Where to find maps of local water mains around a village?

[Mick Annick]

Water supply here is the responsibility of the village council, for years it was looked after by my mate Serge, but then got contracted out to Suez…

One day last spring I was talking with Serge and a couple of others in the centre of the village when three Suez vans rock up, lots of shiny new hi viz jackets and hard hats climb out with their magic water diving wands and stride up and down the road spraying hierolglyphics as they went, followed by much consulting of plans, head scratching and animated discussion. One brings out his spade and starts digging around the war memorial until Serge can take no more and goes and talks to them. After a few moments he laughs, beckons them to follow him 30/40 metres down the road where he kicks at the turf to uncover a manhole cover, you can’t beat local knowledge.

 

[minimutly]

At my last house I built a big concrete workshop in the back garden, carefully avoiding the main sewer that ran through the centre of my house, as evidenced by the supplied map of drains etc, and by two manhole covers….
….or so I thought.
After I was done and started tidying away around the garden I found a big heavy round drain cover, with a 12” sewer underneath it, right at the extreme end of my property …. and it ran diagonally across my garden, right underneath the big concrete workshop I had just spent two years building……

So the water boards drawing was 30’ out of position for that sewer, which was the main sewer for my whole street. I had visions, nightmares, of it caving in, and the water board demolishing my garage to repair it, massive fines, costs, street overflowing with human dung etc etc

Some ten years later I sold the house, expecting my faux pas to be discovered in a search, and the sale to cave in, prosecution, charges, costs…… but in reality I paid £160 for some sort of indemnity insurance and that was it, house was sold, no more drama.

What you people don't know is that when mapping went digital, the way it was done was to pay someone who's job was either being phased out or discontinued, or someone who was due to retire in x months time to do it. In other words, someone who couldn't give a t***. On top of this they had a computer and a screen and a mouse, and in the 90s, such were computers then that the more you zoomed in, the longer the picture took to load. So it was done in 1000 or 500m scaling - ie from a long way out. So if the main followed a road, maybe it crossed it somewhere, was it important where? No. So what you got was information, but not much accuracy.
There you are, maps and microfiches were burnt, binned, and everyone slept soundly in their beds...

 

[m_c]

If the plans were put on OS maps as over lays on a computer by the Chinese as often happened in the late 1980's & early 90's they may well be a few hundred metres off course .

BT had a hell of a time locating underground cable buried deep from such computerised maps /plans .

I used to know a gal ( Joe ) who's 36 yr old bungalow was inundated with raw sewage to a depth of 20 inches or more .

Local water board in the Worcester area said , " That's impossible the main sewer is 60 mtr down hill away from your garden ."

Subsequent removal of the floor boards revealed a ruptured main sewer running diagonally under her bungalow .vomiting a fountain of raw sewage .
The maps were way off and the routes were a good 2 inches off on the plans supplied as evidence by the water board.

Here at my place an old filled in mine air vent over 100 feet across from the late 1800's closing is shown as being to the north west of our bungalow some 250 yards away , John an old timer tells me is is almost opposite us 50 yards in on the other side of the road . I trust the guy , as told me a sink hole developed after some really heavy March to June rains , his 11 yr old pal roped down into it one Saturday and the sides collapsed about 30 foot down inside the hole killing his pal some 70 years ago . Seems that the coal board also put their mine plans on to digitalised OS ones around the same period .

The accuracy of the digitalisation is largely dependant on what they digitalised.

For the parents house, I've seen some of the original sewage pipe plans (~1950s), and they're just a hand drawn line on a rather basic map.
Pipes were laid in the direction that they needed to go, without any precise measuring or recording.

There were also a lot of things that were never recorded in much detail, if any.
I know somebody who worked in anode/cathode protection of gas pipelines, and he spent a lot of time surveying to find isolation points, as when they were installed, the work crews simply installed them wherever it was easiest, and nobody recorded the actual location.

Then you have lots of maps/plans were simply lost. Companies/offices got merged, archives were moved etc.
As a result of lost plans I know somebody who found a random gas manhole in a patch of trees he'd owned for over 20 years. He knew a gas pipe rain through, but there was no mention of any access points on any of the plans he had, so he contacted SGN. Turned out it was an emergency shut-off valve for a main pipeline for a rather large region, that although SGN knew there was valve somewhere, they didn't know where as the plans had been lost. SGN subsequently spent several weeks cutting down trees to dig a big hole and replace it.

 

[Morrisman]

What you people don't know is that when mapping went digital, the way it was done was to pay someone who's job was either being phased out or discontinued, or someone who was due to retire in x months time to do it. In other words, someone who couldn't give a t***. On top of this they had a computer and a screen and a mouse, and in the 90s, such were computers then that the more you zoomed in, the longer the picture took to load. So it was done in 1000 or 500m scaling - ie from a long way out. So if the main followed a road, maybe it crossed it somewhere, was it important where? No. So what you got was information, but not much accuracy.
There you are, maps and microfiches were burnt, binned, and everyone slept soundly in their beds...

From what I remember the ‘map’ we were given when we bought the house, in 2006, was just a scan of an old paper map, not some digital recreation.

 

[cheb]

Possibly a similar thing to nautical charts, your electronic mapping system is probably based on lead line surveys from the late 1800s

 

[Cobbler]

Works for 75% of people though I found if you play hunt the silver foil hidden under a carpet the target is under your heel and not where the rods cross

This was what the colleague of mine found, (see post 10) spot on under the heel. This is why I wonder if it’s the effect on the body, not the rods, the rods just act as an indicator.

 

[Cobbler]

Some of BT’s maps were sent to India to be digitised, enough said ……

 

[dave h 2]

This was what the colleague of mine found, (see post 10) spot on under the heel. This is why I wonder if it’s the effect on the body, not the rods, the rods just act as an indicator.

Who knows.
In front of an audience of non believers.
If you jam your elbows hard into your side and hold them as stiff as you like - it still works.
If you tilt your body forward so the rods point down hill a bit so to indicate the rods have to go up hill - it still works. (Maybe the floor wasn't as level than we thought, but............)
We had a lot of spare time in B'ham Works Orders.

 

[Morrisman]

Easily checked. Dowsing a narrow water pipe, of known position, from both directions should provide the answer?

When I first I tried dowsing (about 60 years ago) I didn’t think it worked for me - probably not trying it in the right/best way.

I checked over a drain with the coat hangers/ pen barrels and needed running water for a possible result. I then checked, walking slowly along a hospital corridor, and found a point where the rods crossed crazily. On looking up, there were loos both sides of the corridor. That was enough to give me confidence that it was working.

There seems to be a majority of evidence herein that water beneath one’s feet can make metal rods wave higher and yon, but exactly what power does water produce to do this? What metaphysical energy is emitted by waters mere presence?
If we could harness it, then maybe the planet does indeed have a green future. Imagine a whole ocean covered with reciprocating steel rods, millions of them, geared to a multitude of small
generators…..

 

[dave h 2]

There seems to be a majority of evidence herein that water beneath one’s feet can make metal rods wave higher and yon, but exactly what power does water produce to do this? What metaphysical energy is emitted by waters mere presence?
If we could harness it, then maybe the planet does indeed have a green future. Imagine a whole ocean covered with reciprocating steel rods, millions of them, geared to a multitude of small
generators…..

It's not quite like that - works on a 10p coin , silver paper, steel girders etc so you don't know what the rods react to. It's just a party trick that isn't a trick.

 

[DAPPH]

This sort of thing is why it impressed me that the plans of subterranean London are so accurate. I was watching a documentary about building Crossrail, and they were tunnelling through a part where they've got very little clearance between the underground tube below, and some Victorian sewers above (or vice versa), and yet the plans dating back decades were so accurate that they managed to thread it through the relatively tiny gap without hitting anything. My inner cynic suggests that it's probably because those plans are of very old things, and date back to a time when things were done properly, though someone must be doing a decent job of updating them. Contrast that with a local road-building project which was put back by several weeks once the water company came along to do their bit, because water and/or drain pipes weren't where they were supposed to be. Hmm, there's a theme developing here.

Likely the sewers , tubes & tunnels were super surveyed with the very latest LIDAR & laser tech before a digger was hired. so they could get with in a few feet of them without a major incident happening .

This might be interesting to some folk ...

https://www.faro.com/en/Resource-Library/Article/What-is-Lidar#:~:text=LiDAR%20surveying%20is%20a%20fast%20and%20effective%20way,to%20collect%20data%20is%20accurate%2C%20quick%2C%20and%20flexible.

 

[DAPPH]

At my last house I built a big concrete workshop in the back garden, carefully avoiding the main sewer that ran through the centre of my house, as evidenced by the supplied map of drains etc, and by two manhole covers….
….or so I thought.
After I was done and started tidying away around the garden I found a big heavy round drain cover, with a 12” sewer underneath it, right at the extreme end of my property …. and it ran diagonally across my garden, right underneath the big concrete workshop I had just spent two years building……

So the water boards drawing was 30’ out of position for that sewer, which was the main sewer for my whole street. I had visions, nightmares, of it caving in, and the water board demolishing my garage to repair it, massive fines, costs, street overflowing with human dung etc etc

Some ten years later I sold the house, expecting my faux pas to be discovered in a search, and the sale to cave in, prosecution, charges, costs…… but in reality I paid £160 for some sort of indemnity insurance and that was it, house was sold, no more drama.

Those indemnity insurances are fantastic our last three conveyancer assisted sale homes were protected by them .

 

[DAPPH]

There seems to be a majority of evidence herein that water beneath one’s feet can make metal rods wave higher and yon, but exactly what power does water produce to do this? What metaphysical energy is emitted by waters mere presence?
If we could harness it, then maybe the planet does indeed have a green future. Imagine a whole ocean covered with reciprocating steel rods, millions of them, geared to a multitude of small
generators…..

It could be that there is a magnetic imbalance. vibrations to the ground either side of things like cables , water , cavities , rock faults or grounds disturbances , lumps of certain individual metals so certain people with forked witch hazel sticks or metal rods containing whatever chemicals they have in them , the conductivity of their bodies and the wands make a sensing aerial current much like a crystal set receiver that their brain can differentiate things from .

 

[DAPPH]

Possibly a similar thing to nautical charts, your electronic mapping system is probably based on lead line surveys from the late 1800s

In the Bury port inlet I watched a very shallow draught water jet craft using ultra sound to pick up the bottom on GPS ordered grids . Isn't that now the norm for marine surveys using side scanning beams rather than slinging the lead mapping ?

 

[addjunkie]

In the Bury port inlet I watched a very shallow draught water jet craft using ultra sound to pick up the bottom on GPS ordered grids . Isn't that now the norm for marine surveys using side scanning beams rather than slinging the lead mapping ?

Yes, but not everywhere has been surveyed yet! Surveying costs money, so if its not a regular route why do it. Though I do recall something about satellite type imagery of oceans that can see depths.

 

[Morrisman]

Those indemnity insurances are fantastic our last three conveyancer assisted sale homes were protected by them .

I’m not too sure exactly how they work. My solicitor told me that if the water board knew about me building over the sewer then I wouldn’t be able to take out the insurance.

The existing front garage was built a few years after the house was, and that was also built over this same main sewer, but nobody asked about that and it hadn’t been mentioned when I bought the house originally. And there was no build-over permit for it.
In fact the whole house was over the sewer according to the water boards plans.

Where I live now I was advised to take out indemnity cover for some old covenant where all home owners in my estate were obliged to pay for the upkeep and repairs to a church and it’s organ in another village several miles away. £30 later and I was covered for all eternity.

 

[dave h 2]

Where I live now I was advised to take out indemnity cover for some old covenant where all home owners in my estate were obliged to pay for the upkeep and repairs to a church and it’s organ in another village several miles away. £30 later and I was covered for all eternity.

Those are fun, also applies to places with Glebe in the name, which was or maybe still is church land the covenant will be there somewhere.

 

[DAPPH]

I’m not too sure exactly how they work. My solicitor told me that if the water board knew about me building over the sewer then I wouldn’t be able to take out the insurance.

The existing front garage was built a few years after the house was, and that was also built over this same main sewer, but nobody asked about that and it hadn’t been mentioned when I bought the house originally. And there was no build-over permit for it.
In fact the whole house was over the sewer according to the water boards plans.

Where I live now I was advised to take out indemnity cover for some old covenant where all home owners in my estate were obliged to pay for the upkeep and repairs to a church and it’s organ in another village several miles away. £30 later and I was covered for all eternity.

Loads of townies get caught with the parish church repair bills when they move out to the sticks .