A 78-year-old woman says she is 'at her wit's end' after living with a 'horrendous' sewage smell in her home for the last five years. Virginia Hammond has been experiencing a strange stench coming from under the floorboards at 'random intervals' in her new build property.
Virginia, who lives in Yorkshire, says she has pleaded with developers Barratt Homes to remove the 'horrific' smell but claims that they have deflected responsibility and said that they can't do anything as the warranty on her property has expired.
Mrs Hammond moved in to the newly built home that she bought for £187,000 in September 2016 and said she first noticed the stench within a year of living there, and that it appears to come from some pipes below the floorboards in her kitchen.
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Other homes on the site were still being built at the time, so Virginia says she brought it up with the site manager on numerous occasions. She claimed he 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, reports YorkshireLive.
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.”
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