So, after waiting forever for my underground soil fittings to arrive after they were missed off the first delivery, I ended up cancelling the order from Plastics Express and buying all my soil fittings from Screwfix as I just couldn’t wait any longer. It had been over a ten days since the order was placed and the delivery was supposed to come next day. I won’t be shopping there again.

The manhole walls were knocked in and the channel removed ready to be piped through:

The original builders of my house must have poured about a yard of concrete every metre of soil pipe as it took me two hours of breaking to expose enough clay pipe to actually fit the coupler to accept the uPVC pipe. This is tiring and tedious work, as I had to exercise extreme caution not to damage the 50+ year old clay pipe yet use enough force to smash away very hard seasoned concrete.

Here’s the new uPVC underground drainage pipework in place and partially backfilled with pea shingle.

I called up and booked for Building Control to come and have a look and within a very short while I had an inspector from building control around to inspect the works and all is well. I have to say BC have been great so far, if I call them before 10am they come round the same day.

Backfilling over the pipework has been done and the area is safe to walk over once more with no holes to fall down and even better than that, no stinking leaky pipes to contend with and a drainage system that will be good for many years to come.

My next job to start on the first course of blockwork around the footings to retain the concrete slab.