Soak away help

[mark19632]

Hi,

I have found that the main drainage from the roof of my house goes into a soak away that has become blocked. I say soak away, it appears to be a load of bricked chucked in the ground 1m from the house. What I find strange I its directly above the main drain - I would have thought this was allowed?

My options I think are:

1 - dig out the soakaway and put the bricks back in, but I assume it would just block again
2 - move it further away from the house and use some of those soakaway crates
3 - attach it to the main drain - I belive this isn't allowed?


Any advise?

Thanks

 

[Deleted 224857]

Do u have clay soil. Soakaway is useless. Link it to your main drain for life.

 

[RomanAbramovich]

Pretty sure regs state soakaways should be minimum 5m from a property these days, which would mean lots of trench digging for you. But as CB states, they are useless in clay soil anyway. Depends on whether you get LABC involved, if not then guess you can do as you like. I once dug a soakaway pit in advance of BCO first site visit, he asked what the big square hole was in the back garden, I replied confidently: 'soakaway for the extra surface water drainage from the extended roof' - he said 'this is heavy clay soil, fill it in before it turns into a swimming pool and route the surface water to your foul drain'.

 

[jeds]

The regulation says you must drain to a soak away. If a soak away is not suitable then you must drain to a surface water drain. Only if a surface water drain is not available can you connect to a foul rain. Suitability of a soak away starts with location; it must be 5m from any building and 2m from any boundary. If you can't achieve that it isn't suitable. Secondly the ground conditions must be tested for rate of percolation. If the test fails it isn't suitable. Clay soil would usually fail but some inspectors insist on testing anyway - because they are ****s.