Am I being unreasonable to feel a bit annoyed? (a long tale)

[Oldgreybeard]

The chap from WW was here for hours today, extremely open and honest about the way things work, and did a very thorough check, including talking with everyone supplied by this pipe, checking the pressure but, would you believe it, the leak seems to have now magically fixed itself. No more loud hissing noise, nothing he could detect with his listening pole, nada.

I asked him if leaks just fixed themselves like this, he said no, in his 25 years experience he's never seen it happen. He did, however, admit that WW had had other reports of the hissing noise from the leak outside our place, and that the contractors that repaired the leak at the top of the lane had filed a report that there was a significant leak just where I'd marked, making a lot of noise.

He's not sure what's going on, but is not going to close the job and is arranging for a monitoring valve to be fitted at the top of the lane, as he's convinced there most probably are leaks along the pipe that he just can't hear (the chap at the top of the lane also told him the long history of the pipe being repaired several times in recent years, and pointed out the patches in the tarmac for each of four previous repairs).

The bad news is that his view is that, although WW will repair any leaks in the pipe for free, if it needs replacement our neighbour will have to foot the bill for the new pipe, as it seems that most of the leaks are likely to be in the stretch running around 100m down the lane that only feeds their cottage. There's no way they can afford this, they are both retired and a bit older than me, so I'm just hoping that it doesn't come to that. The crazy thing is that, if the pipe does need replacing, then as soon as it's replaced it will then belong to WW, in effect.

Right now we have an assurance that the leak detected on 22nd December and marked by myself and the other WW chap will be repaired (even though the chap that came out today said he couldn't hear it and didn't think there was now a leak there at all) and that the monitoring valve at the point where this pipe connect to the main will allow them to easily check for water leaks in this run of pipe in future.

I've no complaints at all with the staff from WW I've met, they all seem to genuinely want to resolve the problem. I'm more than ever convinced that their management is, however, complete and utter shite, and that's putting it politely. No doubt this saga will run for some time yet, but hopefully reporting it here might help someone if they have a similar issue, even if it's just to provide forewarning that they may be in for a prolonged battle.

[AE-NMidlands]

I think you mentioned a stop valve at the top of the lane... Is it possible that after the "repairs" it's now only cracked open so the audible leak has disappeared? This would allow them to claim that they have completed the job - until the people on the main start to complain of loss of pressure whenever anything more than a minimum flow is needed. Given your potential claim against them it would allow them to say it wasn't their fault...
Or am I being too cynical?
A

[Oldgreybeard]

I think you mentioned a stop valve at the top of the lane... Is it possible that after the "repairs" it's now only cracked open so the audible leak has disappeared? This would allow them to claim that they have completed the job - until the people on the main start to complain of loss of pressure whenever anything more than a minimum flow is needed. Given your potential claim against them it would allow them to say it wasn't their fault...
Or am I being too cynical?
A

I don't think it's possible to be too cynical! They are definitely concerned about the way water has very obviously undermined the old fence and the edge of our drive - it's obvious from the appearance of loads of gravel at the surface of the area we covered with fresh topsoil that something is going on with water coming up from underground somewhere. The chap that came out today mentioned the liability for damage to the foundations of the new wall, but in the context of it possibly being our neighbour's responsibility if it is being caused by a leak from the pipe. The whole liability thing about pipes under public highways seems to be a right old mess to me.

My neighbour (a former firefighter, so has a feel for what water does under pressure) reckons their may be a really big leak further up the lane now, so big that it's not making much noise. His logic seems sound to me; a small leak under high pressure is likely to make a lot of noise, a large leak, which causes the pressure to drop (just because the pipe's not that large) may not make a much noise. There's certainly a hell of a lot of water all along the base of our wall, far more than the recent rain could account for I think. The area along our new wall is now like a very boggy marsh, and I suspect my neighbour's right, the leak's got bigger and consequently isn't making as much noise.

[Bugtownboy]

Few things that are bothering me with some of the assumptions OGB -

If the leak had become larger, wouldn’t this have had a significant impact on domestic water pressure in those homes fed by the pipe ? I know when we had our leak, water pressure was the first indicator - at its worst, we had virtually no water from upstairs taps (all mains fed). Are people complaining of this ?

From our experience, WW have monitors on their network showing significant changes to flow, indicating a leak. This gives them a degree of granularity to location. One of the inspectors that came out said they were aware of a leak somewhere in our general area a couple of days before it was reported.

Given the amount of water that you think is being lost, have you noticed any difference in the water analysis of your well water - presuming some of the leak finds it’s way to the well ?

Can’t remember the detail, but isn’t your wall a recent construction - has this affected groundwater flows in any way ? That is, are there multiple issues that may be confounding the situation ?

[Oldgreybeard]

Few things that are bothering me with some of the assumptions OGB -

If the leak had become larger, wouldn’t this have had a significant impact on domestic water pressure in those homes fed by the pipe ? I know when we had our leak, water pressure was the first indicator - at its worst, we had virtually no water from upstairs taps (all mains fed). Are people complaining of this ?

From our experience, WW have monitors on their network showing significant changes to flow, indicating a leak. This gives them a degree of granularity to location. One of the inspectors that came out said they were aware of a leak somewhere in our general area a couple of days before it was reported.

Given the amount of water that you think is being lost, have you noticed any difference in the water analysis of your well water - presuming some of the leak finds it’s way to the well ?

Can’t remember the detail, but isn’t your wall a recent construction - has this affected groundwater flows in any way ? That is, are there multiple issues that may be confounding the situation ?

The pressure has dropped at the one house that this run of pipe feeds, but we don't know by how much. The main is at the top of the lane, about 10m above the height of the lane outside our place and our neighbours (we are both at the valley bottom). The pressure at the main is supposed to be about 4 to 5 bar, according to the chap that was around yesterday. The pressure at our neighbour's place (at the water meter in the verge) is now about 3 bar so something odd is going on, as my rough maths suggests that just the 10m head from the slope of of the lane should given them about 1 bar over the mains pressure at the top, so somewhere around 3 bar of pressure is being lost.

The lack of monitors is one thing the chap mentioned yesterday, so he's going to get one fitted to the valve at the top of the lane, in the hope that will show them what's going on. This water supply isn't really a network. A private water company took over a big well/borehole that the war department had dug during WWI to supply an army camp and this company piped water to standpipes around the village in the early 1920s. When the water boards were set up they took this over and added plumbing to the houses and installed a water storage tank and treatment plant up at the top of the hill behind us (roughly 55m higher than where we are, looking at the OS map). This is what feeds the main in the road above us. From the WW maps our water supply isn't connected to anywhere else.

Our well water comes from a different aquifer. There are three aquifers locally, the chalk downs (which is where WW get their water from), then under that is a rocky layer of upper greensand, that is where most of the local building stone comes from (the base of it's about ground level down here), then there is about 40m thick layer of very hard gault clay/mudstone (our house sits on that) and under that there is another big aquifer, the lower greensand layer, which is mostly fine running sand under the clay. We pull our water from the lower greensand, and the hydrogeologist reckoned that this sealed from the water from the chalk that forms our stream, because of the thick layer of gault. The water we get has a lot of iron in it from the greensand, whereas the water from the chalk springs that supply the WW water from the well doesn't, but they have a problem with their water being very hard, whereas ours is about half the hardness. We do have to have an aeration sand filter system to oxidise out the iron though, something WW don't have to do.

Behind where the wall is we dug a deep (about a metre deep) trench to run SSEPD,s underground electricity cable and BTOpenreach's phone cable. That was ten years ago and that trench kept filling with water that was flowing in from the lane side the whole time. We had to keep a pump running to allow the SSEPD and BT people to lay their cables and ducts in there. At the time we assumed this was spring water, as the resting level was about a foot or so higher than the stream, but thinking back this was during a long, dry hot summer, when all the local springs had dried up.

I had timber fencing put in on the lane side of this filled in trench, but had to get the contractor back as within a couple of months four or five of the fence posts were really loose and the fence was at risk of falling over. He put longer posts in as he said the ground was very boggy and that's why the posts came loose. The new fence posts went the same way, and started leaning at crazy angles, so I tied them back with wires to helical ground anchors on the dry ground alongside our drive. The posts then started trying to move upwards, so in September this year we decided to replace the fence with a stone wall. When the fence posts were pulled out water gushed out of the post holes right where the hissing leak appeared!

The wall contractor dug a trench for the foundations and it filled with water, all flowing in from under the lane. WW were called out (not by us, by an anonymous complainant) and they found three or four leaks in the pipe under the lane. They wouldn't commit to the water in the trench coming from their leaks, though. We changed the wall foundations by digging a sump and putting in a pump to get the water out, then the guys bored some holes down a couple of feet and put some short precast concrete posts in as piles, grouted in with loads of postfix, so we could get them solid before the flowing water washed it out. They then used concrete lintels to bridge across the piles, and poured some fast curing concrete around them, so they are now embedded along with the tops of the concreted in short fence post piles. The top of the foundation concrete is a few inches below the lane surface, and the stone wall is built up from there.

The water runs pretty much where it always has done, right alongside the edge of the tarmac of the lane, which is maybe half a metre from the base of our wall. No doubt the wall foundations are deflecting the water away from flowing under the edge of our drive, although our drive is higher than the lane by a fair bit.

It's almost a certainty that at this time of year there are springs further along the lane, although we've not ever seen any on our side of it, they all seem to flow out of the hillside on the other side for some reason, maybe because where we are is very solid gault clay, perhaps. On the other side of the lane, around 100m further down, there is an old quarry, where the greensand stone was dug out to build most of the local houses. There are springs all over that area in wet weather, although they almost always dry up in the summer.

[Mr Gus]

Time for some divination of the water. get yer wee flags out!

[Oldgreybeard]

Time for some divination of the water. get yer wee flags out!

Divining for water here would be hilarious! The stuff is everywhere at this time of year, with goodness knows how many springs flowing like billy oh over the other side of the lane. Much further up the valley, towards the chalk escarpment where the springs that feed the stream come from, there are even springs visibly bubbling up through the gravel stream bed. Some of the houses on the far side of the village (maybe a mile or so away) have ponds and water features fed from springs in their gardens. Most of these springs dry up in the summer though, whereas our water problem along the boundary is much the same all year around, even when we have a very dry summer.

I did ask the hydrogeologist I used when planning the well whether it was worth getting a diviner in to help put the well in the right place. His reply was that wherever we drilled a hole we'd find water at the depth we were looking at (around 150ft down) so a diviner would be a waste of time.

WW now know where this pipe is, they've used a CAT to scan the lane and know exactly where it runs. The problem is whether, when they dig down in their marked spots, they will find the leaks or not.

[Mr Gus]

You've had so many water problems, I'd be wanting to try a seasonal flow map to at least understand surges / trickles & the like.

[Swwils]

Your neighbors will love paying for all this