Odd Road Works: Motoring Non-motoring forum

Non-motoring > Odd Road Works	Miscellaneous
Thread Author: zippy	Replies: 14

Wed 2 Oct 24 17:47

Odd Road Works - zippy

Miss Z is currently renting because she still has to move hospital every year. Luckily this year the 2023/24 hospital and 2024/25 hospital are quite near each other so she is staying put with her current rental.

The house is on a newish estate - about 5 years old. The road is a loop with a spur to the nearby main road and is paved with bricks (I suppose blocks - but YKWIM) -it's quite nice.

Anyway, over the last 8 months there have been constant roadworks - not coming and going - on the road - around and around the loop, taking up the bricks and putting them back, taking them up again and putting them back. No-one seems to know why and all the contractors will say is that they have been told to.

I've measured the road - there are 20ish homes on it and it's 252 meters long. They have all their utilities, gas, water, electricity, phone, FTTP.

I'm wondering if the road wasn't made to specifications for adoption?

Miss Z was annoyed today because she's just arrived home and can't get on to her drive because they've dug up the bit of road outside her house - again!

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Wed 2 Oct 24 18:44

Odd Road Works - sooty123

They lift they bricks up, do nothing under them, then put them back down. They do this non stop for 8 months?

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Wed 2 Oct 24 18:51

Odd Road Works - zippy

>> They lift they bricks up, do nothing under them, then put them back down. They
>> do this non stop for 8 months?
>>

No, they seem to be digging up under the blocks, doing something to the sub-levels and then replacing them but they have gone round a few times now.

I would ask but it's about 3 hours each way from where I live and last time I visited it was a weekend and the "JCB" and dumper truck were there but no people.

Last edited by: zippy on Wed 2 Oct 24 at 18:52

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Wed 2 Oct 24 18:55

Odd Road Works - sooty123

Probably repairing various bodges.

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Wed 2 Oct 24 18:58

Odd Road Works - zippy

That's a lot of bodges in 252m! :-D

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Wed 2 Oct 24 19:21

Odd Road Works - Robin O'Reliant

When I worked for a London Borough back in the eighties the council laid about 300 yards of new paving flags along one stretch of road. Come the following Monday morning the whole lot had disappeared, residents saying how a group of "Workmen" had appeared over the weekend and took the lot. Nobody thought it was in anyway suspicious, I suppose being used to seeing a road tarmacked and then shortly afterwards being dug up by one of the utilities to lay pipes or cables, something not uncommon back then.

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Wed 2 Oct 24 22:41

Odd Road Works - smokie

Did road works used to stink back then or am I misremembering? Maybe it was the clay or whatever the soil was where I grew up. I mean back in the (probably) late 50s/early 60s.

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Wed 2 Oct 24 22:48

Odd Road Works - tyrednemotional

I think, back in the days of coal gas (rather than natural gas), any leaching from the pipework, particularly in clay soil ( which retained it?) used to provide a rather unpleasant stench.

May be entirely wrong, though.

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Thu 3 Oct 24 06:40

Odd Road Works - Falkirk Bairn

A son lives on a "new estate" - actually 14 years old.
Lives in a branch of a normal road with 3 houses on it - brick rather than tarmac

He has a 1.5m pole in his garden with a street light. likewise the other 2.

The light failed in his garden, phoned council was advised that his part of the street has not been adopted by the Council.
The builder did not make a payment to the council when the house was built. This was unknown to the house owners until the street light failed many years later. The bulb was not expensive but relaying 50 metres of 2 x car width brick would be!

No chance of getting a response from the builder - they went bust over a year ago.

That said about 1 mile away there are a lot of disgruntled home buyers - the builder went bust weeks/months after they moved in. Half built homes next door, piles of builder's waste, unmade muddy access roads.
It appears other builders have made offers to the liquidators to buy the site & half built homes but cannot agree a price.

Meanwhile £500K homes and unsellable until the estate is completed in the future - it could be years!

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Thu 3 Oct 24 09:48

Odd Road Works - sooty123

>> That's a lot of bodges in 252m! :-D
>>

More than likely, if they've bodged one bit they've probably bodged it all.

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Fri 18 Oct 24 19:47

Odd Road Works - zippy

Miss Z caught one of the men with a diggers and apparently the houses are connected to the wrong water company.

Sounds odd to me - wouldn't they just change the connection to the one pipe upstream?

Anyway, she was annoyed because they dug up her drive without warning and her landlord is livid because their nice long brick / block drive has been dug up and there is now a meter wide black tarmac zig-zag running down the centre of it.

I suspect legal action to follow if it's not put back how it was.

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Sat 19 Oct 24 05:59

Odd Road Works - Falkirk Bairn

Just the same as a nearish neighbour.

Gas man dug up part of the road & his drive nearest to the road say 8 months ago . Fixed the issue and then infilled the holes and put new bricks down. Night & Day difference between existing 20+ year old bricks & the new ones. Still not fixed months later.

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Sat 19 Oct 24 07:59

Odd Road Works - smokie

I thought I read somewhere recently that they weren't generally obliged to put back into original condition. Might have been when renewing my insurance, so I don't know of there'd be a claim possibility. Or maybe the legal cover would get involved to try to get it done.

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Sat 19 Oct 24 09:12

Odd Road Works - Bromptonaut

>> Sounds odd to me - wouldn't they just change the connection to the one pipe
>> upstream?

Possible that companies A & B have different standards for piping. Or maybe topography is a factor and the 'fall' was wrong. A long dead friend of my Mother's was fond of the saying God only knows (pause) and he's not telling.

Water supply and waste water disposal, while generally simple, can be a mish mash.

I did a few years on project funded by one of the very big water companies. Our job was to interview customers, and check they were getting the right benefits and that they were on the best tariff for their usage.

Most places our funder did both the supply and the waste. Easy peasy. In some places it did the supply but one of the other big companies did the waste (or vv). So customers had to be directed to contact Severn Trent, Thames or whatever as well. That sort of split was usually down to how infrastructure was allocated in 1974 when water supply was removed from local government.

There are also places where other outfits do the supply. The used to be small and very local, Three Rivers was one, Rickmansworth another. Many have been bought out by Affinity but others, Essex for example still plowed their own furrow.

Every company has to have a Social Tariff for low income but they're all different. A mess that needs solving.

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Mon 13 Jan 25 17:06

Odd Road Works - zippy

Due to a small domestic emergency I had to travel down to Miss Z with my toolkit a short while ago.

The road is in a dreadful state. The lovely block paving that covered the road (red blocks for the road, edged with dark blue blocks) are about 70% gone. What's left is an undulating mess of tarmac - this has been dumped not laid and is in no way smooth - it feels like one is driving off road. Tarmac covers some blocks and others in the herringbone pattern have spread like fingers on a hand.

There are pipes stored up at the side of the road. These are wide bore and look much more like waste pipes rather than fresh water pipes.

The residents no get informed by letter when a new hole is to be dug. I am advised that the workmen have been around the close at least 4 times now - in 10 months.

I suspect home owners there are well peed off.

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