Drains

There have been a few problems with the building project in Cyprus. This is just one of them.

When the house was first built Larnanca did not have a mains sewerage system so the drains were connected to a septic tank at the back of the house. But as time went by, the Municapality eventually got round to putting in mains sewers and the house was connected up - not to the sewer running at the front of the house but to the sewer in the road behind, via Uncle Hambis' property. I believe this was done for reasons of short-term economy, but it has meant that the sewerage junction is a tad overloaded. So we figured while we're getting the building on the roof done, let's put the drains right. We obtained the necessary permissions, paid the fees and gave the plans to the builder and the architect and thought that would be all there was to it.

But no. Despite having had the plans since February the builder just noticed that the drain from the house doesn't meet up with the inlet to the main sewer. And the authorities won't let you run a diagonal pipe under the pavement or road to compensate. Various solutions were put forward, including digging up the whole of the ground floor to lay a new drain, but we've now reached a compromise whereby they'll dig a diagonal channel under our property to meet the main sewer at a right angle. This was supposed to happen last weekend but for some reason or other, it didn't. And now the builder has gone to Libya seeking another job. Ho hum. Meanwhile, not a small amount of inconvenience has been caused to the ground floor tenants whose drains remain temporary.

What I find annoying is not that we have encountered a problem - such things are inevitable - but that both the architect, who is supposed to be supervising things, and the builder have failed to sort out a difficulty that was foreseeable.