by Lancastrian »
Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:35 pm
Hi rosebery,
Thank for the valuable input into the problem :)
With regard to the previous here are my observations : -
1. Met neighbours contractor on site and he confirmed there is no leak and that it is not unusual for stop cock chambers to fill with water."
Did you ask him why the others aren't?
Yes and he said that the other two stop cocks were not as far down in the ground to which I responded that his comment rather proved my point that with the raising of the land above our stop cock it is now below the water level.
The other two stop cocks have not had the land above them raised - they are still at the same depth as they always were.
2. How did he confirm there is no leak? Did he actually check or did he just say so without doing anything?
I was with him all the time and he didn't check anything but said that if it had been a leak the water would have been bubbling up and overflowing onto the drive.( Seems logical to me but I am only a layman ) - I have checked each day and the water is usually just up to the underside of the lid and occasionally has dropped by an inch but no lower.
3. "He says he encased the stop cock in a vertical 4 inch drain pipe and that the reason for it filling up with water is that it is non porous and the water can't get away - He was not particularly interested and offered no solution and was not helpful."
If only yours is filling up there is a leak or he has altered the surface water drainage The contractor can't have it every way.
I think he has altered the surface water drainage because I raised another point with him which I raised with the neighbour who owns the drive last winter i.e that since the chippings were removed and replaced with tarmac we had great difficulty getting off our drive( which has tegula block paving ) onto the shared drive which has smooth tarmac and the incline has been increased by the raising of the lane and we can't get the same traction as we did on the chippings on a lesser incline.
The neighbour wouldn't do anything about it last winter and the Contractor just shrugs his shoulders.
The penny began to drop that he might have done something to affect the draining away of the water because when it freezes the ice on the section of tarmac from our gate and upwards to just beyond the stop cock lingers for hours longer than on the rest of the lane - I think that the water is not getting away from under that section of tarmac which is at the lowest point.
In fact the Contractor agreed that water would be taking longer to go from there and the ice would remain longer because it is the low point.
I said he should have anticipated this when he redesigned the drive and could he not have used a " rougher " sort of tarmac or some other surface which would have given more traction but he said no he couldn't.
Do you think someone in another section of the forum would be able to tell me whether any better surface could have been applied to the incline -the rest of the shared drive is flat - no problem when I get to there.
4. "Problem is I can't see the tap for water so it is difficult engaging the tap with the key in case of emergency and would be impossible for my wife."
It is often the case that you have to ferret about with the key because you can't actually see the valve and do it by feel.
Noted.
5. "We asked him to preserve our stop cock before he reconfigured the drive. The drive was surfaced with chippings and the neighbour had it dug out and tarmacced and the contractor in so doing raised the height of the lane where our stop cock was"
So previously surface water on the drive just soaked in. Now it has to run off. If Your stopcock is at a low point then yes it will fill with water.
Yes it used to soak in before - now it seems to lie just below the surface.
6. "Could he have arranged it so our stop cock was still near the surface or was this impossible because he raised the level of the ground above it - seems to me as a layman that our stop cock is now below the water level."
That would have meant rerouting the supply pipe. Your stopcock is in the same place it was before -its the height of the roadway that has changed and I can't see how raising the level of the drive affects the water table. What he seems to have done is changed the surface water drainage which is inevitable changing from chippings to tarmac.
Yes I understand now.
My concern is that if the stop cock tap is continually immersed in water then it will corrode or jam up.
In another house we once had a problem when our Builder turned an external stop cock off temporarily whilst doing some plumbing inside and when they went to turn it on again the tap broke off still in the off position and we were without water until they could excavate and install a new tap.
I am trying to get the neighbour/his contractor to put right the two problems which we didn't have before reconfiguration of the drive but to no avail - Before we had a dry accessible and easily maintainable stop cock and a surface outside our own drive which we could get off without problem - Now we don't have either of those two.
So far the Contractor has stonewalled me.
Once I have learned what ( as good practice ) should have been done re the stop cock and the tarmac at the time and what can now be done to rectify the 2 problems I will have another go at the Neighbour/ His Contractor.
