I'm planning to build a garage in a position where a public 6" sewer will
intersect with two of the walls in plan view. I've got all the official
documents from Severn Trent about how to apply for permission, and about
before and after CCTV surveys and all that.

The general principle seems to be that building foundations must be taken
down to sewer invert level to avoid any possibility of the sewer pipe being
loaded by the building - but I'd like to know how negotiable that is - and
whether anyone here has ever been given official permission to do anything
different.

In my case, the sewer is about 2.4 metres below the surface, and the soil -
apart from a few inches of topsoil hasn't been disturbed for nearly 40
years - when the sewer was laid. If I were to excavate to 1 metre, and lay
normal foundations as if the sewer wasn't there, there would still be well
over a metre of well compacted clay soil between the bottom of my
foundations and the top of the pipe. It could possibly be argued that the
sewer pipe is far less likely to be damaged by this approach than by
excaving down to 2.4 metres, and exposing the pipe. [I'm not sure how
controllable a digger bucket is at that depth - when the operator can't
really see what he is doing!

Any comments - particularly from anyone who has been down a similar road?
--
Cheers,
Roger
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