WORKER’S Party city councillor Ted Tynan has claimed that the recent prolonged cold spell has exposed a “huge level of non-compliance with building and planning standards with regard to water supply and said that local authorities including Cork City Council had failed to enforce the regulations properly, particularly with regard the depth of water pipes and stop-cocks”.
The Workers’ Party councillor said that he had been contacted by dozens of householders whose |water pipes or stopcocks had frozen because they had not been buried deep enough”.
He pointed out that regulations have existed for many years governing the depth of pipes and stopcocks but these had not been adhered to in many cases.
Cllr Tynan said that the problem appears to be widespread in Cork City but he has also heard of people with the same problems throughout the country as far away as Westmeath and Kildare.
The Mayfield-based councillor said that local authorities such as Cork City Council should “pursue developers whose shoddy work has led to problems and expensive emergency works for the local authorities and has caused untold damage to homes, expense and inconvenience to householders”.
However he also stated that local authorities themselves have questions to answer on enforcement matters adding that he would be raising some of these questions at the next meeting of the city council.
“Building regulations have been flouted on a massive scale and there seems to have been a huge amount of leeway given to these developers. The cost of this is now being borne by cash strapped local authorities but in particular by householders and taxpayers who will have to pay the cost of the damage.
“This is yet another example of how property developers were allow ride roughshod over rules and regulations during the Celtic Tiger era. The chickens are coming home to roost but it is ordinary people who are being made carry the can,” he said.
Cllr Tynan said that the crisis showed the “complete stupidity of the government’s plan to introduce water charges and spend over €1 billion on installing water meters”. “It is not householders who are wasting water but the state itself which turned a blind eye to sharp practices in the property sector, just as they did in relation to banking. Proper enforcement of the regulations and pursuing developers who have cut corners should be the priority instead of attempting to use a water management crisis as an excuse to introduce an additional tax on the family home”, he said.
This is a very imprtant issue and credit to Mr tyan for raising it. Why havent the TDs and Cllrs of the main parties raised it ?
There is an interesting letter in tiday’s Irish Times reagrding frozen pipes:
http://www.irishtimes.com/letters/index.html#1224286701252
Madam, – I wish to comment on one aspect of disruptions to water supplies which does not seem to be receiving due attention. I refer to protection against frost. Current Irish building regulations state that “the cistern, service pipe and fittings and any associated cold water pipes should be adequately protected against frost”. The Irish building regulations are silent as to what is meant by “adequately protected”, but I can recall after a long life spent at water supply and roads, in three local authorities, and before that with consulting engineers, that the minimum depth to protect against frost was 2 feet, 6 inches or 750mm. This fact is still confirmed in four of the most modern and reliable text books which I have in my possession, three from the UK and one from UL.
Despite this, the practice seems to have crept in – throughout at least one local authority area, in recent years, of replacing old stopcocks (at old-fashioned 750mm depths or so) with new fittings. These new fittings have an aluminium-type cover and frame at ground level, with a plastic cylinder extending underground for depths varying from 5 inches to 12 inches. These depths are the depths to a temporary short pipe within the cylinder connecting the public supply to the house connection. There is no further protection apart from a disc of polystyrene which absorbs rain water and then freezes. Needless to say, the rest of the cold water service into the house then freezes, often for many days.
I don’t know what is going on, but it seems to me that someone is trying to get ready for water meter installation on the cheap. I can certainly say that these new “contraptions” have caused extreme hardship to many people, especially the elderly, including widows, during the intense cold of last winter and of recent weeks.
I would like to draw attention to this bad practice and to find out if it is spreading. I should add that I am strongly in favour of water metering, on a fair basis. The place for water meters is within the house, such as on the kitchen rising main. – Yours, etc,
There has been a very surprising lack of questions from the majority of our TDs and Councillors as to how so many houses found themselves without water due to freezing ! I Why is that ?