Shoeburyness Qinetiq Explosions

After having my house shake several times over the last 2 days in a totally unacceptable way - I spotted an article about the explosions at Shoeburyness and decided to write an email about it to the author of the article and other influential persons, as lets face it - its getting really bad again!

Here's another link... http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=120105185386




Dear Mr Duddridge

Re your comments in this article - 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1252988/Bomb-disposal-squads-barred-testing-explosives-neighbours-complain-noise.html

I live in Lee-Over-Sands on Colne Point, St Osyth, Essex which is 15 miles away from the explosions from Shoeburyness - Despite what you think, the explosions are still going on, we've had peace and quiet over the winter and not many really big explosion vibrations until the last two weeks.

Every now and again they seem to test really massive explosions - which make all the houses in my road shake like there's an earthquake going on - yet Qinetic insist ground vibrations aren't possible - and its only air pressure, which is below their prescribed limits. The smaller ones aren't too bad and are tolerable - but when it makes your entire home shake... thats a different matter entirely. I work from my home as a software designer - when I moved to this area I had no idea how incredible the tremors were until several weeks after moving in - whilst the peace and quiet here is fabulous - and why I moved here, each time the tests go on - its not just humans that feel the effects here - even the birds in the SSSI sanctuary panic and fly making loud noises of fright.

Basically the issue for us here is not sound from the explosions - its vibration. Our homes are behind and surrounded partly by the sea wall defences, which seems to amplify the shockwave, and perhaps the geological structure of the land here seems to be particularly susceptible to this.

After many, many complaints to them most residents here start to give up with the process and don't see any point, because it just keeps going on and on! When you ring the company's complaints line you get the same old story about decibel levels. Of course an explosion sounds quieter in the air at a short distance - what they don't measure or consider is that sound travels underground in low frequency waves for a great distance - so this form of monitoring is inaccurate. Perhaps they are burying munitions and detonating them to reduce short distance noise - only causing us worse problems miles away!

Basically these sort of tests should be done in a very remote location - or limits should be put on magnitude of explosions. I fail to see how any IED in Afganistan can match these huge explosions scale wise - so I can't see how any of this is justified - Larger explosions should be done offshore on a distant uninhabited island in the outer reaches of the UK - not 20 or 30 miles from the capital and the most populated area of the UK.

Lots of residents who pay the taxes that allow the war to be fought in Afganistan have to deal with the noise and vibrations - remember that we fund this!

And did we as citizens want the war in Afganistan or approve it by referendum - no

I for one think your comments are typical for an MP - If you think its acceptable to tolerate your house being shaken - why not try it yourself!

Regards

Derek Foley

If you want to ring up and complain about the noise - make yourself heard - make a note of the time and date and complain via the telephone 0800 056 0108


Rather amusingly, I complained to their line at 11:44 and while I was on the phone to Carolyn Circus, three explosions went off shaking my house, and another single one minutes later.


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Update 21/04/2011


There is now a website where you can check for any "activity", or subscribe to email alerts, such as the one I received below.


http://www.qinetiq.com/home_shoeburyness/exceptional_activity.html

Crime Rates

If you're interested to see the crime rates for our hamlet and information about the Police officers who are assigned as our local constables, you can see it on a great new website - Police.uk
Take a look click here

Beach Road's 'The Town Hall' is for sale

Probably the most substantially constructed dwelling in Lee-Over-Sands, aka 'The Town Hall' as many Beach Roaders call it, is up for sale on a major web-property portal. The private sale sign has been up for several months now. Click here to visit the listing on RightMove

Lee-Over-Sands Gypsy site

Just heard from a reader of our blog (a local journalist) that the application has been turned down, mainly on the grounds of the site being in a flood risk area. What makes this a hollow victory for us is that this decision was apparently not made because of our resident's objections but zoning technicalities. The local opinions of real neighbours which should be what actually matters in the decision making process - so ironically sometimes, we can get a result through our so called elected democratic process - just not the right one we hope for!

Access Road Maintenance 2011 - Hopes & Dreams

I've noticed a big deterioration in our private access road from the EA depot to Wall Street since the weather has deteriorated in October.

Regular readers of the blog already know this year Andy Haynes and I did our best to voluntarily improve it for all residents and households during the summer using our own funds and manpower as the owners of the road had not bothered to maintain it and maintain our access rights. Thankfully our desperation fuelled work earlier in the year has remained intrinsically sound and unaffected by the wet weather. Hopefully residents driving over it will notice that all the hardcore re-inforced areas we filled in the summer have remained level - proving that it was a sensible decision.

The remainder of the rough-track road that we did not work on covered with a fine gravel covering has once more moved around dramatically with the wet weather and late summer vehicular movement - producing large pot-holes and bumps which have started to re-appear throughout the 1.6 km making it tougher to get a normal car down once more.

By spring these areas will have deteriorated further - in 2011 I'll be contributing another £180 towards another 20 ton load of hardcore - which is what I provided last year in addition to the 70 tons Andy and his mother paid for.

I've been thinking about some of the previous negative attitudes towards the work by a couple of individuals, and I think a good compromise would be to make the entry point of the road look intentionally uneven to put off car-based explorers and the "boy-racer" fraternity which they cited as the main reasons for not improving the surface. If we improve 95% of the road past that point we can move up and down more easily and still maintain the feeling of isolation we adore!

Given all the positive encouragement we had last year from all the other residents, hopefully this year given our new spirit of community cooperation we'll be able to rally support and get some more help both financially and physically to improve it further!

BT Infinity - Fibre-Optic Broadband to suit the 21st Century

I'd advise all residents of Lee-Over-Sands to vote for this (click here), our broadband speeds are typically 1.5 megabits or less - so any fundamental system improvements to broadband will solve our speed issues, which is mainly because we are so far from the nearest exchange, which reduces our conventional ADSL broadband speed.

Lee-Over-Sands Gypsy site

I spotted a news item today about traveller's sites, and noticed someone had made a comment at the bottom of the local newspaper's website edition of their article - albeit erroneously and misinformed with regards to the current status about our site in Wall Street.

http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/8416446.Severalls_travellers____site_idea_won___t_work__says_gipsy_supporter/?ref=rss

Technically the council originally only granted residency and permission for caravans on the small site to a past resident (Mr Grinrod) for 5 years for one immediate family only. This was revoked technically when a different family, the Dorans moved in. In July 2010 the family disappeared, leaving the site unoccupied.

Since then a yellow planning notice has been attached to the telegraph pole outside the site and letters sent to immediate neighbours only about an extension allowing caravans onsite being applied until 2012.

Whilst the Doran family themselves were no trouble, apart from their work vans going in and out dozens of times a day the only major problems we had were with their extended family during visits - what concerns me is that there is massive uncertainty about the quality of future tenants - I'd suggest to all residents that we all write to the council to individually object, as its unclear who might eventually return to the site, it could be a decent family like the Dorans, or the ownership could be passed on to another family by sale or lease/rent of the land - and we could be left with the problems Phil and Carol unfortunately faced in the past.

If you want to support or object to this application here is the link to the Tendring Planning website.
http://idox.tendringdc.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=neighbourComments&keyVal=L8DCONQB09L00

Wall Street Sewage System update

Just to let readers of our blog know, that the weekend's work on the pump system and increase in flow efficiency has resulted today in the pit fluid level going down to the position of the pump, which is 4.5 metres down from floor level, a really big difference to what we saw before getting the key - back then the sewer pit was almost full, only half a metre down from floor level.

Our aim is to get the fluid levels in the galleries / manholes (near Robbie & Frank) down to sensible levels - as previously this was not happening or being checked by the previous management - which risked the system being backed up with solids at the extreme end of the pipework.

Now, as the levels have dropped so much, the clay pipe entry into the sewer is above the water level, which should mean the rest of the system is no longer full with water.

Now we've achieved this, the pump has been set only on the timer - I re-adjusted the time-switch to run for 1 hour each night today, and will closely monitor it over the next week.

Wall Street Sewage System update

After finally obtaining the key for all residents, Puck, Andy and I took a good look at the sewage system over the weekend and did some thorough testing.

We considered several factors, how could we lift the pump more easily than I had with a friend last year, and how we could monitor levels, as it is extremely hard to measure the amount of fluid going into the system obviously.

While I looked thoroughly at the electrical installation - Andy and Puck scrutinised the pumping.

I started out by first measured the average current to three phase pump, approx 1.8 Amps on a single phase, I also tested the pump under startup load, no problems either so the pump looks like it is electrically sound.

What was surprising was that after 8 years of maintenance, and pump specialists looking at the pump, nobody had realised that the pump itself had not been earthed, and the armoured cable to the control box had been linked to the contactor with a piece of 3 core mains flex! Whilst this would be ok in some situations, if the pump is double insulated and IP rated for immersion, the pump is actually suspended on a steel chain connected to the body of the steel pump outer casing. This means that should a fault develop inside the pump electrically, anyone touching the chains would most likely be electrocuted or at least get a very nasty 415 Volt shock - and with an open manhole that is 5 metres deep - thats a very dangerous situation!

I also discovered that there was a fault with the earth spike for the building, as when I put in a temporary earth, the motor tripped out, which made me realise someone had previously made a decision to not attach an earth to the pump rather than spending 5 pounds on an earth spike and making off the armoured cable sheath properly (which is an earth!)

Andy started to fit a ratchet chain block kindly supplied by Puck and tackle and a frame to support it, to enable us to raise and examine the pump more easily while I started to investigate the best way of fitting a time-switch onto the system.

I switched the pump on at 1.30am and it was switched off in the morning at 7.30am - At 10:30am on Sunday further investigation was made (removal of the outlet hose outside the building) proved that the pump was doing very little, with black sludge coming up - a trickle, rather than gushing out of the 2 inch pipe. This explained why the level in the sewer wasn't moving. Andy calculated 2 cubic metres had been shifted overnight. It was quite clear that the pump isn't doing its job, as a 2kw pump should shift that sort of quantity in an hour - even a pond fountain 400Watt pump would do better than that!

We lifted the pump, which of course with the right kit is now pretty easy thanks to our collective expertise and equipment - we discovered that the position of pump vertically is crucial to flow, if the pump is positioned too low, then it can't cope with the "black sludge" - and does very little. As soon as the pump was raised a few inches, and started again, we had a full flow outside.

I replaced the old timeswitch, which I had fitted yesterday - which didn't seem to advance, over to a low-cost plug in version, which will be more easy to replace in the event of a fault, and re-wired the previous control box so that the emergency stop button would function again.

The timeswitch has now been set to run from 1.30am to 5.30am in the morning, so we can take advantage of night electicity rates (economy 7). As the pit was still quite high, we decided to override the timeswitch from 2pm onwards to reduce the pit's fluid levels and get the manholes down the road back to a sensible low level.

Andy will look at the old pump unit and attempt to refurbish it, and my next job next weekend will be to fit a proper earth spike and run an earth cable to the pump connection in the control box to make it completely safe.

We also discussed investigating the flow rate at the end of the pipe at the sewage works, so we will investigate that in due course.

Very High Tide across Beach Road & Ray Creek!

My Stepdad today noticed how high the tide was at midday today while walking his dog - for a Lee-Over-Sands resident like me who lives behind the sea-wall and not owning a dog to walk regularly has meant that I've always been blissfully unaware of how high the tide gets sometimes across the "other side" of our sea-defences.

I was pretty amazed at what I saw... The creek had vanished.... and the sea was at the foot of the sea-wall height, approx 2-3 metres from the top.

Amazing stuff - and for residents of Wall Street who would be otherwise under water, as you can clearly see from the picture below...

you can see the difference in height between properties on the Beach Road side compared to Wall Street...




...Its good to see the seawall is doing its thing - well - it will until 2050 apparently, which is when all maintenance of the sea-defences will be cancelled!

Residents Association & Sewage Meeting for Option 3

13 Residents/Homeowners met half way down Wall Street on Sunday at 12pm to discuss and make a final decision on "Option 3" as proposed by Frank at the last meeting.

Of the 10 eligable households, 8 were in agreement with Frank's suggestion that we should all run the sewage system via an elected committee and make use of all of our skills. Unfortunately despite this landslide majority, the only two households that disagreed were Phil and Andy King, who between themselves had decided after the last meeting much to our dismay took things into their own hands and took control. Despite the fact that the last vote was not unanimous (see previous post).

We discussed Franks proposal, and there was a landslide majority - that we would all manage the pump - questions were asked about why people who don't reside have a key - Frank's wife made a very good point about why the key had been issued to Andy and his father in-law, and who had the right to make such a  decision  for all of us. This seemed to polarise attitudes for all residents and the meeting then seemed to turn on the current keyholders. At the end of the discussion we said that as it was quite clear that opinions had changed that we should take control asap - we then asked who had the key now, Andy King answered - the group then informed him that Andy H & Derek will need the keys immediately so we can examine the condition of the pump equipment and start making our analysis of the situation.

They stated to everyone that they would not hand over the keys to the new majority, citing that the owners of the pump room would not agree with it. Regrettably Andy left the proceedings, followed 20 minutes later by Phil, as things were clearly not going the way they had hoped.

The rest of us, the majority of 8 households - then formally proposed and voted on a residents comittee who would be formally in charge of pump management, and be accountable to all residents - first a treasurer, Puck (Mark Burgess) and Frank Bollu as chairman of the residents committee.

We stated that our first mission is to get the padlock removed so the elected comittee can run the sewage system in the way the majority of residents want it to be handled.

Talks are currently going on to this end with Puck and Andy King.

Clacton-Air-Show

Flyovers have been few and far between for the Clacton-Air-Show - I filmed this earlier today....

Bad smell recently

Anyone else notice the bad smell coming from the sea direction over the weekend? It smelled like sewage, wind direction was from the South, so it must have been coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Mersea Island. Ironically today, the wind is blowing from inland, across the LeeWick sewage farm and we can't smell anything - very bizzarre!

UPDATE: Fri 27th August.
The smell is back... it seems to be whenever we have no wind - the question now is where is the smell coming from, Wall Street's drains, the sewage unit, or Lee-Wick lane sewage depot - or possibly even somewhere on Beach Road... Hopefully someone with a good sense of smell can track it down!

Water Pipe - Self Laying Rules

I've found this document that appears to go through the regulations that we need to follow if we are going to lay the new water supply pipe ourselves. Its a pretty involved document, and I'll be getting my head around it this week between my 9-6 work and house building committments.

http://www.deevalleywater.co.uk/article_files/90/english/Self_Lay_Policy.PDF

We need to understand all the technical details in this document whatever we do.

Here's Anglian Water's version of the same thing - all based on British Standards all water companies adhere to:
http://www.anglianwater.co.uk/_assets/media/Guidance-notes-for-self-lay-water-mains-services.pdf

Which reminds me - I'm still trying to find a phone number for "Bond's" - I've looked online and can't find anything - if nobody knows the number, I do have a vague idea where they are now, so if by the end of the week I can't find a phone number I'll go into the village and knock on a few doors until I find them!

Wall Street Sewage Meeting 2 - second vote for "Option 3"

Having given the situation a lot of thought, I'm struggling to maintain a positive attitude due to events after our last meeting. I'm going to put my suspicions aside (I wish other people would) - disregard my last post and the "past" - I really want us to sort this out.

I can see why people might think that it wasn't a clear majority, yet the previous controllers of the system took it upon themselves to retain the key and do things their way citing a false vote result in their favour.

It wasn't a clear majority - the third option of "everyone" being in charge was a solution to the stalemate on the last vote as our last best hope. I can see this might have annoyed people - as they weren't asked - this 3rd option wasn't really voted on by EVERYONE, so its really important now that we do so. It seemed the best solution to those who remained at the meeting till the end.

To be completely fair - we now need to have a second vote now to be truly democratic to give everyone a proper chance via a secret ballot to vote on Frank's suggestion.

Additionally this meeting should also put in place a proper residents committee with fully voted representatives. This will also give us more political clout with the authorities in the future, and is something I'm sure Smith's Farms will agree with, as they always cite "what everyone wants" - during conversations - although the reality is this "everyone" was not in the past a proper majority. Additionally I have said to Phillip Smith on many occasions that we should have a proper residents committee.

A proper committee will help us sort things out democratically and give everyone a say.

Why this is very important to our small community:
The sewage issue is a pilot scheme for our bigger issues that we face - the water supply needs unity - if we can't come to a fair outcome, what chance do we have for our future infrastructure - leaving a very real possibility that we could be left high and dry if things deteriorate without residents taking action TOGETHER.

Who exactly was running the pump ?

I realised today I'd been lied to for a whole year about who was actually ultimately responsible for the bills on the Sewage.

The person I thought was doing it was really just the money collector. I feel really betrayed after all the conversations I had with certain individuals - for an entire year!

This makes me think even more that we can't go on having people in charge of the system who can't "come clean" on all the accounts or be honest with people when in discussions, casual or otherwise - I've decided from my own perspective - they will need to now substantiate their sums by proving everything in relation to bills, maintenance and expenditure.

I'm not giving money to anyone I can't trust without a paper trail to prove it from now. It sounds like I've been paying through the nose for mistakes made by the pump management before I moved into the road - It would seem that my contributions have footed the bill for the pump bought a couple of years ago.

It makes the arguments over £40 almost 8 years ago seem quite trivial in comparison.

As I keep saying we'd pay the same amount for commercial sewage service in a town. (approx £150 p.a. - Last year's bill for sewage for Lee-Over-Sands Wall Street residents was approx £140 for a year in total).

Whatever happens - Given this realization - I'd advise everyone in the street to demand an itemised bill before paying anything to anyone - whoever is in charge - it all needs to be transparently accountable... no more slips of paper with only "You owe £55 this period" and no explaination of why, or copies of bills paid during that period.

This is a key point that was our main issue - more transparency. Whatever happens - we need accountability - its only fair to all residents who contribute.

Sewage Shed Light Left On

Since Carol got an electricity company out last week - the sewage shed light has been left on - running up our bill. I've asked three people so far to give me the key or go switch it off - no luck, always excuses, "someone else has it etc"

The story goes that John had the key. When I asked John today for the key, his son-in-law has it. And today, he didn't arrive.

Is it really wise for someone who doesn't live here yet to have the key for emergencies - Utterly Daft.

I think we all know whats really going on here. Puck needs a meter reading to sort out the billing on the new tariff. I need to go in to start measuring current on the pump and monitoring flow, and start planning the switching work to lower the bills.


What worries me more is that the pump might have been left running as well as the light being left on - you can imagine the bill we'll have if its been running for 24hrs non stop for a week.

Reluctantly I've spoken today to Phillip Smith, who is the actual owner of the shed about removing the padlock with his permission - he will be getting back to me later today.

Sewage Unit decision made

Just to be clear, for those people who didn't see the update on the end of the blog entry about the Sewage unit. This is a seperate entry that explains the outcome of the meeting a bit more thoroughly for those people who didn't see the updated bits.

This is what happened for the benefit of those residents who didn't stay until the end.
If you're unhappy with this, you should have stayed until the end!

Voting was as follows: 
(It was decided that non attendees would not be counted - one vote per occupied household)

Votes for: Robbie, Derek, Andy Haynes
Votes against: Carol, Theresa, Andy King

Deciding votes were then up to Puck and Frank's choices.

Puck after much deliberation for half an hour decided to vote against our proposal which resulted in:

Votes for: Robbie, Derek, Andy Haynes

Votes against: Carol, Theresa, Andy King, Puck

This left a Final Deciding casting vote which would result in either a stalemate or a vote of 5 to 3 to keep it "as it was", which was all down to Frank's final vote.

Frank did not want to make a choice, as he could see the merits of both situations - and proposed a third scenario to the remaining attendees as a new option to break the stalemate - suggesting that we should all pool our knowledge and skills between us - rather than having 2 seperate camps, which is a very weak position to be in - as it would have ended up with either the "Technical people", and "non-technical" people managing it. Saying it was not a sensible situation to end up with - we should be united so the skills we have can contribute end up helping reduce bills - so everyone who wants to help physically and is able bodied. practical and technically minded instead should be involved and helping us make decisions. Andy, Puck and I agreed with Frank's suggestion, as we are really not that "precious" about controlling it in isolation anyway - we'd prefer more people were involved generally.

How it will work 

Basically we will have a "sewage comittee" -  - but this time rather than being 3 of us - have more people to help decide what to do - 

e.g. Derek, Puck, Andy H, Andy King, Frank

membership of the committee is only conditional on two factors: 

1) only those that agree to contribute

2) able to help physically with lifting, are able bodied - as well as being practical and technically minded.

This will help us guide decision making in the best possible way for everyone's benefit. 

• Andy H and I will start by monitoring and measuring pump data for several months, which will require us to go in and take measurements and readings initially on a periodic basis - could be every day or every week - we haven't planned this yet. Obviously we're going to need the key to do this. We will not do anything to change existing equipment without having the relevant data and have consulted on our findings with the rest of the comittee and voted - abiding with a majority decision for any changes in equipment only via the committee.
• The £40 magic figure Andy and I proposed is something that now be dropped - instead we as a committee will do our best to do anything we can to reduce the bills to a sensible amount each year.
• Puck will be doing whatever he can to reduce billing and tariffs with the electricity company.
• Billing at year end in arreas will also not happen now it will be on a per quarter basis in arreas as before.

Hope that explains things better!

Wall Street Sewage maintenance

Andy and myself have proposed that we take over maintenance and running of the Wall Street sewage system, as maintenance costs have been increasing leading to a cost per household of £125 this year, which is what we would be charged by a commercial water company for waste disposal in a suburban setting.

Andy has his reasons for doing this which we all know about - He's happy to contribute towards this cost from now on the condition that he and I take over the system.

My own reasons are mainly to reduce the cost and make best use of our technical knowledge and experience rather than relying on a third party company.

With these facts in mind we collectively drafted a letter to all Wall Street residents for signed approval - if we get a majority result, we will take over management of it.

UPDATE: 10th August 2010 
Andy and I had a meeting with Puck (Mark) today to try and make some sense of the percieved ignorant nonsensical negativity towards our proposals, which is not helping matters and so we made positive, constructive suggestions as to how we can get a consensus of opinion and actually start sorting this out between us instead of lining the pockets of the 3rd party pump management company.

Our suggestion:

If certain individuals can't trust me just because of an irrational fear of association, then the obvious solution is to manage it collectively by committee - so it seemed sensible to us that it should be me, Andy & Puck organising this. Simple. If after a year the three of us haven't reduced running costs, then someone else should step in and attempt to do better.

My Personal Opinion
I don't like being dictated to, especially if it involves uneccessary expense. We have the skills to do this ourselves collectively. I must admit, I'm tempted to start investigating getting my own seperate system if this nonsense doesn't stop soon, which could mean another contributor dropping out = which will mean everyone else will end up with even higher bills, and I certainly won't be lending my own electrical engineering expertise to helping a system I no longer subscribe to if our proposal gets objected.


UPDATE: 
As all the letters, discussions and knocking on doors and seperate discussions over the last few days are taking up a lot of time and becoming stressful - unfortunately despite Puck's valiant attempts, it really isn't getting us anywhere - so I suggested and proposed we have a meeting about sewage so hopefully we can move forwards with this with all residents on Saturday 14th August 2010 at 1pm.


CONCLUSION:
After a residents meeting, which got quite heated at times, Some interesting points, and disappointingly some soap-box ranting that kicked off the meeting and expected lack of cooperation from negative residents because of past troubles, we finally managed to proceed and keep the meeting in a positive.
Joe raised the issue of public liability insurance, for example if someone is injured while working in the sewage shed. Personally I think the litigation culture is something we can do without - If I injure myself I certainly won't be suing the other residents for compensation or whoever did the work badly. Despite my opinions, its a relevant point, although I dismissed it at the time - the thing to consider though is insurance puts up costs. 
Andy King also raised the issue about insurance cover, e.g. if the system fails. This made us wonder about the current maintenance contract. Usually sewage damage is covered by buildings insurance, although this is something we should investigate to see how we stand if there is any negligence either intentionally or unintentionally. 
The rest of the residents were understanding and reasonable as everyone saw how important this is to us as a community. 
Voting was split down the middle, with equal amounts of households in favour of our proposal until the final two people, who had trouble deciding, it came down to one person's decision. Finally after 2 hours it was decided by the remaining people at the meeting with the deciding votes that we should all get involved as a third option - no more "2 camps" and division in the community - instead we should all get involved. 


MY OPINION:
All in all a good outcome. At least everyone attended - which was good - despite the problems - good constructive stuff, despite how stressful it all was. I am a bit worried that things could get disorganised due to too many people being involved in the decision making process - that said I do believe we're all better moving together as a strong unit. So lets hope it all goes well.

Veolia Site Visit : 21st July 2010

Veolia's engineers did a preliminary site visit yesterday, I showed them the manhole at the road junction, told them about the stopcock, and meter inside it, and also explained how Phillip Smith is happy to let us run the pipework in set-aside areas (5m) from the road.

They also saw the water tower during their visit, before going over to Beach Road.

This visit was to give full details and technical info to Martin Henderson, Head of Operations of Veolia Water who is visiting tomorrow (Friday 22nd July 2010) at 3pm at the junction of Wall Street to inform us of our options.

I'll update everyone on the details after the meeting.

UPDATE: Friday 22nd July 2010
After meeting with Veolia's head of operations, Martin Henderson, he explained that the figure for them supplying water to Lee-Over-Sands is approximately £100,000.

This would be a cost of £8000 per household should the amount be split between all 34 properties and covers the cost of running and installing a new main to each household.

Obviously this is out of most people's budgets, so we discussed our options with regards to installing our own pipe which new users would "buy into" and have shares of as previously suggested until such a time that all properties are on the system - after which we could hand over responsibility of maintenance and ownership of the pipe to the water company.

Cost of the supply pipe itself would be approx £6000, Veolia would be happy to commission and test the pipe after we lay it - so this is one way we can reduce costs. So digging is the main cost after the pipe itself.

Frank (No11 & No 9 Wall Street) is investigating costs of running our own pipe.

If we do things this way, then there will be a shared cost for joining and testing the supply pipe, then an individual per household cost of between £350 and £700 to connect up each house's boundary - so householders will need to run their own pipes into their homes too.