Your toilet, sink, drain and bath are connected via a waste pipe and soil pipe to a drain, generally a 4 inch diameter pipe running under the ground and connecting your property to the sewer system. You may not be connected to the sewer, however, but have your own or shared septic tank or cesspit.

Either way the drains that serve only one property are the responsibility of the owner of the property they serve even if they run under someone else’s garden or under the road.

When drains from more than one property join together they become a sewer. There are two types of sewer, private and public (please see links below).