Damp soil, do I need drainage?

[kgthomas]

Hi recently I have purchased a new build house on 1/2 acre of land, before I purchased the house I knew the grass was damp/wet and I thought it would need drained but I'm not a hundred percent sure hence why I am asking advice here, when I dig into the garden there is not obvious water lying but when it rains heavily there is water on top of the soil and this will take approx 4-5 dry days to fully dry out which makes cutting the grass a challenge as the last time I only could wait 2-3 days and my mower ended up getting stuck in the mud, I have found out some background on the ground on which the house sits and this is it. The land has been used for sheep grazing previously, and as far as I am aware there was also a small house on the land. My next store neighbour has had to drain his garden also and I have found out that there is an underground stream which runs across the road at the bottom of my garden. I had also been talking to the farmer who uses the land behind my house for sheep farming and had mentioned about having to drain the garden and he said he was very surprised as he had watched the builder and that the builder had put quite a few lorry fills of gravel into the site to help with the drainage and that there is a drain running around the edge of my garden. I thought nothing of this until at the weekend I was planting a blackberry bush and dug down about 6-8" and found that below this the garden is gravel, I used a fork to test other parts of the garden and it seems that I only have about 6-8" of soil and then gravel below this, I would have thought that the gravel would have allowed for good drainage of the garden? Anyone have any suggestions as to where to go from here?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Cheers Keith

 

[libby lou lou]

Hi tom, break your post up please, more answers will be available

Gravel is good drainage.

 

[kgthomas]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me I assume you mean break my question into smaller bits of text? I'm always doing that. Cheers if that is what you were meaning here goes.

I have recently purchased a new build house on 1/2 acre of land, before I purchased the house I knew the grass was damp/wet and I thought it would need drained.

But I'm not a hundred percent sure hence why I am asking advice here, when I dig into the garden there is not obvious water lying but when it rains heavily there is water on top of the soil and this will take approx 4-5 dry days to fully dry out which makes cutting the grass a challenge as the last time I only could wait 2-3 days and my mower ended up getting stuck in the mud.

I have found out some background on the ground on which the house sits and this is it. The land has been used for sheep grazing previously, and as far as I am aware there was also a small house on the land. My next store neighbour has had to drain his garden also and I have found out that there is an underground stream which runs across the road at the bottom of my garden.

I had also been talking to the farmer who uses the land behind my house for sheep farming and had mentioned about having to drain the garden and he said he was very surprised as he had watched the builder and that the builder had put quite a few lorry fills of gravel into the site to help with the drainage and that there is a drain running around the edge of my garden.

I thought nothing of this until at the weekend I was planting a blackberry bush and dug down about 6-8" and found that below this the garden is gravel, I used a fork to test other parts of the garden and it seems that I only have about 6-8" of soil and then gravel below this.

I would have thought that the gravel would have allowed for good drainage of the garden? Anyone have any suggestions as to where to go from here?

Again thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this problem and to those who have suggestions on how to fix the problem.

Cheers Keith

 

[r896neo]

Oh dear, If there is indeed a blanket type drain under the entire lawn it probably means the soil put back on top was actually really heavy clay.

I'd be very surpised if this blanket drain of gravel was indeed over the entire lawn.

Time to dig a few test holes and see whats there.

Having a stream nearby is a bonus as it may be somewhere to pipe a drainage system to?

 

[kgthomas]

Yip was thinkng I might need to start digging a few holes and see what I find.

I have quickly checked with a garden fork and so far everywhere I have spiked I can feel the gravel below but so far I have not ventured into the middle of the swamp, sorry I mean lawn!!

Yip definitely having a stream close by is a great advantage.

I must check with the builder to see how much gravel he put into the site, I know when he finished the house was at the start of the collapse of the markets, so at the time from what I can see he seemed to have spent some time and probably money trying to put some gardens and plants in, I suppose to boost his chances of selling and now in the first summer we are finding a lot of plants are starting to grow which we didn't plant.

I think the builder has built a couple of houses around my own house so I am thinking that he might have tried to put in the drainage as it would increase his chances of selling as it would already be done before a buyer moves in.

I did try spiking a small area of soil last night about 1 sq.ft. and this morning I threw about 2 litres of water on that area and I could see it bubbling away so I'm going to do this again only more scientific and have two equal size areas and spike one and not the other and then put the same amount of water on each area and see if the spiking improves the drainage.

Cheers Keith

 

[r896neo]

Good idea, dig a few holes and see if its a full blanket drain which i doubt to be honest but you'd need to know one way or the other as a first step.

It won;t be any deeper than 18 inches and probably between 6'' and 10'' down