Over the Easter weekend, our drains packed in. Again.
I have spent an inordinate amount of time on the ‘phone trying to get the people who fixed our drains before to come and do it again…and/or get the insurers to send someone.
However , one of the guys who came out merrily told us that we were probably a “Section 24″. As neither the original drain company, nor the insurers, nor the loss adjustor operating on behalf of the insurers had mentioned this before, I have enquired further…
It’s all to do with Section 24 of the Public Health Act. If your house was built before 1 October 1937 and shares the drainage system with another property (most do, it seems), then amazingly the drains are counted as a public sewer and are the responsibility of your local water company, even if they are on your own property. For more, see here, especially pages 3 and 4.
Make sure you’ve checked with your local water company first if the above applies to you!
This would appear to be our situation. Meaning, we have paid for our drains to be fixed even though it’s our water company’s problem. So the drains we thought were fixed aren’t, and suddenly the situation is a lot more complicated.
And the drains still aren’t fixed, but are, thank the Lord, working at the moment.
2006 is quite a year so far, and we’re not even a third of the way through.