It is estimated that the cost to locate all the misconnections in the UK could be around £450 million and the cost to remove them might be around £50 million. If you’re not familiar with the term misconnection, we’re talking about foul drains connecting to surface water systems, eventually discharging to water courses and it’s not just aesthetic issues that concern the Environment Agency. The most serious issue is the effect increased organic matter, chemicals and nutrient enrichment have on the fragile ecosystems of our waterways; insect life, shellfish and fish are either chemically contaminated or killed off due to oxygen starvation, which eventually affects humans in many different ways. The other issues are that it doesn’t smell very nice, it doesn’t look very nice and why jeopardize something important or essential to you?
So the Environment Agency have had a large amount of involvement in the misconnection module contained within Certified Drainage Surveyors qualification. In their opinion it makes much more sense to have drainage contractors who are trained in looking for misconnections and also understand the implications of misconnections. There are thousands of drainage contractors visiting thousands of properties, so why not utilise this massive workforce in an efficient manner?
It makes a lot of sense.
Candidates concentrating hard on longitudinal crack definitions and whether or not this is a continuous defect at XTI’s training centre.
There are now six training centres through the UK that provide this training including the XTI training centre at Oldham.
The Domestic Drainage CCTV Qualification has been designed by the WRC in conjunction with the NADC and the Environment Agency. The course content includes the following:
- Drain ownership and sewerage law.
- Domestic drain design, drain misconnections and components.
- Drain investigation best practice.
- CCTV survey practical exercise.
- Domestic drainage classification coding.
- Condition grading and the need for drain repair.
- Selection and specification of the correct drain repair technique.