Moving someones water pipe on land

[nickw]

I have a pipe running through the site that feeds the "awkward" neighbour, not directly under the future slab but near enough that the ground work guys said "yeah we will dig through that"  as I'm levelling the plot somewhat, I have the space on the site to situate a new pipe going around the boundary , approx 50m of pipe and trench that would remove any future issues with the pipe location , do I just serve notice on them that I am moving their pipe location and cost is down to me or do I have to do anything else. I would trench and lay new pipe before cutting anything so they would not be inconvenienced for any length of time, plus put in a tap on my boundary for future access.

[Conor]

You first have to establish who owns the pipe (his private supply, yours or the water companies?)  and if there is an appropriate way-leave in place if it's owned by a third party. You may be in breach of a way-leave, but that should have been picked up already as part of the planning searches.

 

(in reality you could very easily lay the new pipe, connect in to the existing pipe, then cut and cap off the old section without interrupting the supply at all and nobody would be the wiser - but I cannot condone that!)

[Jeremy Harris]

Depends.  Does the existing pipe have an easement/wayleave and does that detail exactly where the pipe runs?  If so, it might need to be amended, but nine times out of ten these things just give the right to run the service under/over the land in pretty general terms.  Worth checking, though.

 

The chances are that it may be a pipe that was private, but which now will be owned by the water company, most probably as a communication pipe.  The law changed a few years ago so that pipes across private land that had been privately owned became the responsibility of the water company, if those pipes were on the water main side of the meter and stop cock.

[nickw]

Private pipe, wayleave in place, map of wayleave very very sketching and not good enough to know exactly where. Pipes are still the responsibility of the owners and is old , 2-3 problems a year apparently further up the line due to bad ground and old black brittle pipe. I would most certainly lay the new pipe cut and connect but they will see the work and even without an interruption i'm quite sure they will whinge. If there is no official way of doing it I can only see myself trenching and laying new pipe all ready for when my guys "accidentally " dig through the pipe, I can fix the "mistake" at my cost and being ever so helpful do it quickly ?

[ProDave]

If the existing pipe is old and rotten and keeps bursting surely they would jump at the chance to have a section of it replaced for free?

 

And talk to them, while doing the bit across your land for free, offer to do some of it on their land at cost price at the same time?

[nickw]

On 15/05/2019 at 08:08, ProDave said:

If the existing pipe is old and rotten and keeps bursting surely they would jump at the chance to have a section of it replaced for free?

 

And talk to them, while doing the bit across your land for free, offer to do some of it on their land at cost price at the same time?

 

You would think so, but the bit of pipe i need to move doesn't seem to be the problem area, that plus they are so dead against anything being built I really cannot see a time they won't make things difficult if possible.

[joe90]

Well just offer to do it and say if your contractor accidentally damages the pipe during the build it will take time to correct it, if they turn that down they are stupid (put a new pipe in ready around your land anyway) ?

[Jeremy Harris]

Any chance that the pipe can be re-routed by stealth?

 

I was thinking along the lines of putting the new pipe run in, excavating where the connection points need to be for the old pipe, getting everything ready and then waiting for them to go out.  It would probably only take half an hour or so to make the new connections and cut the old pipe out.

 

With luck they may be none the wiser as to what you've done.

 

For safety's sake it would be best to connect the new pipe at the incoming supply side first, flush it through, then connect it to their supply pipe, that way there's much less chance of any muck getting washed in to their pipe.