garden drainage

  • Thread starter Andrew Haughton
  • Start date
A

Andrew Haughton

We have a heavy clay soil and the back garden slopes towards our 11 year old house and even moderate rain causes the lawn and beds in some places to be squelchy for days. I have got so far as deciding a soakaway might help with a few radiating 'french' drains running into it. Is it safe to dig the soakaway 5 ft from the house and how deep must it be - what factors determine the depth.
An alternative idea I had is to dig a few french drains and run the out flow either into existing undergound rainwater pipes but I suspect this may be overload them. Or run it about 25m to the front garden which faces our access road which runs downhill.
Can anyone advise?
 
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Soakaways are fine if in ground that does itself drain. No point at all digging one which is simply in clay. You might find, when you start digging, that you get under the clay layer, in which case you are away.

Better to drain the garden as you then describe, taking the run-off to a surface water drain (where your gutter down pipes go to).
 
when we put in land drainage, soakaway is an absolute last resort, it is only a glorified holding tank.
 

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