In article ,
"Jonathan Pearson" writes:
Phil L wrote:
Lawrence Zarb wrote:
Is it allowable to drain the rainwater from my conservatory into the
main sewer, as this is more conveniently located than the storm
drains

If the house is older than 35-40 yrs, then yes, they all join up
underground anyway, newer houses have seperate rainwater and
foulwater drains.

Our house was built in 1907 and has a separate sewer system. For these sorts
of systems built at the time, it was normal for the front (w.r.t. the road)
guttering from your roof to go into the separate system, however I guess due
to cost implications the rear guttering was still normally routed into the
foul.

It has almost nothing to do with the age of the house, but
is related to the age and density of the area as a whole.
In older dense urban areas, you are likely to have a single
victorian sewer system designed for both surface and foul
water. In less dense areas where there was space for separate
surface and foul drainage, or areas with newer infrastructure,
you'll find them separate. Two home counties residential areas
I know which were layed out in 1875 and 1895 both have separate
systems, whereas as area in London layed out in 1875 has a
single system, and a row of 5 year old houses also have all
their surface and foul combined into it. (With no space for
soakaways and no other infrastrure provided, there isn't
much choice.)

To the OP: you will have to ask your sewage company if they will
allow rainwater drainage into the sewer system. A friend did this
recently for an extension where it would have been difficult to
route the guttering to a soakaway (extension was on top of old
soakaway), and much to my surprise, the sewage company were fine
with this. They needed to know the horizontal surface area which
would drain into the sewer, in order to ensure it had adequate
capacity without risk of the sewer flooding in a downpour.

--
Andrew Gabriel