How to Achieve Self-build Success

Self-building needs a mix of many qualities, but are you cut out for the challenge ahead?

Win an amplified indoor aerial from One For All

Estimating Service -NEW from Homebuilding & Renovating. Find out how much your self-build is going to cost!

 

My Building Project - Estimating Service

Design Ideas for Sloping Sites
A look at the design implications of building your own home on a sloping site

Daily Telegraph Homebuilding & Renovating Awards 2011

Query the water board's quotation

Question

Asked by: Paul Matthews

My local Water Board has just quoted me over £8,000 to connect my home to the mains sewerage — which runs less than 3m from my property under the main road. At this cost, it would be cheaper to fit a septic tank, which is a little ludicrous — what should I do?

Answer

Answered by: David Snell

It’s always very difficult to advise on matters such as this because each case is going to be different. Last year, I paid £2,614 for a lateral connection to the sewer in the road outside my present house. The price included the Board making the connection, bringing the pipe from the centre of the road into my property, by going beneath a wall to a new concrete ring manhole with two connections for the two bungalows I was building. The invert level was 2m. VAT was zero.

The water connection for the two bungalows was £1,056 — this included the water for construction purposes, meaning there was a £18.48 deduction for VAT, which I recovered.

Now mine is a quiet lane — yours is a main road. They may have to put up traffic lights, etc. There may be other complications.

It might not work but I’ve often found that if one goes back and queries the quotation, they tend to look at it again. You could try asking if the price could be reduced if you or your contractors undertook some of the work within your property.

What you probably can’t do is swap to a septic tank, as your local Building Control will probably require you to connect to the mains sewer if it is available.

 

Further information:

Further reading:

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <br> <caption> <style> <cite> <code> <dd> <div> <dl> <dt> <em> <hr> <img> <li> <ol> <p> <strong> <table> <tbody> <td> <th> <thead> <tr> <ul> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <span>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • You may insert videos with [video:URL]

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is to prevent computer generated spam submissions. Please enter the code exactly as you see it, with no spaces between characters, and with upper and lower case letters as displayed
Image CAPTCHA
Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.

 

Problem?

Do you have a question for one of our experts? Contact us with your question and, if selected, we'll forward your query to the relevant expert. You can also write in with your question to: 2 Sugar Brook Court, Aston Road, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, B60 3EX.

Due to the high volume of enquiries we receive, we can not answer all queries. However, if selected, we will forward your query to the relevant expert who will shortly after provide a written reply.

Alternatively, if you can't find the answer to your query here, you could try our archive of How to guides or why not ask other members of the online community in the Homebuilding Discussion Forum.