East Dulwich / Forest Hill how many burst water mains

Does anyone else think the amount of burst water mains etc in the last six months is a bit odd?

I live near the entrance to the Horniman Gardens and in the last six months I have reported approximately 10 water leaks all quite substantial in that area! Also in Forest Hill, London Road and Honor Oak Park Road there have been two sink holes, a major cavern formed outside Sainsburys shutting the a205 for a time and more bust mains over the past 2 years.

The one today outside the entrance to the Horniman was only repaired 4 months ago.

What’s the reason hive mind!

Some of the water is said to come from natural springs. As tarmac covers large area and water table swells in autumn then the springs appear in unlikely places. Being naive and believing this is possible does not explain majority of water leaks. So the merry go round starts again.

Thank you. I never knew that. However I suppose Sydenham Wells which was once a place the Victorians used the water for health benefits is a stones throw. Interesting!

There are a lot of natural springs under Forest Hill, but we’ve also had a dry autumn so the natural water table should be quite low.

The more of the larger leaks that are fixed, puts pressure on the other failing areas. Pressure will always win, especially if there are weak links.
More to come for sure.

While it is true there are plenty of aquifers, this is not a new problem. Some of the pipework is pre-Victorian!

As anon64893700 said, any repair makes that area stronger and puts pressure on the older weaker bits hence the continuing blow outs.

Yes understand that but it doesn’t excuse the historic lack of investment. The better question is why not a large scale replacement of the pipework rather than addressing it piecemeal? Bound to be cheaper overall, especially on Honor Oak Road which seems to be particularly bad for this.

Replacing the pipework will make HS2 look cheap by comparison. There are 13,000 miles of pipe under the Capitol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_water_supply_infrastructure

Personally I would rather they did this than the HS2 but…

What a strange comparison! There are probably only a few miles of pipes under Honor Oak Road.

Replacing that will put pressure elsewhere and round and round we go. If you want to stop the leaks ALL of the old infrastructure needs to be replaced, not just one little bit in FH.

Not that strange is it.

Very strange, especially given that infrastructure companies do not work like that, thankfully. My point is that there are places where the pipes are exceedingly old and Thames Water know this. Rather than continually digging these up each time a new leak springs, then that particular area could have more piping replaced so as to save (?) the utility company money (this part is my question) and cause much less local disruption. They would probably need to amortise over 10 years or somesuch.

It is quite a leap, and a completely different proposition, to suggest replacing the entire capital’s water pipes just because one local road, or even a number of them, has old pipes. HS2 is a much better idea than that.

Brett, MOST of the water pipes in London are Victorian and prone to leaking, fix one bit and another leaks. This happens all over London. Replacing one bit wont help, it just leaks somewhere else.

I am talking about PRE-Victorian pipe work. Honor Oak Road has some and is particularly prone to continual dig and mend. Most of the other housing round here, hence the supply to them, is not that old as you say.

But if it’s dug and mended it is no longer pre Victorian is it.

I tried to ask a serious question and I wondered if anyone had any real insight into it. It seems that you do not but thanks for chatting anyway.

Thanks Brett, I am trying very hard but not getting through. Thanks for being condescending btw. Very nice of you. Maybe someone else can take over and try.

Five minute tea and biscuit break, all.

Well gosh darnit, will ya take a look at that…

http://www.thameswater.co.uk/about-us/2689.htm

Our current areas of focus are:
Brent
Chamberlayne Road, London

Camden
Finchley Road and Belsize
Finchley and Frognal
Regent’s Park

Islington
Holloway

Tower Hamlets
Poplar
Abbott Road

Hackney
Homerton
Daubeney Fields

Haringey
Northumberland Park, Tottenham
Tottenham Hale
Highgate

Lewisham
> Honor Oak

Redbridge
Grange Hill
There will be more information on our areas of focus coming soon.

http://www.thameswater.co.uk/about-us/18981.htm

Is that green tea, @anon5422159? How soothing.

Jasmine for me and my fetching frock.

snork

[quote=“Londondrz, post:9, topic:2527, full:true”]
There are 13,000 miles of pipe under the Capitol. [/quote]

Wow! How many miles of pipe are there under the Railway Telegraph???

Which side?

Seems it’s a bit of a problem all over.
Burst water main caused issues for drivers on the A505 Luton to Dunstable road.

Good spot @anon64893700 but can’t get the link to work, sadly. Sounds like an interesting page.

Having issues with Thames Water right now so have got to speak with quite a few engineers. One had an intriguing insight: the basic metric that they generally work to is whether a pipe is serviceable, i.e. It carries water. Even if it leaks, it can still be classed as serviceable, so no problem.

So the leak I originally posted about turned out to cause a sink hole 8ft wide and 20ft deep! And 4 concrete mixers later… its fixed

IMG_4871.JPG2448×3264 1.74 MB

It’s true that many springs break their man-made bonds at this time of year. We have the same thing around the Streatham spas but we also have the water authorities blaming springs that have nothing to do with burst mains. It’s a buck passing matter. As for Sydenham Wells springs (beautiful park BTW), they are not actually brimming at the moment after a dry-ish Autumn.

I see Lee High Road went again yesterday, now that make our leaks look like a trifling matter.

Well, some of them.

Meanwhile, Thames Water have been nominated for a project management award:

Meanwhile in Islington…