Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Understanding the drains...
Hi,
I'm trying to get a better idea of the likely way in which the drains for our house work, as a part of generally understanding the house.
The house is a standard gardens property from around 1899, so much the same as many of the houses in the Harringay area, so I suspect there will be a lot of common features.
Firstly, do local houses usually have two drainage system, one for rainwater & one for sewage from inside the house? There have been previous discussions on mis-connected systems causing pollution in the River Lee/Lea, which would suggest that this is the case.
I have a feeling that the set up in our front garden may be unmodified from the original:
- A small circular metal grate over a drain in the middle of the concrete, with a ceramic funnel shaped device under it (presumably going to the rainwater drain).
- A circular man hole cover near the gate, which looks very like the ones used for coal holes in some parts of London.
- Finally, there is a vent (like a periscope) by the front wall of the Garden - maybe this is to prevent siphoning or something?
Information/ideas appreciated!
Thanks,
Michael
Tags for Forum Posts: drains, house, misconnected drains, plumbing
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Isabelle on
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I can only speak from experience with my house which is from around 1920. Should have a two-drainage system, even though you might not see it, however with time it's possible that added/replaced pipes have been connected to the wrong one. Had Thames Water coming to inspect the whole building and they noticed one new pipe needed branching out differently, so perhaps you could call them and see what they say? Izzy
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Permalink Reply by michaelw on
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I found the "connectright" site via Thames Water, which gives an assessment of the chance that your property could be polluting due to a mis-connection - you put the age of your house & your postcode in to this page:
http://www.connectright.org.uk/check-your-existing-connections/
In my case the risk was low, due to:
(i) A house built before the 1920s
(ii) A combined sewer - i.e. rainfall and sewage in the same sewer (which is how it used to be done)
Ironically, the combined sewers themselves are creating major pollution of the River Lea (and the Thames), as they don't have enough capacity to deal with sewage flows & rainfall these days, so overflow (through Combined Sewer Overflows, CSOs) into the Lea & Thames (maybe even during the Olympics).
The solution to the CSO problem will be a combination of reducing peak flow (through water butts, not concreting over gardens etc) & the multi-billion pound tunnels than Thames are planning to build under the Lea & Thames.
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