seems like I don't have much of a choice but to pay out the 5k. 

 

24 minutes ago, Canski said:

Did you have 2 separate companies for this ? One for the moling and one for the connection ? I'm interested if you did as my DNO for the electric connection have taken 12 weeks and are still unable to be able to get me a  quote for moling.

One of the sub-contractors (can't remember whether he was for electricity or gas) told me there are 5 companies involved, security fence, digging on public highway, making the connection,  putting flags down on public highway, and trenching on private property.

[LnP]

58 minutes ago, Canski said:

Did you have 2 separate companies for this ? One for the moling and one for the connection ? I'm interested if you did as my DNO for the electric connection have taken 12 weeks and are still unable to be able to get me a  quote for moling.

I'm preparing to demolish the house into which the water supply goes, prior to building the new house. We're still living in that house and will live onsite in an outbuilding during the build, so need to maintain the utilities. The water meter was inside the old house so I wanted to relocate it out of the house and agreed with United Utilities it would go in the street by the stop valve. UU agreed that the supply to the current house (built in the 1960s) could be replaced under their lead replacement programme. I did it all at the same time and the way it worked was, I paid UU £82 survey cost for the meter relocation, paid a private moling company £785+VAT as described above, they submitted paperwork to UU to demonstrate the work had been done, UU paid me £550 grant under the lead replacement programme, and I paid UU £183 to remove the old meter from the house and  install the new meter in the street. I got quotes for the moling, and they did the connection in the street and installed an Atplas box over the stop valve and all UU had to do was screw on the new meter. It all went very smoothly.

 

I only talked to two moling companies and the other one was more expensive and was going to do less - they were just going to install the new MDPE pipe and leave me to arrange a plumber to bring the new supply into the house and were going to leave UU to do the connection in the street. This would have left me with having to coordinate work to ensure continuity of supply. Very happy with the moling company I chose and UU were easy to work with.

[LnP]

56 minutes ago, iMCaan said:

Yorkshire Water informs me that the water supply for the demolished houses would had be disconnected from the main pipes on the other side of the road. it seems like I don't have much of a choice but to pay out the 5k. 

 

One of the sub-contractors (can't remember whether he was for electricity or gas) told me there are 5 companies involved, security fence, digging on public highway, making the connection,  putting flags down on public highway, and trenching on private property.

As well as the water supply work described above, I've also moved the electricity and gas meters and at the same time got new supplies from the street - Cadent for the gas and SPEN for the electricity. I also wanted to relocate the supplies away from conflicts with the new build. Cadent told me that if I was increasing the size of the supply they would install the new supply from the street or free and I would just have to pay for the fairly short relocation of the meter, which is what I did. I got Cadent to leave the trench across my garden open, so SPEN could use it for the new 3 ph supply. SPEN billed me for the trench but agreed a reimbursement if they could use the Cadent one, as they did. Btw, despite the agreement, I'm still chasing them for the reimbursement. This all went well and the only problem I had was with energy supplier Eon Next who I needed to commit to installing the new meters to ensure continuity of supply. They were a compete pain in the proverbial. I switched to Octopus shortly before the work was done and they were much better. Technicians showed up when required to install both new meters.

[iMCaan]

I had something similar planned. I wanted Northern Gas Network to dig the trench and leave it open for electricity. However, NGN cancelled their visit because two scaffolding poles crossed the trench path and their were some concrete blocks close by. The rescheduled appointment was after Norther Power. All this meant, I had to pay the builder to dig the trench for electricity cable. It was left open for gas so that they could do their work. NGN subcontractor did minimal fill. They said I would still had to do a lot of fill anyway as part of the driveway.

 

I contacted Octopus for the meters but they said it'll take several weeks for engineer to come out install the meters. Will go with Scottish Power who said it'll be 2 to 4 weeks.

[Canski]

5 hours ago, LnP said:

paid a private moling company £785+VAT as described above, they submitted paperwork to UU to demonstrate the work had been done, UU

I got quotes for the moling, and they did the connection in the street and installed an Atplas box over the stop valve and all UU had to do was screw on the new meter. It all went very smoothly.

 

I only talked to two moling companies and the other one was more expensive and was going to do less - they were just going to install the new MDPE pipe and leave me to arrange a plumber to bring the new supply into the house and were going to leave UU to do the connection in the street. This would have left me with having to coordinate work to ensure continuity of supply. Very happy with the moling company I chose and UU were easy to work with.

 

 

Is there any chance you could DM me the details of the moling company. It may help me get connected.

 

[LnP]

26 minutes ago, Canski said:

 

 

Is there any chance you could DM me the details of the moling company. It may help me get connected.

 

Here you go https://www.pipelineservices.co.uk

I'm not sure if the forum rules or etiquette would prefer me to DM this, but why not give them a shout out as they did a good. I'm sure Forum Admin will advise if I got this wrong!

[jack]

15 minutes ago, LnP said:

Here you go https://www.pipelineservices.co.uk

I'm not sure if the forum rules or etiquette would prefer me to DM this, but why not give them a shout out as they did a good. I'm sure Forum Admin will advise if I got this wrong!

 

You've been on the forum for a bit so it's fine to share suppliers you've used. That's particularly true given someone else asked for the info!

 

 

[iMCaan]

Thanks @Canski and @LnP Only if I knew about moling companies before it may had saved me a bit of money.

 

Yorkshire Water want the blue mains water pipe on the other side of the garage, about 5 meters away from where it is located now. This would mean it can be placed in the same trench (still open) as gas and electricity. Furthermore, the gas engineer suggested this from day one. He said it'll be better for the water stopcock to be next to the unvented cylinder in the garage then under the sink in the kitchen.

 

Looking at the architect's drawings with a bit more experience now, the builder has placed the water mains pipe in a wrong place. The builder run the mains water pipe from the front garden through the foundation to the kitchen at the back. However, on the drawings the stop tap is in the utility room, adjoining kitchen and behind the garage. Furthermore, the mains water pipe is not long enough to reach the footpath. [trying to keep calm]