Have I been stupid?

[Greengrass29]

Bought a house last year. Horrible garden with a manhole cover near the house. A family friend has slabbed over it and part of the garden with nice patio slabs.

Will this cause me issues when I come to sell? Have I been an idiot?

Yes, why not astroturf or slabbing that fits

I have slabs over mine op. I have had two drain surveyors and they were easy to pull up and put back.

yes that was a silly thing to do. Yes you need to reverse it. Can the 'friend" who did it for you undo it?

that's fine if they are easy to lift.

We had decking when we brought the house. Only realised it was covering some kind of manhole cover about 3 years in because of a horrendous smell in the garden...was the drain blocked and overflowing. We got the decking redone with a section to lift off where this cover is. You need to sort it, otherwise down the line it could end up costing you a lot more if issues arise

We've got a special liftable slab that completely matches the other normal slab on the patio. It's really heavy & takes 2 of us to lift to acces the drains but we've had to access it several times since it was laid a few years ago so it was worth the cost.

Just angle grind the concrete around the offending slab/s?

a slightly crazy thing to do though - pave it over. What if Dynorod need to come and stick poles on it?

Ours was buried under lots of mud and then decking over the top. We found it when removing decking.

Are you always this negative and dismissive?

We've got 2 manholes in our garden and we've had Indian sandstone. You can get manhole covers that a slab sits in so it blends in with the rest of the paving but can still access if you need to. Your friend should have known this if he's in the trade.

The time to sort it out is now.

Not when you have sewage bubbling up into your washing machine.

you absolutely need to make the man hole accessible again. Just replace the slab with the original cover if a proper decorative slab is expensive. Might be the ugly option but will keep you out of trouble.

you also better make sure your friend (who is obviously clueless) hasn’t piled the manhole high with debris from the work he did. If he’s got cement down there you might have a bigger issue.

Just leave it

but if you have a drain problem you’ll have to lift up the slabs

We have a manhole cover in our back garden which is not accessible from the road. We have a legal duty to let Yorkshire Water inspect it three times a year. So yes - I think you shouldn't have paved over it.

over dramatic much and wrong
any "manhole" cannot be for both clean and dirty water at the same time.

Op did you see him lay the slabs? Did he lay them on sand or a mortar base? If the latter then that's a real pain but sand is easy to remove at least but will compromise the rest of the patio.

Unless your friend did it for free then I would ask him to come back and sort out the mess he caused.

You absolutely need access to the manhole. After living in our house for more than 10 years, in the last 3 there have been repeated problems with the drains that run across our street. Thames water have come several times and flushed the pipes etc. ie essential to be able to access things. I don’t know about cost but I’d sort it sooner rather than later.

Can your friend who did it come and undo it?

If not then it will cost but possibly not as much as you imagine, it's not a big job. But whatever the cost, it needs to be done. You've made a mistake, we all do, this one can be sorted out. Just do it sooner rather than later.

Yeah, you can't (and shouldn't!) do that - My folks extended into their garden over a manhole cover and have the manhole cover in the kitchen (tiled in the same floor tiles, you'd never actually know unless you knew) and have had to access it twice, If it wasn't accessible it would've been a big problem,

At the very least,, get the tiles over it taken off - easy if a sand base, trickier but not impossible if mortar

Ummm, don’t have this friend do y oh r decorating, you’ll end up with the windows painted over.