V A Sewer is defined as an underground pipe or

channel owned and maintained by a statutory

body (usually one of the privatised water
companies) and used to carry waste water or
sewage.
V A Drain is most commonly defined as a pipe or
channel owned by an individual, usually the
property owner.
V A Private Sewer is a drain shared by a group of
residents/property owners.
V All drainage systems, both above ground and below
ground, work by creating a slope and relying on gravity to
cause the water (or other liquids) to flow from the high
point to the low point. This is known as the 'fall' and can
expressed in a number of ways, usually either a percentage
or as a ratio. All gradients are defined as the amount of rise
(or fall) in height above a fixed point over a given distance
(the run). Gradients are expressed in a number of ways,
including Ratios [eg: 1 in 60 or 1:60] and Percentages [eg:
9%].
V For 100mm pipes, the type normally used for residential
drainage, the minimum acceptable falls are 1:40 for Foul
Water and 1:100 for Surface Water. Larger diameter pipes
may have gentler gradients in certain circumstances
V Foul water used water from any building or
process. This includes water from toilets, baths,
showers, washing machines, kitchen sink, dish
washers etc. Sometimes it referred to as 'grey'
water, effluent, soil water or waste water.
V Surface water also referred to as Storm Water.
Clean (ish) water that has been drained directly
from the ground, a pavement or a roof. It is
also known as 'run off'.
V Water held by the soil, subsoil or bedrock. The
upper level of the groundwater is known as the
'water table' or 'saturation line'.
V 4ackfall is the term used to describe a gradient
that is counter to what would normally be
expected. In the footpath example from above,
a footpath that sloped away from the roadway
would be said to be back falling. 4ackfall in a
drain is usually bad news - it indicates that
water/sewage may find itself trapped at a low
point
V This is a term that seems to have been specifically
designed to befuddle students and others outside the
trade, but is actually a much needed term for the sake
of clarity on site. It refers to the height above/below
a benchmark of the lowest part of the pipe channel at a
given point on the drainage system. The key point is
that it refers to the level of the floor of the pipe on the
inside, not the base of the pipe on the outside, which
can be 10mm or lower still, depending on the thickness
of the pipe.
V In a manhole or access chamber, the invert level (often
abbreviated to IL), is taken to be the lowest point in the
pipe channel that is still within the chamber, that is, the
level of the pipe channel just as it exits the chamber
V The highest point of a manhole (or other access chamber) is the
cover level (CL), which is the height of the cover above a
benchmark level, and the difference between Cover Level (CL)
and Invert level (IL) is the overall depth of the chamber. On
drainage plans, manholes are often annotated with figures for IL
and CL, and the difference between the IL figures for successive
points of a drain run (usually manholes or other chambers) are
used to calculate endfall.