When your waste pipes go through your neighbour's property...

Ah ok that's a bit different to what i was thinking, i assumed it was closer to the house. But 20k?? What's in the yard? ? Gold astro turf?
Get as many plans as you can to have lots of options avail and see what's going on.plus get another plumber to quote or a quick visit if possible.
Even call syd water for their advice where you and the neighbour's stand.

The tenants may be delaying so you go through the pm first being a weekend. So they don't get involved allowing you access and the LL / pm don't agree

 

Oh yeh it just gets better Have the plans now from Sydney Water and there is no connection from our old outhouse location to the mains, so it must go via the neighbour somehow. There's no plans of any pipework within the private properties, the plan only shows the connection to the mains on the street. The only house out of the four terraces that has direct connection to the mains is our neighbour (to the right in the diagram).

I suspect the $20K is because our property is on a slope, it slopes upwards towards the street so there would be a lot of excavation and probably quite deep too with around 9m of new pipework and approval needed to connect to the main sewer (he said that part would not be problematic). Plus he still needs to access the neighbour's property to pull up part of their lovely concrete garden to cap off the junction. The plumber actually said it might cost more than 20K!

We haven't spoken with our neighbour tenant about this, we went through the PM who replied to our email this afternoon to tell us she'd been in touch with the tenants and that's how we know the tenants were concerned about their dog. At the end of the day, this is an emergency repair no matter what option we go with - can the neighbour owner refuse access?

 

Won't show the private sewer just a junction. Should be some numbers and a little spur off the main near the thunder box.
I was hoping you would have that line across the yard so you could offload to syd water

 

This is what is in the water report.. I just removed the house numbers and the yellow line is our property.

 

Why did you remove the numbers? I would've popped round for a cuppa.

 

That is EXACTLY why I removed the numbers!

 

Ah ok it's making more sense now

Your house is where the "B" is yeah? That end of the block

And id say there's a bit of a hump in the land at the backs of the 4 blocks? That's why back in the day they ran it through the middle with your pipes, so they could get fall to the main with out deep digging.
There's no connection for your block on the main, so that's extra $$
After all that it's probably best to do the repairs but also let the neighbours know what's going on and may be best they check their lines and go easy on the curries

 

Yes exactly! The house is located where the B is.. so it faces the street side. The back yard is facing the lane.

Where property 1 is (next to property C), that is the high side so there is a slope downwards towards property A, and the backyards slope upwards towards the lane so the lane is at a higher level than the house and street. So yes your logic is absolutely correct, this is why they ran it through the middle of the back yard, so they could get the fall without too much digging.

Turns out the owner of property A has given permission for us to access his land to do the remediation works so this is all happening tomorrow and we will be about $6-8K poorer by this time tomorrow. The upside is we will be able to have a shower and wash our hands in our newly renovated bathroom without flooding the house.

 

It's a lot of money to be able to flush again!

With the lining jobs it's always worth looking at all the options. It's bloody expensive!.... but can be a life saver too. These little jobs go for 1000ish/m but done in bulk, talking kilometres of the stuff goes for 150/m (used to be in the game doing the bigger stuff for syd water and others)

If your job was going to cost 10k to dig, it may get quoted at 8k to line but it actually may only be 6k. Get my drift? They'll bump it up to cover themselves. It is riskier work as you can get gear stuck in the pipe, then they have to go and dig it anyway! This job may cover the last one they lost money on, or the guys wasted liner or took longer than expected etc