CHORLTONVILLE 
Chorltonville is an estate of 262 houses, located in the suburb of Chorlton in south Manchester. It was built in 1910-1911 as part of the garden village movement, and was originally intended as affordable rental housing for skilled artisans. Today the estate is almost entirely owner-occupied, with most roads, footpaths and green areas owned by a Board of Trustees on behalf of all house owners. An Owners' Committee has a brief to manage the day-to-day maintenance of Chorltonville.
This private ownership has enabled us to retain much of the character of the original estate. Chorltonville is noted for the abundance of mature trees - over 350 in public areas plus many more in gardens. These, together with the grass verges, occasional greens and winding roads, give the estate its village appearance. Houses are mostly semi-detached, built in Arts & Crafts style but to many different designs, with detailing on the frontage to make each pair unique in the estate. Chorltonville is one of Manchester City Council's conservation areas.
Mains Water Supply Replacement
latest update
- An update from the UU contractors regarding the programme and phasing of work:
There have been some significant issues when completing phase 1 of the work, we have discovered that the existing 4” water main has a thicker than expected wall thickness which has meant that we can’t slip line our new polyethylene pipe up it as planned. We have been able to slip line a smaller diameter pipe up the first section but the issue is that if the 4” main is the same thickness throughout the estate then we can’t downsize all of our new pipework as we could create pressure issues.
We have completed some investigatory works on the estate (on The Meade and South Drive) but we needed to isolate the water main to take a sample cut to see the cross section of the pipe and understand wall thickness. The next issue we have encountered is that the valves on the network that were due to isolate the water main haven’t stopped the water, we now need to undertake some investigatory works to understand why this is the case.
The next step on the progression of works is for our colleagues at United Utilities to attend site to discover how to isolate the nextwork and then we can re-phase works around the findings.
As reported at the AGM, we have been contacted by United Utilities and their contractors. They are replacing the entire water mains throughout the estate.
- It will take a minimum of 6 weeks to a maximum of 12 weeks and is planned to start in the next 4 to 6 weeks.
- There will be an “open cut” throughout the length of Claude Road replacing the entire water main there. For the rest of the estate they will be inserting polypropylene pipe inside the older pipe (slip line). Ideally this will require less digging but they may need to dig in ad hoc places where the slip line doesn’t work.
- They will replace old lead or steel pipes they come across going to houses as they go, but where these have already been replaced they will join pipes from the house to the new main.
- There will be a need to turn off the water periodically and houses will get 48 hours notice via a card through the door.
We will keep residents informed as we know more. Queries can be directed to roads@chorltonville.org
For now, there is no need to contact United Utilities about low water pressure as we mentioned in our previous newsletter.
