Review

Check drains through manholes

I want to check that the stormwater and wastewater are getting out of my property (rather than leaking into the ground and causing my lawn to sink). At the bottom of my property there are two manholes – one for stormwater, and one for wastewater. Only my house feeds into the stormwater at that point; and only mine and one other house feeds into the wastewater at this point. So if I could open them up it should be easy to get an indication that the drains are working properly. How do you open these manholes though? They seem very heavy. Note - there is no vehicle access to the place where these manholes are located (any machinery would have to be walked about 20 metres with a couple of stairs).