Outside stopcock, direction of mains pipe?

[Del-inquent]

I’m trying to find my mains pipe at the point it exits the stopcock in the road. Closest I can dig a trench is 18 inches away, so I stupidly assumed it would be a 5 minute job…

 

looking at these photos of the stopcock in the pavement, what direction would you expect the mains pipe to run? I’ve dug a 5ft long trench to the depth as the stopcock plus a bit… no joy. Would it be likely to do a 90 deg turn or anything immediately outside the box?!

[Del-inquent]

Nobody got any hints, or is it a case of “could be any direction”?

[Mr Punter]

The water pipe should be 750mm deep.  The route is normally a fairly straight line from the point of entry to your house via the meter to the connection in the road.

[saveasteading]

@Mr Punteris correct. Unless there is any obvious reason for a detour, such as a tree, rockery etc it will be the easiest route.

Either 90° to the road or the shortest route to your internal stopcock.

 

What depth is the inside of the meter box? Dig that deep and a bit. Carefully.

[Conor]

I've seen 1000s of meter box installs. 90% of the time it'll run straight. The other 10% could be anywhere. 

 

First, is the outlet side of the box pointing towards your property? I.e. in your photo the customer side will be at the bottom of your photo, the meter side. The valve side is the incoming mains. Sometimes they are installed at 180⁰ if the supplying main is close to the property and they need to loop the pipe back to avoid the main or other services. 

 

Post a photo of the surrounding area, camera facing your property.

 

Also, are you sure that's your meter?

Edited January 5 by Conor

[Del-inquent]

35 minutes ago, Conor said:

I've seen 1000s of meter box installs. 90% of the time it'll run straight. The other 10% could be anywhere. 

 

First, is the outlet side of the box pointing towards your property? I.e. in your photo the customer side will be at the bottom of your photo, the meter side. The valve side is the incoming mains. Sometimes they are installed at 180⁰ if the supplying main is close to the property and they need to loop the pipe back to avoid the main or other services. 

 

Post a photo of the surrounding area, camera facing your property.

 

Also, are you sure that's your meter?

Definitely my meter, the stopcock turns off our property anyway 😂

 

I’ll try and get a photo when it’s not torrential rain, in the meantime, the red line is the road direction, the blue arrow points to the house.

[Conor]

Ok, the. The pipe will be coming out to the RHS, bending round before going in to you pretty. At a guess, 1-2m to RHS of the box. Bend radius on a 25mm MDPE is pretty big.

[Del-inquent]

1 hour ago, Conor said:

Ok, the. The pipe will be coming out to the RHS, bending round before going in to you pretty. At a guess, 1-2m to RHS of the box. Bend radius on a 25mm MDPE is pretty big.

Well that would explain why my trench didn't reveal it then...

I believe my pipe is Black Alkathene - house build is around the 50's - 60's and at the internal stopcock it's got black pipe. The main reason I wanted to find the other end is that inside the house where it comes up inside, the pipe is run inside a large conduit and appears to go diagonally from the mid side of the house, toward the front door, underneath the slab. A relative (retired developer) mentioned that he's seen the conduit nearly all the way to the meter in similar properties.  This is the main reason I wanted to find the meter end - if it does, I'm wondering if I can replace the black pipe with MDPE simply by pulling it through the conduit. The current position of the stopcock is less than ideal, it could do with being 3m further away and if I could get it through the conduit could simply be run under the floor to the ideal position. I don't really want to have any joins in the pipe under the floor.

Currently my trench is full of water ,of course, and it was filling up with ground water even while I was digging it so I'm a bit stuffed now until the weather gives me a break.