I wonder if anyone on here has any ideas that will help us out in an unusual situation.
We recently purchased a 1756 cottage that stands right next to the local road. A few years back it appears that a footpath was put in, running along the end wall of our house. When this was done a gap was left of about 140mm between the side of the path and the house wall (which, at that point, is about 4200mm long). Annoyingly it appears that the previous owner has merrily signed off that he was happy with the work done and the council still have the document on file. The problem is that the footpath is a good 3 feet above our internal floor level and there's a fair bit of damp coming through the wall there where the "free draining" gravel used to fill the gap is now full of plants.
The council were very helpful to the point of understanding our dilemma and have given us free reign to dig out the area, so long as we don't do any significant damage to the pavement and leave the area safe to walk along. They will, of course, no be paying for this.
I was thinking of putting in some kind of gully at the base of the hole I'm planning on digging out but am somewhat at a loss as to what to put over the top of the hole that'll be safe to walk over and not trap water in the same way. All I've managed to come up with so far is the idea of using industrial metal stair grates as they appear to come in the correct sort of sizes, but I'm still working on how to attach them and how to acquire them.
Anyone have any ideas?
We recently purchased a 1756 cottage that stands right next to the local road. A few years back it appears that a footpath was put in, running along the end wall of our house. When this was done a gap was left of about 140mm between the side of the path and the house wall (which, at that point, is about 4200mm long). Annoyingly it appears that the previous owner has merrily signed off that he was happy with the work done and the council still have the document on file. The problem is that the footpath is a good 3 feet above our internal floor level and there's a fair bit of damp coming through the wall there where the "free draining" gravel used to fill the gap is now full of plants.
The council were very helpful to the point of understanding our dilemma and have given us free reign to dig out the area, so long as we don't do any significant damage to the pavement and leave the area safe to walk along. They will, of course, no be paying for this.
I was thinking of putting in some kind of gully at the base of the hole I'm planning on digging out but am somewhat at a loss as to what to put over the top of the hole that'll be safe to walk over and not trap water in the same way. All I've managed to come up with so far is the idea of using industrial metal stair grates as they appear to come in the correct sort of sizes, but I'm still working on how to attach them and how to acquire them.
Anyone have any ideas?