Rainwater options

[icornish]

Having built the extension, we now need to workout what to do with the rain off the roof. Council have said a soak away is needed...
Current thinking is to have a downpipe from gutter (not a diverter!)into one end of a long ~1000l water tank against the fence. The other end we plan to put an overflow pipe down to under the (yet to be built) patio area. We also need to have a drain for the patio, so both will be connected and then flow down to our soak away.

Two questions:-
1) would building regs allow the direct flow into a tank with overflow handled?
2) soak away was 1 cubic meter with the roof (25m2). We have well drained sandy soil. Patio will be about 20m2. Is the planned soak away large enough to cope if the tank were full...

 

[pinenot]

You will need to do a test, witnessed by building control of the soakaway potential of the proposed ground. What you consider as well draining may layered with a sub Terran, impervious strata, making a soakaway impracticable.

A 25 m2 roof say in a storm of say 25 mm water height deposit, will gather 25 x 25 = 625 liters - better hope your tanks empty or the soakaway is capable of soaking away the rate of flow. That aside the idea of collecting water from the roof is good, any idea what it will be used for?...pinenot

 

[tony1851]

What's a 'sub Terran'?

 

[pinenot]

Subterrane

 

[icornish]

The water will be used for livestock - they prefer rainwater to fresh - and we will trickle it to flow continually to the animal water trough. It will also be used for irrigation.
We had the building control guy around yesterday, and he suggested we could go half a metre deeper to be sure, soil is very sandy (he saw the foundations in pouring rain when they were dug), and we are well clear of the water table (test pit showed this was more than 2 m down).

 

[pinenot]

Good result, are you keeping the tank above ground to provide a head of water pressure and how are you triggering/diverting the water supply to the animals (just being nosy you understand)

good luck, sounds interesting...pinenot

 

[tony1851]

Subterrane

subterraneAN