Oh I am so done with my house.... want to cry

[Cattermole]

So the ongoing saga of the kitchen and the incoming water.

After a month of poking the water board, they come out, hold up their hands in horror, put in 10m of new lining and three new manhole liners. They fill a manhole with water and put dye down and it piddles through into my kitchen, we all agree, that's their dye, this is my kitchen, it's coming up through my floor. "That should sort it!" they chuckle.
Except it hasn't, has it?
Appreciate that last night was lousy for a lot of people but we weren't on flood alert, except in my house where 100 litres of water later we certainly were. The water board have reached the limit of their involvement, they've dealt with their installation and the "voids" they've identified under my kitchen floor where groundwater is now able to come in (in the same places as their drainage was coming in previous, I might add) are not their problem. They won't investigate. The ongoing insurance claim is to put it back to its pre-loss condition, not to investigate the cause.

I'm tired of fighting all the time to get someone to take me seriously. I love my little house but right now I just want to walk out and lock the door behind me and never see it again.

Aaaaand tomorrow I will be back on the phone again to anybody who will listen to me, trying to find someone who will be able to tell me how this water is getting into my house, but right now I am just sad and tired and done and thank you for listening....

That sounds really shit. Sorry I can’t help.

I assume investigations with cameras have been done?

They sorted the shit bit @Tulipvase - next door's sewage was coming up through the grouting between my quarry tiles and I didn't realise till they dye tested that drain.... with yellow dye....
(You have to laugh or else you'd cry!)

Yeah they've had cameras down, more bloody cameras than Tom Cruise. Their actual pipework is sound as a pound. It's just that as it had been piddling up into my house for over a month, it's washed out channels in the soil under my kitchen floor where the water has been forcing its way through. (Old house!) I'm just feeling defeated tonight. I'll be back on form tomorrow.

Are you in a terrace or detached? Just wondering if the same thing is happening to your neighbours. I've recently bought a terraced house with a small cellar and it floods in heavy rain and so do my neighbours houses

Terrace @user1467486752, but next door isn't affected.
We're a funny little end terrace sort of dog-leg at right angles to theirs, so we cop for everybody's surface water down the hill - only started being a problem a month ago!

That's awful OP. Have any of your neighbours had any building work done recently? (We had issues with drains when some new houses went up nearby)

Fingers crossed you can get it sorted soon.

I feel a bit of your pain. We recently bought a Victorian terrace and had some building work done, my heart was in my mouth every time they wanted to speak to us! We also have shared drains and at one point shared outbuildings with washing facilities and I’m dreading anything going wrong!

Ah, thanks all. Tomorrow is another day and all that. It just feels like today I have hit a dead end, but tomorrow I pick myself up and start again.

I think it's that whole waiting-for-outcomes thing. I seem to have been running on the spot all day and I am just sad and tired.

PS all the drains are now impeccable. This is groundwater - they took samples last night and it's definitely got soil in it :-(

So.... are you saying that even though the water board have now repaired their leaky drains/pipes, the damage done whilst their pipes were leaking is now allowing groundwater in? So some kind of further repair/waterproofing/new drains are needed somewhere - and the water board says that’s not their responsibility. So your insurance company needs to sort it then, or take the legal case up with the water board that seeing as their leaky pipes caused the damage, they put it right?
Sounds like a massive headache. Sorry you’re going through this!

Sounds so stressful OP.

Exactly that @LemonViolet. The insurance company reckon "... written confirmation that your Home Insurance policy only serves to cover and reinstate damage to the buildings of your home from the insurable peril of flood, being the large ingress of water into your property, and not any preventative measures to stop the ongoing ingress or putting right any potential ‘access channels’ made over a period of time by water escaping from the drains".
Water Board are claiming it may be purely coincidental that it's coming in the same holes.....

Oh that sounds so shit @Cattermole and presume you own your house.
We had issues with a rental (also an end of terrace) where the cellar flooded every time we had heavy rain - wasn't a problem until the pump which automatically turned itself on stopped working. Landlord couldn't care less so the cellar filled up more and more and resulted in damp and mould all over the interior of the walls.
We were lucky and just rented elsewhere.

OP try contact your MP. They might be able to help with this kind of thing against the water board.

Sounds awful @Cattermole
If you post on the money saving expert forum under "in your home" ,you will get some good advice on there.

Find the CEO, email them directly. Usually you can work out their address eg. [email protected] this is very effective. Don't be kind lay it on thick. And go through the official complaints procedure. Document everything. Then go to ofwat they have powers to get involved, in my opinion this is not good enough and even if they cannot resolve directly should be providing the information to you for the next steps.

Thanks all.
I have gone a little bit sideways in that I have contacted the civil engineers who did the work, direct. (I thought about contacting the CEO direct @Slightlydustcovered but there's method in my madness....)

So. I've been in contact with the head of geospatial services, we've had a chat, I've emailed him photos etc. I'm requesting that someone comes out and does a GPR test (the radar thing they do for utility installations) to see where the voids actually are. If they are radiating out from the water board installations, I will be taking legal action in addition to the insurance claim.

I'm also waiting for a call back this afternoon from an independent civil engineer.

I'm no longer in the business of playing nice customer-complaint games. This has already gone to the senior management team and two customer service team members have confirmed that we've been put forward for compensation from the water board.
Which is nice, but not solving the problem....

Goodness, who knew that being a homeowner would mean you have to become a geology expert as well! I’m sorry you ever had to learn what “geospatial services” is OP.

Hope you get a good resolution here but sounds like it won’t be a quick one. On the up side I think the heavy rains have passed for a while at least.

This sounds awful but fascinating! How old is your house? I hope you manage to sort it out.

1850s granite and cob construction.
Spoke to the Flood Defence Forum this morning and they reckon it pretty much is what it is. Unlikely to be coming in through voids, as it's unlikely we'll have voids on a cottage this age - built straight onto the ground.
Their thinking - the lady I spoke to has a house of similar construction - tanking/waterproofing is not going to be helpful as the house construction is breathable. Likewise taking up and reflooring will just move the problem about. It's not damaging the property - it comes in, and it goes out - exactly as the house's construction intends. French drains will help, or a curtain drain, but we've had a phenomenal amount of water fall out of the sky and unfortunately with older properties it's an occupational hazard.

So it might be, as Tesco have it, "every little helps" but it's a lot of little fixes instead of one big fix. And buy a wet and dry vac to deal with the aftermath more expediently.

Really impressed with your actions!

If you’re going to contact the CEO by email, input variations of what you think their email address is. I’ve done this 5 different times, and only got one response. The time I got a response was when I kept it short, with just the links to my FB & Google maps reviews berating them. Within an hour I had his right hand man the Supply Chain Director on the phone to me. Cannot believe how hugely helpful that was.

You can always see if the CEO or any of the Directors of either the water board or the Civils company have been silly enough to put their home address on Companies House. Then go and knock their door. Trust me, the several thousand to put that right will be a drop in the ocean to them (it’s not their money), and they won’t want you coming back. Just don’t do anything stupid, that could get you arrested.

Failing that, sell the house in summer.

Good luck

Looks like we may have identified the problem.... and it looks like it may be a hole in next door's domestic surface water drain!
Talk about the mouse that roared! SW Water chap came out and saturated the ground, and it pee'd up through my floor as we watched.
Neighbour is talking to her builder this afternoon and here we are!