h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not totally convinced that house ownership is a good thing. Never have, really, although I do accept it has its good points. This week hasn't been one of them.

Last week our downstairs plug sockets tripped. It wasn't a device tripping, it was faulty wiring. Electrician came round, isolated the stretch where the wiring had gone, popped round the following morning and put in a new stretch of wiring to replace it. No need to look too hard - it was an easy fix, no problem.

Then it went again on Monday. Electrician came round on Tuesday morning to have another look and found the cause of why the wiring had gone - our underfloors are a foot deep in water.

This in itself isn't as bad as it first seems. The houses were built with four foot gaps under the floors for this reason, so the water table can rise and then drain away without flooding the house.

The problem is that earlier this year we put in a new damp course because we were thinking of selling and not having a modern damp course was putting people off. Now the damp (well, puddle) can't rise up through the bricks and evaporate away, the water is just sitting, festering under our house. It's smelling too.

The solution? Fill in the underfloor with concrete so that the water can't pool in the first place. For our whole ground floor. Then of course replace the flooring, because it will have been ripped up in order to fill the place with concrete. For the the whole ground floor (well, apart from our tiny kitchen, for some reason that's already concreted - thank heavens for small mercies).

I'm going to see if the house insurance covers this sort of thing, although I don't hold out much hope given that it's not been caused by anything in particular, or if it has it's been because we've had work done to the house. Still worth calling and asking though.

*sigh*

We have someone coming around to give us a quote of the cost and a rough idea of whether or not the house will be liveable for the period of time.

Hopefully this can be done sooner rather than later though - if we wait too long it's going to get more awkward for me and if I go in to labour early I can't see them letting me go home if I don't have any floors!

Happy days...

This may be a totally off the wall suggestion Vip - but places here have pumps that automatically start up once water collects in cellars ( most garages here are underground. The pump is situated in a sump, lower than the rest of the floor, and pumps the rainwater out through the drainage system.


I've seen this used in a hotel where there was a culvert going under one of the main rooms, which would otherwise have had damp and possible flooding.

I've also built a system ( or rather the sub-contractors did the labour) where I built a sump and pump under and elaborate sunken garden, to stop flooding. The rain water there was pumped upwards into the house drains.

ah, missed out the fact that the hotel was in Manchester. The garage sump/pumps are here in Lanza

Yeah, I wondered about this too, although I would be concerned about noise. I expect that noise is something that lots of people would be worried about though, so they may have solved that problem.

At the moment we're still in the casting about, looking for solutions phase, so I'll add it to the list.

Rubbish isn't it?

Holes, is the answer, and plenty of them


nothing quite like a portible hole


RJR

I don't think the pump makes that much noise, it's only like a sturdy pond pump and only works long enough to empty the sump. Once it's done, it turns off. ( and its in a plastic tub - you lay land drains to it, covered in hardcore.)

Holes - we have a Guide entry for that: A68062971.

I subbed that one! Yay!

I remember doing some serious reviewing on that one too, which is why it sticks in the brain. I like the Entry though, factual, proper advice about something everyday.

On hold with the insurers - they haven't said no yet.

Plus - the insurers have said they'll come out and look at it (better than a stright no, anyway).

Minus - my oven has stopped working. This may or may not be related. The grill part works, just the oven bit.

We had a similar problem a couple of years back, Vip. The kitchen floor was rotting away. When the men came to investigate we (and they) discovered there was a sizable cellar under the house. Eight foot high at the back five and a bit foot high at the front. the back had a rather large pool of water in it and the rest was damp, damp, damp. We now have a sump pump and the floor and walls have been covered in oversized bubble wrap. The pump *does* make a little noise. You can hear the water rushing out into the drain outside (like when the washing machine drains) and then the pump makes a small 'farting' sound. It amuses us no end and sometimes we hear the gushing, wait for the pump sound and say 'Oh, excuse me '

We don't own the house, it's Council, but why they didn't realise there was a cellar underneath, I'll never know

This is what it looks like now (well, before we put all the carp in it)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10569202@N06/3251893482/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10569202@N06/3251892472/in/photostream/

holes are much better, you can make them any size and shape

Yeah, you can even make them negatively sized, then they're called mounds

That actually looks pretty Magwitch. Ours is definitely not a cellar proper; it's only a few feet high and the floor was covered in ash last time we looked (when it was dry, of course).

I do have some photos, but given I was absolutely petrified of dropping my phone into the murk they're not very good. And, to be honest, look a lot like some bricks with some black water nearby.

Hopefully the insurance man will not only tell us whether or not they cover such things (I'd put money either way) but the best options for putting it right, as I assume he's qualified to tell us if he's qualified to say yay or nay.

Good news! We're discovered the source of the problem!

Bad news! It's the sewerage!

Yes, just what I wanted to know - that smell is in fact raw sewage (and bath water, and kitchen water,etc.) flooding the floors under my feet. Uck.

The water company are sending someone out within 12 hours to look into the problem, thankfully.

However, the question still remains - how did the water get from the sweerage pipe into our house?

They found the blockage (much further down the line - apparently it was a chunk of wood.... how????) and the water under the floorboards just drained away like magic.

They then put a camera down the sewer pipe and found that there's a pipe going into it, which is draining clear water into the sewer pipe.

Now, it *could* be that this was how the water got into my house. But why is it there in the first place? And why did the clear water continue to flow at a constant rate even after the under-floor water had drained away, and after we turned off he water stopcock?

The water people are scratching their heads a bit. And also trying to figure out what to do about the smell now that the water they were intending to pump out has drained away, leaving the debris behind...*




*We don't know that much sewage ended up in there. It was probably mostly ordinary water plus a bit of icky stuff, so the debris is mostly the ash and soil that was originally under the floors, not... *ahem* ... sewage.

The main thing is it's fixed

Well... no, not really. The blockage is removed, but there still is no answer as to why having a block in the sewer flooded the underfloor, so it could happen again if another brick got stuck down there (just got work it was a brick, not a lump of wood).

And the debris still smells. They're sending out a clean-up crew who'll be here in two hours (poor sods) to re-flood it and then pump it back out, but there's no guarantee that it'll work as they can only access the living room, and not the hallway or the kitchen.

It's still a better scenario than not knowing anything, and at least we don't have to live with the *really* bad smell all over the weekend and through until next week.

I assume you mean word, not work - unless you are being required to fix it yourself, which bodes badly for their technical skill