Re: Replacing the water mains.
Originally Posted by
Donkeyman
->
I think you could be right Dex, dont you have to ask them to come
and instal the services on a new house??
Donkeyman! 🤔🤔🤔
That's my understanding. They will have sought permission to perform works on public roads and pavements. Any work that involves going onto privately owned land will be at the request or permission of the landowner. If this permission is not provided, then they have no obligation to connect an existing supply, especially if this would be problematic in terms of connection of eg new plastic pipe to old iron/lead fittings. They will do this at street level as a matter of course where possible.
In the case of gas pipe connections, we had the utility company around a few years back to do this - the method employed was to line the street pipes with plastic and then line the steel/iron pipes from there to our house which required an inspection pit to be dug near the point of entry into the house, which was made good afterwards.
Running new water pipes from the street into a house is a different beast, since lining existing pipes isn't appropriate (loss of diameter size for a start), and there are regs regarding the depth of trench in which pipes need to be laid.
Similar regs are in place for electric cables.
If an owner refuses access, for their own (possibly legitimate) reasons then, as stated above, this will be done wherever possible at street level.