# Legal Advice Blocked Drains



## tester12 (26 Jul 2014)

Hello,

I hope this is the correct forum for posting this question.

There is a situation regarding a blocked sewerage drain.  The drain is blocking due to an obstruction in an apartment complex which is adjacent to the House that is experiencing the situation. i.e. Group of houses have drain going through an apartment complex.  The drain was originally responsibility of Council but now they say they are not.   This connection is only for the houses and is not fed from the complex and eventually connects to manhole which exits to main sewer  The drain blocks consistently and is clearly a Health/Environment issue.

Does anyone know the position regarding who is responsible and how this is enforced to recify the drain which is outside the control of the House experience the blockage.


----------



## Branz (26 Jul 2014)

Is the sewer from the apt block blocked or is it okay?

Who has paid for the work before?

My experience that whereever the blockage is has to pay for freeing it up

Our row of houses had an issue where a new owner with a house full of babies and young children, who was the first one on a row of four, was putting baby-wipes down the toilet and they continually blocked the main manhole which is on my property.
I was paying 160 euro to have it cleared.

We never had an issue for 20 years until they arrived.

They denied all knowledge and told us to go...

The 3 adjoining neighbours installed a CCTV camera in the first manhole off their property and collected several days of continuos footage, put it on a a series of dvds and dropped it in to them.
End of blockages.


----------



## tester12 (26 Jul 2014)

No the sewer for the apartments is not blocked it is a seperate pipe.  The problem goes back a lot of years when the apartments were built.  In recent years the person OAP living in the last house before the pipe exited to the apartment complex would ring the drainage section of the council and they would send a suction truck out to remove the material by going into apartment complex and pumping out the offending pipe for the houses to the main drain.  This usually happened once a year or so but last time they said so suspect this timing was when Irish Water took over.


----------



## Leo (28 Jul 2014)

So there is access to this drainage pipe within the bounds of the apartment complex? 

See this previous thread. Note in there states: 


> I've got a Council notice of their webpage that says*"Responsibility  for clearing blockages or repairing defects in the shared drains is a  matter to be resolved by the  residents that are served by it."*


----------



## Guns N Roses (28 Jul 2014)

tester12 said:


> This usually happened once a year or so but last time they said so suspect this timing was when Irish Water took over.



Irish Water has taken over responsibility for the provision of public water and waste water infrastructure from the Local Authorities. 

The Local Authorities now only carry out work on the water & waste water network on Irish Water's behalf.

Irish Water will only undertake repairs if the pipe is on public land. It would appear in your situation that the problem is on private land.

You could try to approach Irish Water but I suspect that they will say that it is your's & your neighbours responsibility.

If so the first thing you should do is get a CCTV survey to identify the cause of the problem.


----------



## RainyDay (29 Jul 2014)

Isn't there some kind of 'first fix' policy with Irish Water, where they will cover the costs of the first fix on any particular drain?


----------

