I have a large detached garage with a pitched tiled roof. It has guttering running along the side facing our house. The downpipe goes into the soil, I haven't investigated where it goes after that, but the garden doesn't waterlog so I assume it either goes to a soakaway or under our driveway and into the surface drain. The other side of the garage (facing the neighbours garden) has never been accessible due to the wild overgrowth of the neighbours garden. Now the neighbour has sold and the garden has been cleared, I see there is no guttering on that side, which explains why the wall on one side of the garage has been damp!
So I need to put guttering up, which shouldn't be too much of a problem. I can clean up and paint the fascia boards which are in reasonable condition and put some UPVC guttering on. My big problem is where do I send the rainwater? A concrete driveway runs down to the garage, so I'd have to dig through that to get to the surface drain (no thanks!) I can make the guttering fall from the front of the garage to the back, but about 1.2m beyond the back of the garage is the boundary fence and beyond that a farmers field. I read that soakaways have to be 5m from any building so that's out. I could just dig a trench leading to the edge of the field and put a drain in it which the new downpipe links into, but am I allowed to do discharge the water into the field? The only other thing I can think of doing is a french drain but will that cope with the discharge from the roof?
So I need to put guttering up, which shouldn't be too much of a problem. I can clean up and paint the fascia boards which are in reasonable condition and put some UPVC guttering on. My big problem is where do I send the rainwater? A concrete driveway runs down to the garage, so I'd have to dig through that to get to the surface drain (no thanks!) I can make the guttering fall from the front of the garage to the back, but about 1.2m beyond the back of the garage is the boundary fence and beyond that a farmers field. I read that soakaways have to be 5m from any building so that's out. I could just dig a trench leading to the edge of the field and put a drain in it which the new downpipe links into, but am I allowed to do discharge the water into the field? The only other thing I can think of doing is a french drain but will that cope with the discharge from the roof?
