3 drains on one property. Unusual?

[caramelmacchiatocup]

We viewed a bungalow yesterday and saw that there are 3 drains / manhole covers on the property. Two of them are right next to each other in the back garden on the patio, and the third one is a bit further up on the driveway (which is long enough for 3 cars, so I'm not concerned about that). I'm just curious, is this normal? I've lived in 3 other houses and never encountered that many on one property before. Should I be worried about anything? I’m thinking if they ever get blocked, it’ll probably be my property that ends up with the sewage, right?

You can lift the lids and have a look. They enable inspection and clearing any blockages. One at the back and one at the front is fine. They are often at a change of direction, or a place where several pIpes join, for example from a bathroom, a kitchen, and a WC.

The extra one might be rainwater from the gutters, which might go to a soakaway, or, less often, a stream.

it depends where they're coming from, they might only serve your property and therefore if they block and you end up with sewage in your house/garden you've only yourselves to blame! If there's 2 side by side it's possibly a separate system with sewage going down one pipe and rainwater down another. If you do get blockages it'll be easy to clear than if you didn't have manholes on your property and it means any sewage has a point of escape outside your house rather than the first point of escape being inside!

We have one at the front, and one at the back. Neighbour has 2 at front, and 1 at back so that would be normal here. I'd never really thought about it being excessive

We have 3. One just outside the back door, another where the house we are joined to drains into and one in the alley between us and the house the other side. The one in the alley is a large diameter sewer because it also serves the school behind us.