Gigantic Sewer Cover in backyard

I am building a house at my land at the moment and it is near completion. I have noticed a big metal cover at the rear of my property.










It is big about 50cm and it is an eyesore. It is also a safety hazard because it is at a very high ground (higher than the ground level of my house), exposed and crooked.

Does anyone know what it is and whether it can be removed?

Thank you.

That is a sewer manhole cover and cannot be removed.

It will be on an easement which means there is a limit on what you do in the area, it also means you must give the sewerage authority access to the cover at all times.

Thanks bashworth,

Does anyone know if it can be lowered? At the moment it is higher than the ground level of my house.

Can I get my own plumber or is it more the local water authority?

Don't know where you are........but in Melbourne you would need to get permission and used an approved contractor.

It’s worth a call to your local water authority to ask.
If it is your own sewerage inspection point for your house then likely you can lower it.

If it is the boundary trap for easements then best to ask.

Is this area going to be a garden bed? Or grassed?
I have my boundary trap in garden bed and my sewerage inspection pit under deck, with trap door so can access the pit of required. My pit though after concreting path around house is at ground level. So level with ground.

Have you considered building a timber seat over it with screws so can access the pit when you need. Be creative and you’ll come up with a solution that masks this so it’s not a hazard and doesn’t annoy you.You could get some 3rd year apprentice chippies on gumtree to build something for you.

The large round cover is definitely a manhole owned by the sewerage authority.

And, assuming it's a gravity main, OP's not going to be able to have it "lowered" per se as the inlet and outlet pipe invert levels will be set to achieve certain gradients to the upstream and downstream manholes. Replaced with a shallower pit maybe, but not lowered.

Hopefully you can cover it with something you can remove to provide access as required.

For me on the things I wish I’d know page, I want to add - take note of water and gas meter locations and sewage inspection points as the builders convenient locations are often locations that make them a feature

Is there a way to make a complaint as the developer did not inform us of the change in sewer lines. We have just learned about the sewer line after the settlement because we saw them on title. And that is after nearly 18 months! The original contract did not say there will be an easement! It was really frustrating. The conveyancer did not even see the changes. And we have a super big manhole at the backyard. This is really frustrating. The developer did no even want want to talk us but only to the conveyancer who missed seeing this. They have the old and the new contract copy and they gave us so many excuses. They also said that the changes in sewer is not something you can use to ask the developer to give you a different lot

We are now building because we have to commence else we will have to pay the builder for the delay which we cannot afford and the risk of losing all the monies we have paid. It was a stressful time. I just couldn't believe how people, these sales guys would do everything to trap a customer.

I totally understand your frustrations. We are currently building. Our land hasn't settled yet. It's been 18 months. Land was supposed to settle 12 months ago. We haven't had access to the block until recently and noticed 2 manholes in our backyard. We knew about the easement from discovering it in our contract ourselves but there's nothing at all about the manholes. The worst thing is we had held 3 blocks so could choose any. Now all are obviously sold and we must have chosen the worst block. If we had known, we would've chosen a different block. Conveyancer agrees its not in our contract and could get our dep back but that would devestate us. There's no land now or land had gone up significantly. We don't know what to do either!

Just an update, we were able to lower it to the same height as the concrete slab through our local water authority. They required us to pay almost $3k but then later refunded us $1.5k after the work was done. It looks ok now.