BTW, when Sydney Water do a peg-out, I assume they mark the ground with pipe location, but how does this get onto a plan or a survey?
lol twodogs I love your curiosity.... you remind me of me! hehe
Peg-Outs: The illustrious fishing licenses of the plumbing World (Im not kidding). Sydney Water has granted a limited number of contracts; they're a license to print money really.
It goes like this: When you (or I) go into a 'quick check agent' to get our Site Plans stamped, they look the property up on a computer which shows the property and the approximate sewer location. They do a rather crude measurement there- they measure the pixels on the screen. Seriously. That's how they locate it...by counting the pixels from the boundary. Yea...
If the operater (usually a pimple-faced appprentice) figures that your structure is less than 2x the depth (the depth is shown the same as you see it on the dialb4udig print we get)- he charges you about $26, issues you a 'Dolfin Number' and tells you "sorry, you need a peg-out". They often 'recommend' a guy who can do this pegout...(conflict of interest, anyone?)...
And it gets crazier...read on...
The pricing for peg-outs IS NOT regulated. Sydney Water Contractors, as they're called (the peg-out guys) can charge anywhere between $400 to over $1,000 for the same service...and here's the service: The guy comes to your property, walks around trying to look like he's doing something (for around 20 minutes)...takes your money..then leaves.
He then sits down and uses a program he exclusively has access to (it comes with the license)..did I mention these licenses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy? Anyway, he uses his own reckoning, sketches the sewer location and nominates the depth + distance from boundary. It's up to him where it is, and there's really no way to know for sure. It's a guess mostly.
He issues you the Peg-Out (see sample attached). Now that you have this peg-out you can build closer (Depth + 600mm if the sewer is <2.5m deep, otherwise Depth + 900mm if the sewer is >2.5, deep). You then MUST take the peg-out and site plan to a 'Sydney Water Coordinator' (they too have a special bought license)..who charge you between $250 to over $1,000 (also NOT regulated) to stamp the plan.
It's a massive rort. And it's inescapable.
Ive had dialogue with Sydney Water over this^ for years and they just don't want to talk about it. They also don't want to talk about why we (the people) have to fork out thousands of dollars for a system that is unregulated, often in conflict of interes etc...It's like going to the police for help, being put in gaol then told for a 'price' we can send you to a guy who can break you out.
Crazy. But that's the system I (and every Sydney-Sider) has to use.
Last bit of craziness is the 2x depth rule: You'd think that the deeper the sewer, the more protected it is. But they figure that the deeper the sewer is, the more unprotected it is
...Ive talked with the Engineer's @ Sydney Water and they say the sewer is already under load from the earth above it, so putting a structure away at 2x it's depth ensures no 'lateral forces' are placed upon it. So if your sewer mains' is 2.5m deep they figure a safe distance (for a 100mm slab) is 5m away! Again, nuts.
End of Brazen's rant. I hope my 'peg-out guy' doesn't read Somersoft.
P.S. You'll notice on the attached peg-out they contractor measures distances from the fencing- since when is fencing exactly on the boundary? So all of this for an innacurate location. And as I said we have to do it.
