AN ELDERLY couple who have spent £2,500 of their life savings on pumping raw sewage out of their East Oxford home say a faulty drain is making their lives hell.

Ken and Catherine Walsh, of Iffley Road, have had their floors and furniture ruined three times in eight months after filthy waste overflowed from manholes.

The pair, who have spent £2,500 on pumping equipment and rebuilding work, were even forced to move out for six weeks before Christmas while repairs were carried out.

On Wednesday, having taken his 84-year-old wife to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Mr Walsh returned to find three inches of sewage in the couple's living room.

The 83-year-old, who has had a quadruple heart bypass and is fitted with a pacemaker, said: "I am in a terrible state. I had been with my wife in the hospital for three hours that morning, because she is losing her sight, and we came back to find the house is flooded.

"I just cannot put up with it any more. I feel like setting the house on fire and moving out to live in a caravan."

The Walshes bought the house 38 years ago and believe the problem is down to an ageing sewage system and a housing development that was completed shortly before they moved in.

Mr Walsh said: "Forty years ago three houses were built behind ours and they should have had a separate drain but the builders connected them to ours.

"It had been fine until last year when three students moved out of one of them and it now seems ten or 11 people are living in the one house.

"Our drain just cannot cope with all the extra sewage.

"At present there is eight inches of sewage in the manholes and over the course of a day some of it will seep away, but if we get torrential rain it cannot take it and the sewage comes and spills over into our house."

The first incident happened last September and the couple were flooded again last month, just two days before their 60th wedding anniversary.

Mr Walsh, who praised the fire brigade for their assistance during each flood said: "So far it has cost £2,500 in temporary repairs to the drain and getting the back door raised - it is a lot of my savings.

"We have had an engineer here this week and he has gone away to get an estimate, which he said could be anything from £12,000 upwards."

Mr Walsh claimed the faulty pipework was not beneath his property, but added: "The pipe is under the road, but Thames Water are saying they do not accept any responsibility until it gets to the main sewer."

An Oxford City Council spokesman said its environmental health officers were investigating who owned the worn pipes.

Thames Water spokesman Becky Johnson said: "We have been to the site three times and we have identified that the problem is with the private shared drains.

"We carried out a CCTV survey on our part of the sewer and found no problems.

"However, the private drains were in a poor state of repair.

"We have spoken to Mr Walsh and advised him to contact his insurers."