A woman is at her wit's end due to a 'horrific' sewage smell that fills up her new build home. Virginia Hammond has done her best to investigate the matter and has tried contacting the developers who said that as the warranty on her property has expired the responsibility doesn't lie with them.
The 78-year-old pleaded with developers Barratt Homes but they won't budge. She bought the new build home in 2016 for £187,000 and first noticed the stench a year after moving in. She said that it seems to come from some piping and in to her kitchen towards the back end of her property, Yorkshire Live reports.
Other homes on the site were still being built at the time so she brought it up with the site manager on numerous occasions, who blamed it on the pipes under her sink and the downstairs toilet, saying that it had nothing to do with the connecting drains on the properties. However the smell has persisted until this day and still comes and goes "at random". Mrs Hammond said: "It's a mystery because the smell is horrendous but then it vanishes as quick as it came.
"The smell of sewage gets horrendous in my kitchen. My family have been here when it's been bad and gone 'Jeez, what's that?' Recently it's been really bad - sometimes for four days and nights at a time."
Her son, Martin added: "I've come here on a warm day and it's really unpleasant." She said that she brought it up with Barratt Homes directly in 2019 but they said that because the warranty on her property had expired after two years they would not look at her private drainage.
They also did not have any log of the complaints from the site manager from when Mrs Hammond had raised the matter before. She said: "They don't want to help you but it must be coming from somewhere else to my house because I've had my drains checked twice and there's no smell from my drains.
"They just turned around and said it's my problem. I'm really at a loss. I really am." Mrs Hammond said she spoke to her insurance company who have been out to look at her drains and established that the smell was not coming from her plumbing.
She said at this point they also found stones, rubble and slime in the drains from the developers. She said: "I watched him and he was taking bricks and all sorts out of it.
"If that's just mine there might be rubble and a blockage in someone else's drain and they don't know about it." She also called Yorkshire Water, who came round and theorised that the smell may be from shared drainage between the houses, which they said was still the responsibility of the developers Barratt Homes.
Mrs Hammond said: "They said it's Barratts's responsibility so I called them again. Someone came out and checked my drains and they couldn't find anything which I think is a good thing - it shows it's not my drains causing the smell.
"I think it's the pipes under the roads that need checking for a blockage. The smell is coming to my house from somewhere else. It's a real problem."
Mrs Hammond's son Martin, who works as a caretaker, said he has also dismantled the internal plumbing and taken the water boards up in the kitchen but says he can't find the source of the smell either. He said: "I'm furious with Barratt Homes. They've had issues with the drains throughout. It's really frustrating."
A spokesperson from Barratt Developments Yorkshire East said: “There has been a complaint about a drainage problem from a local resident who lives close to our new development. Our team has done several camera surveys to investigate this issue, and we have found no evidence of any issues with drains caused by our development.
"As a local housebuilder, we take complaints of this nature very seriously and we always look to find a solution for any issues in the local community.”
