Manholes inside a house

[Ellsiedodah]

There are manholes in the house we're trying to buy, one that's already been covered up under flooring and one that's accessible in the integrated garage (which we want to convert into living quarters). The water company do not have the man holes on their map. They are believed to be private access rather than shared but we don't 100% know. There seems to be some knowledge of what's underneath and so far the suggestion is that there are not sewers. Building control have told us they would not approve any conversion of space where there is a man hole without a build-over agreement from the water company. Has anyone had to deal with a similar situation? It's freaked us out but feel the only thing we can do is ask them to get a build over agreement in place, especially since we agreed a price for the house £15k over the guide price. What would you do? Any advice much welcome!

Pull out. Who wants these in the house?

Well quite, it's a worry. But we love the location and for various personal reasons around timing and financing it's a massive deal to do that.

sealed man holes inside a house are not a problem and are relativley normal , it may limit what floor covering you put on
Build over agreements are not that hard to get either

We have an internal manhole in the bathroom (it was originally an external manhole but had been extended over) - it’s rather a long story, we didn’t know it was there when we bought the house (they had put shower tray over the top and cut a hole in it for the plug to drain directly into 🤮). We had to put a double recessed cover over it and then tiled through it along with the rest of the floor - it now matches the flooring but we can get into it if needed.

I don’t know how build over agreements work or what you plan to use the space for, but I thought I’d say that it is not problematic now we know it’s there. I’m not sure whether it would put off a future purchaser but we put a bathroom mat over it lol and you’d never know it was there !

Somebody needs to open them and see what's inside.

Get a drainage company like MetroRod to come round and do a CCTV survey, that'll tell you if there is an issue.

Buildover agreements are really not that difficult if you apply well in advance. Ours cost about £250 from memory, plus the cost of a CCTV survey (about £300) before and after the manhole was moved. With Thames Water it was a case of submitting plans and an application, then waiting for them to decide whether to do a full survey or if we needed to provide a CCTV survey to them. Took about 8 weeks in total so if submitted at the same time as Planning Permission it doesn’t hold things up.

Thanks so much all. Very helpful to learn from people's experiences. @Mumtofourandnomore did you ever look into whether it might affect your insurance?