Hello,

I have discovered that I have a lead water pipe and that it is shared
with my neighbour. I have contacted the water company and they have
told me that I will have to change the bit on my property.

I have a concrete path down the side of the house, so hiring a big
drill to dig it up could be fun.

I was going to ask how deep should the water pipe be but the recent
post "replacing services to the property" gave me some useful
information. In that thread, 30 inches was given as the depth and it
was suggested to use the largest MDPE pipe allowed (32mm).

That thread also talked about running ducts for various things. Would
you run the water in a duct. It would make it easy to replace in
future but you would lose the colour coding as the blue pipe would be
hidden.

My main worry is hitting another service. How do you avoid hitting the
gas and electricity: just dig slowly and carefully?

I do see two problems if I go ahead and replace the pipe.

1. My neighbours might not want the expense of having their branch of
the lead pipe removed. How would I cap the pipe? I've never worked
with lead, so I might need someone to do this for me.

2. My house is slightly higher than the neighbour's house. There are
about five steps up from the street to my house. Could this mean the
pipe is very deep? Would it be 30" below street level, rather than 30"
below house level, or would the pipe just have to follow the slope and
steps and be 30" below the surface.

I'm hoping the water company is sending someone out to have a look and
chat with me about this.

Thanks,
Stephen.