Saturday 11th February - Modern Plumbing

It's not until it stops working that you really appreciate how wonderful mains drainage is.

We share our 'dirty water' drain, sewer, call it what you will, with three neighbours.  It runs along the back gardens; we are number 3, and an elderly and rather frail couple next door are number 4. The drain blocks every year or so between their house and ours  and yesterday afternoon was one of those occasions. 

I think the problem is that they just don't use much water; since the water meters arrived they've installed a water saver device in the cistern. They have showers instead of baths, don't run a dishwasher and don't create much in the way of laundry. So the drain silts up and then blocks.

It was a long cold job; eventually our neighbour was persuaded that at 90 years old his days of unblocking drains were really long since over, and he phoned his home services insurance. Hey ho. Everything was sorted by six... 

It's a bizarre situation. He, or his insurance company, is responsible for the drain as far as the boundary fence. We, or our insurancecompany, are responsible for the drain from our manhole as far as the boundary with the next house along. Which leaves a length of drain between our manhole and the boundary fence on the blocked side not covered by either householder, us or the elderly couple next door. Apparently that the Water Company's responsibility.  

Himself's great victory yesterday was to persuade the drain clearing man that the blockage was not in our garden, and would he please stay until he cleated it, rather than packing up and telling us to calk the Water Company. Like I said, bizarre....