Shared Water Mains Question

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Aredwood

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#1756668 4-Apr-2017 23:22

Since it is a cross lease there won't be any easements, as you both jointly own the land. Check with the council if they have it recorded that both properties are fed from the same meter. You will probably have to tell them the meter serial number to be sure. It is very common for cross lease properties to share the same water meter or connection. (you are after all sharing lots of other stuff as well). This will at least mean that when the council starts billing for water, they will just split the bill in 2 and bill each owner for half the usage.

Depending on how many people live in @Paul1977 house compared to the neighbours. The shared pipe might work out better. As for water flows, see if what you get currently complies with the building code NZBC G12 see paragraph 3 table 5.3.1

There are still a surprisingly high number of cross lease and body corp properties in Auckland that that are on shared pipes. Despite the really high watercare usage charges. At least it means that leaks get fixed.

Goosey

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#1756709 5-Apr-2017 07:14

Yep, check the cross lease information on the title and your cross lease neighbor also needs to do this.

Im amazed your respective lawyers did not advise you at the time that you are both using each others water and waste water connections.

At a guess someone built a 'sleepout', connected it to the main house power, water and waste water and then oneday decided to subdivide their land by way of cross lease.

Itsa cheap way to get out of the costs involved with connecting to town water and waste water.

Paul1977

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#1757224 5-Apr-2017 18:32

Bung: If your house is much older have you checked that your pipe isn't an old galvanised one? By now that will be almost completely blocked internally with rust. If you have a tap in the garden at the front does that have better flow than taps further back?

You and your neighbour could both be in line for new pipes :-)

It is an old galvanised one, that's what got me looking into it in the first place when we converted to gas hot water from an old gravity feed cylinder. This boosted hot water pressure heaps, and plumber suggested running a new main from the street would improve pressure even more.

Water pressure isn't awful, but there is a noticeable drop in pressure when a second tap is turned on (or, in our case, when the neighbor turns on a tap).

Pressure at the front and rear of the property seems about the same, and plumber advised that the internal pipes seem OK and that a new main from the street should be enough to boost pressure.

Paul1977

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#1757228 5-Apr-2017 18:55

Thanks for all the replies.

It seems that the cross-lease makes things complicated to find out exactly what the rules are with getting a lawyer involved, which I don't really want to do at this point.

I think my best bet at the moment is to investigate cheaper ways of getting the pipe to the back section, directional drilling would have been nice and neat but it is quite expensive. I think a couple of blocks with some shovels and a "can do" attitude is what's needed!

larknz

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#1757229 5-Apr-2017 18:56

You will find that this situation is quite common with cross leased properties and you probably can't do anything about it. You will probably find that the sewer and stormwater are shared as well. It was all done to reduce costs with no thought about the future.

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