Floor Socket Full With Water

[Steve3948]

Got called out yesterday at around 3pm, customer had no power and could not reset the RCD, gave him the usual information, unplug evetything and switch all fused connection units off, and get back to me if no success.

Well 30 minutes later I get the call still no power, so off I go.

On arrival I checked that everything was unplugged and switched off, then asked usual stuff like have you fitted, changed or done anything to the walls or floors.

Found the circuit with the fault at the fuseboard and it was a 20A radial feeding sockets in the living room, so with it disconnected I powered everything else back up and so off I trundle to find a rough midway point of the faulty circuit, which happened to be a floor socket in the oak floor under the settee.

Lifted up the oak cover and the socket was submersed below 50mm of water.

At first I thought underfloor heating leak, but the client instantly said water table, I disagreed and said as the property is only 2 years old with modern over-site ground work, water should not be able to get in unless flooded outside  which it was not.

Anyway the client took me outside and said the house was surrounded by a French drain system as the house is lower than ground level, he checked a covered well in the garden and the water level was higher than the house. That's odd he says there is a pump in the well which should pump out when it gets to a certain level and it's piped to a large pond 30M over there, where's it supplied from I asked, and garage was the reply so I go to check and find it switched off, switched on and water level in well starts dropping.

After about 20 minutes the water covering the floor socket had gone away, so I disconnected the socket and found the previous socket and disconnected there to isolate, it turned out that it was the floor socket and only one other so not a problem.

I need to return and refit socket when its all dry.

So everything depends on this well pump, I don't think I would be happy with this, not on a house worth over a million.

What is a French drain, I need to look this up later, also need to suggest changing the circuit configuration as the pump will not work if the RCD has tripped, the sub-main to the garage is on the same RCD, and then maybe another pump higher in the well for added fail safe.

Still don't understand how the water gets over the polythene over-site though.

 

[Andy™]

french drain is basically a trench filled with rocks to give a large void to take the water and slowly let it drain into soil. you will see them on motorways & major roads etc

definately a problem relying on just 1 pump. i would expect some kind of indication if the pump has failed to start, or if the water level is too high

 

[OnOff]

A lot of places have French drains retro fitted if the surrounding ground comes close to / over the house damp course level. Often seen when somebody has their drive block paved thus bringing the level up and allowing a lot of surface water potentially hitting the side of the house before it can drain away. Common to then leave a gravel filled gap around the house. Sometimes it's referred to as a "rubble" or "gravel" drain. Modern regs btw take into account this surface water issue caused by block paving and now insist on special self draining blocks (more expensive of course) and there's rules if the paved area is close to a highway etc. The trench is often lined with landscape fabric. Sometimes the trench incorporates it's own drain pipe then then takes the water to a low point but just as often it just lets it through the bottom of the trench.

Your case is a whole different kettle of fish though! The French drain won't help a carrot if the water table can come that high anyway hence the pump. Nasty, IMHO. Is it one of these areas where the insurers are considering NOT paying out for flood damage?

How about an alarm in case the pump supply switches off/fails?

 

[Steve3948]

A lot of places have French drains retro fitted if the surrounding ground comes close to / over the house damp course level. Often seen when somebody has their drive block paved thus bringing the level up and allowing a lot of surface water potentially hitting the side of the house before it can drain away. Common to then leave a gravel filled gap around the house. Sometimes it's referred to as a "rubble" or "gravel" drain. Modern regs btw take into account this surface water issue caused by block paving and now insist on special self draining blocks (more expensive of course) and there's rules if the paved area is close to a highway etc. The trench is often lined with landscape fabric. Sometimes the trench incorporates it's own drain pipe then then takes the water to a low point but just as often it just lets it through the bottom of the trench.

Your case is a whole different kettle of fish though! The French drain won't help a carrot if the water table can come that high anyway hence the pump. Nasty, IMHO. Is it one of these areas where the insurers are considering NOT paying out for flood damage?

How about an alarm in case the pump supply switches off/fails?

The whole install is not good considering it's only 2 years old, the pump does have an alarm which is in the garage and is only mains operated with no battery back-up, so someone switched of the supply but nobody was aware.

The client did mention something about insurance yesterday saying a claim would result in new premium being 30X higher should a claim be made.

I don't know what he pays already, but my thinking is spending money on a better system is the way to go.

 

[OnOff]

Secondary pump with a gennie back up then like on the commercial installs. Loadsa money!!!

or:

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Gloucester-man-puts-house-stilts-beat-floods/story-17476726-detail/story.html

:lol:

 

[binky]

would be fitting back up with battery system if available just in case of power cuts during storms.

had call out thw other day 'popping noise' from under floorboards. Turns out the black rubber cable didn't like being immersed in 10" 0f water and had shorted out. Will be rewiring circuit in new year.

 

[ProDave]

This just shows how bonkers we are at building houses in this country.

If you have a site that is known to hold water and have a high water table, then surely logic dictates you build the house so that the floor level is well above the ground level, even if that means building a slight raised plinth around the house. Then the worst that could happen is the garden floods and the house sits there on a dry island.

To build with the floor below ground level, and total reliance on a pump is just purely bonkers.  I wonder if this was a planning restriction to limit the height of the building? if so the planners need sacking and replacing with someone that knows something about buildings.

Anyway, this property DOES have a "flood warning" whenever the pump fails, the floor socket fills with water and trips the RCD, so you know you need to take a look at the pump.

But it's also questionable fitting a floor socket in a floor that's known to be prone to flooding.

 

[kerching]

just a thought....could the socket install have punctured the membrane.  A bit of a long shot, but if the person that installed it 'wasn't clued up'  he could have damaged it perhaps?

....a bit like somebody did when drilling a hole in a ceiling that had [unbeknownst to him] fricking ceiling heating :innocent

 

[Steve3948]

just a thought....could the socket install have punctured the membrane.  A bit of a long shot, but if the person that installed it 'wasn't clued up'  he could have damaged it perhaps?

....a bit like somebody did when drilling a hole in a ceiling that had [unbeknownst to him] fricking ceiling heating :innocent

The client seemed to recall that the box for socket sat on the polystyrene and the underfloor heating pipes went around it in the middle of the room, this then had a 75mm screed and oak boards onto that, the socket had a conduit under the heating pipes set in the polystyrene. However it was plastic Kopex gland into box.

What i did notice, was on opening the french doors into the garden the oak floor was at the exact same level as the patio, apparently this was an architect design to avoid any kind of step.

I agree with Dave, why build lower than ground level to start with unless it was a height restriction.

This is the first time its happened in just over 2 years, but I fear it may not be the last.

I have spoken to the owner this morning and he told me the french drain is ducted into the well, more like an old cesspit being about 3M Sq, don't know how deep.

The house sits in the middle of the french drain  with all patio, path water etc all fed into french drain which in turn runs into well.

The owner feels the french drain may have been breached after some recent landscape work, he is contacting the company that installed the drainage system to check it all out, and we may get some work out of it with regard to recommended improvements.

 

[NozSpark]

Sounds like very bad planning IMHO

Firstly on building the house below the level of the water table (whenever that may have been),

secondly on the poor design of the electrical circuit supplying the pump,

thirdly for having no backup pump and/or power failure warning system

:shakehead

 

[Steve3948]

Noz I agree, but from what he told me yesterday, is that the pump should never be required as the normal water table would always be way below the float switches, it was for maybe a freak situation that might happen one day,  that day was yesterday and someone had switched off the pump in the garage at some point, and like you say very poor design with no power failure signal, no battery back-up, so float switch for pump fail did not operate because power was off.

Will be interesting to see what the drainage people come up with, and who pays.

 

[kerching]

Interesting word keeps popping up here.......Architect............................just saying

 

[NozSpark]

I think as a minimum I'd have an over level alarm,,, that'd at least indicate power and/or pump failure

 

[ProDave]

This building must be so wrong in many ways.

For instance, the damp proof course in a wall must be a certain distance above ground.  So assuming it is, then the bottom part of the wall in the room must be bellow DPC?

Floors are normally built to be above the level of the DPC in the wall for good reason, so they remain dry.

Seems like this idiot architect seemed like it was "desirable" to have the floor level of the house the same as the outside floor level, so has compromised the building to achieve that.  Yeah that was a good idea wasn't it.

It's all very well to make a bit of raised decking level with the internal floor so you can have that nice level step-free opening from the house to the garden, but it sounds like the architect got it wrong this time.

I certainly would not be happy in that house. It's only a matter of time before it all goes horribly wrong.  As it is, the under floor make up is already soaked. How long is that burried polystyrene insulation going to take to dry out? 

 

[kerching]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^#12

Architect   from the Greek        'Archi'   meaning Bloke               and 'Tect'     meaning    'doesn't know much'    same derivation as

Archaeologists  from the Greek        'Archae'   meaning Blokes          and 'ologists'     meaning 'wildly guessing and jumping to conclusions'............................just saying.................. :coat

 

[ProDave]

I'll share my hatred or architects, since that's a theme here.

Many of you will know we bought a building plot and built the house we now live in.

I had pretty much designed the house myself, so just wanted someone to detail it for building control and make a working set of drawings a builder could work from, and of course to "check" my design and make any tweaks needed to ensure compliance with building regs.

I contacted 5 architects, 4 responded, 3 made appointments, and two of them turned up for their appointments.

The two that attended came in with very similar prices.  £25K.  Yes twenty five THOUSAND pounds.

I stressed to them I wasn't looking for project management, or for them to supervise the build, I just wanted some drawings, but apparently this was a "standard" price based on 10% of the estimated build cost.

Needless to say, I didn't employ them.  Instead, I found a firm of builders willing to build the basic shell for us and do the drawings, for which they charged a reasonable £2K

And it didn't cost us £250K to build the house, we built it for £140K so even by their own measure, the architects were trying to over charge (if it had cost £250K we would not have been able to afford it)

Architects seem to be a profession that over charges, has an inflated opinion of their own importance, and think the building industry would not function without them. Actually I think it would function a lot better in most cases.  And when they do get involved, they still manage to do things spectacularly wrong.

 

[Steve3948]

+1 to all that Dave.

 

[Evans Electric]

Dave Oh Dave Oh Dave 

  you are forgetting that there is a special club for people who are not workers but Professional People.  

To be a member you have to be an Accountant, Architect, Solicitor, Barrister .

Membership entitles you to charge 1000% more than the real cost for any particular job .    

 

[binky]

the house we found the water under the floorboards was an old cottage. Apparently the cottage next door has a soak-away which is overflowing! What i think has happened in this case is that a combination of exceptionally wet weather combined with the fact a new road was built in front of the cottages in the 60s has resulted in firkin up the water table by effectively building a dam in front of the house so that with the exceptional weather, the old soakaway system has failed.

as for achitects, form tends to be more important than function, but it also has to be said that they get pushed into designs by customers not wanting steps or a seemles transition from house to garden, and architectural fashion for that matter. Consequntly they design silliness into the building woith things like pumps to overcome the issues. There is a small housing estate near me at a place called Marshmills - name speaks for itself. The estate is protected by pumps which has never failed to date over the course of around 30 years. So this sort of system certainly can work, provided no-one turns it off

 

[Andy™]

So this sort of system certainly can work, provided no-one turns it off

or Onoff gives it a C1 incase the pipe bursts and the pump gets wet