brewdexta
The biggest tool in the box
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This is not your usual collapsed household drain, but the type that take away rain and storm water. We have several collapsing in the village causing water to course down the roads and sometimes it then comes across my property washing away cobbles and depositing loose road top dressing.
Knowledge of where the field drains run has long been lost, the old guys who used to know where they were have been pensioned off and council outsourced drain clearance so all that local knowledge was lost.
So if a storm drain is blocked, you call out the council, they send out the drain clearing company, they determine its not on council land but disappears across somebodies field or woods so it's their responsibility. That usually takes about a year while they get a camera down it and enables the contractors to screw as much cash as they can out of the problem.
Fair enough, next problem, finding the collapse. The route of these old stone built drains is not predictable, my neighbour has his digger out now, it's like time team in his garden there are so many trenches trying to find the drain, he has an approximate distance of the blockage from the road given by the council but it's either diving below 6 foot deep or takes some strange turns.
He's probably going to get back on to the council to try and see if they can use a radio locator to help. That will be another 6 months during which I'll be getting the brunt of any storm water coursing down the road 'cos the storm drain is partially blocked.
I suggested he ask them to locate the blockage more precisely as I used to work for the GPO years ago. If we had a blocked duct, we put a radio transmitter onto the end of the drain rods, shoved it up the duct until it stopped, then got out the detector and walked around until you picked up a strong signal, at that point you knew that within about a foot or so square, where the issue was, you just had to dig down.
So, as this is not an isolated case, we have other blocked drains in the village, and we have a village fund, I was going to try and buy a radio transmitter and detector, ex GPO/BT if possible. I have a few feelers out with my few remaining BT contacts, it was over 30 years ago, but if anybody knows where to get one of these, or similar, please let me know.
Cheers
Andy
Knowledge of where the field drains run has long been lost, the old guys who used to know where they were have been pensioned off and council outsourced drain clearance so all that local knowledge was lost.
So if a storm drain is blocked, you call out the council, they send out the drain clearing company, they determine its not on council land but disappears across somebodies field or woods so it's their responsibility. That usually takes about a year while they get a camera down it and enables the contractors to screw as much cash as they can out of the problem.
Fair enough, next problem, finding the collapse. The route of these old stone built drains is not predictable, my neighbour has his digger out now, it's like time team in his garden there are so many trenches trying to find the drain, he has an approximate distance of the blockage from the road given by the council but it's either diving below 6 foot deep or takes some strange turns.
He's probably going to get back on to the council to try and see if they can use a radio locator to help. That will be another 6 months during which I'll be getting the brunt of any storm water coursing down the road 'cos the storm drain is partially blocked.
I suggested he ask them to locate the blockage more precisely as I used to work for the GPO years ago. If we had a blocked duct, we put a radio transmitter onto the end of the drain rods, shoved it up the duct until it stopped, then got out the detector and walked around until you picked up a strong signal, at that point you knew that within about a foot or so square, where the issue was, you just had to dig down.
So, as this is not an isolated case, we have other blocked drains in the village, and we have a village fund, I was going to try and buy a radio transmitter and detector, ex GPO/BT if possible. I have a few feelers out with my few remaining BT contacts, it was over 30 years ago, but if anybody knows where to get one of these, or similar, please let me know.
Cheers
Andy