Summerhouse drainage question

[Cellophaneskies]

Hi

Planning on putting a summer house into a small garden. It will be approx 4m away from the house.

Thinking of drainage for rainfall. I could let it drip onto the ground but don’t really fancy puddles during heavy rainfall. Was thinking of adding guttering and a water butt, water stored to be used for watering garden etc.

Two issues - when full it will then discharge onto ground such as during winter, and the down pipe diverters don’t catch 100% of the water down the pipe so some will still hit the ground.

It isn’t near a drain. I’m considering running polypipe under the ground do a drain at the front of the house so when the butt is nearly full it would trickle out into the drain, but that doesn’t solve the fact that the diverted doesn’t catch 100% of water. Unless I attach the down pipe directly to the water butt but I haven’t seen the kit for this.

Does anyone have any suggestions, am I possibly overthinking this?

Thanks

 

[HERTS P&D]

Is your kitchen at the rear of the property? Is there a gully?

Post a plan view of the property and garden showing the gullies and drainage.

Andy

 

[Cellophaneskies]

Is your kitchen at the rear of the property? Is there a gully?

Post a plan view of the property and garden showing the gullies and drainage.

Andy

Summerhouse not tall enough to make any sort of link to the existing guttering

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Two issues - when full it will then discharge onto ground such as during winter, and the down pipe diverters don’t catch 100% of the water down the pipe so some will still hit the ground.

I have a 200L water butt, collecting all of the run-off from my summerhouse. At the bottom of the butt, I have fitted a tap, for filling watering cans. 1/4 the way down from the top, I added an over-flow pipe, adapted to connect a small hose-pipe. The hose-pipe runs under a path, then into a nature reserve, alongside my back garden. I drilled numerous holes in the hose-pipe, to make it deliberately leaky. That top 1/4, copes well enough with any surplus, acting as a buffer, I have never known the butt to over-flow, and the leaky hose, gradually releases the surplus.

 

[Why Not Indeed]

So long as your guttering is stopping water running off the roof from either hitting the walls directly or splashing back up, then you have solved most of the problem. If you don't actually want to collect the water, leave a hose pipe attached with the tap open and let it soak away somewhere. Low-tech but flexible, you can easily move the hose to where it's needed if you want to water the garden. Open/close the tap to suit - in dry spells leave it shut.
A second draw-off point further up sounds sensible, that gives you some flexibility on how much you collect and how much you "throw away".

the down pipe diverters don’t catch 100% of the water down the pipe so some will still hit the ground.

You can just route the downpipe straight in to the water butt. There won't be a kit as such, you just need to assemble some of the relevant joints to get the offset you need.
I would be concerned that a buried narrow-bore pipe carrying dirty-ish water could easily clog with detritus and be a maintenance headache.

 

[Cellophaneskies]

Summerhouse not tall enough to make any sort of link to the existing guttering

I have a 200L water butt, collecting all of the run-off from my summerhouse. At the bottom of the butt, I have fitted a tap, for filling watering cans. 1/4 the way down from the top, I added an over-flow pipe, adapted to connect a small hose-pipe. The hose-pipe runs under a path, then into a nature reserve, alongside my back garden. I drilled numerous holes in the hose-pipe, to make it deliberately leaky. That top 1/4, copes well enough with any surplus, acting as a buffer, I have never known the butt to over-flow, and the leaky hose, gradually releases the surplus.

Thanks. I was thinking about something like that too.. adding an overflow pipe with holes along it to disperse the water out as it fills. Only issue is I have fence directly behind it (right of access), so I could run it under the fence and along the path there.. wouldn’t really want to cause anything to get water soaked though but it’s worth considering for sure.

I think this is the sort of approach that I’m going need to take! I can run the pipe all the way to drown at the front but of course that is quite a lot of digging to get it deep enough. There’s a natural slope so that part is not a problem..

 

[Cellophaneskies]

So long as your guttering is stopping water running off the roof from either hitting the walls directly or splashing back up, then you have solved most of the problem. If you don't actually want to collect the water, leave a hose pipe attached with the tap open and let it soak away somewhere. Low-tech but flexible, you can easily move the hose to where it's needed if you want to water the garden. Open/close the tap to suit - in dry spells leave it shut.
A second draw-off point further up sounds sensible, that gives you some flexibility on how much you collect and how much you "throw away".

You can just route the downpipe straight in to the water butt. There won't be a kit as such, you just need to assemble some of the relevant joints to get the offset you need.
I would be concerned that a buried narrow-bore pipe carrying dirty-ish water could easily clog with detritus and be a maintenance headache.

Good points on the maintenance.

I’m mega scared of damage to house foundations and walls etc which is why I’m so ‘proactive’ on drainage..! But at 4m away from house and 2-3 from extension, a small trickle probably isn’t really going to make much difference..

I was thinking that I would occasionally attach a long hose and manually expel water down the drain when it fills but wanted to try and avoid that, but as you say a narrow pipe under the ground taking grubby water would probably soon block anyway.

Also I was overthinking the connection - you’d jsut make a hole in the lid and direct the pipe in!

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I think this is the sort of approach that I’m going need to take! I can run the pipe all the way to drown at the front but of course that is quite a lot of digging to get it deep enough.

Lay it on the surface, and it will naturally bury itself in time.

I would be concerned that a buried narrow-bore pipe carrying dirty-ish water could easily clog with detritus and be a maintenance headache.

You would expect so, but in practice that has not been a problem, despite there being a tree overhead, shedding leaves. The over-flow, drops around 6 feet to the ground, so it gets a reasonable amount of pressure behind it. The over-flow was installed some 20 years ago, still working fine last year, but the butt was replaced with a larger version, after I reroofed the summerhouse last year.

 

[Cellophaneskies]

Lay it on the surface, and it will naturally bury itself in time.


You would expect so, but in practice that has not been a problem, despite there being a tree overhead, shedding leaves. The over-flow, drops around 6 feet to the ground, so it gets a reasonable amount of pressure behind it. The over-flow was installed some 20 years ago, still working fine last year, but the butt was replaced with a larger version, after I reroofed the summerhouse last year.

Thanks for the insights. I’ll have a think. I can always lay extra ‘just in case’ while the ground is up and then I have options..!

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I’m mega scared of damage to house foundations and walls etc which is why I’m so ‘proactive’ on drainage..! But at 4m away from house and 2-3 from extension, a small trickle probably isn’t really going to make much difference..

Exactly the same amount of rain water, would land on a hut roof, as would land on the same area of garden with no hut there.

 

[Cellophaneskies]

Exactly the same amount of rain water, would land on a hut roof, as would land on the same area of garden with no hut there.

Yeah that’s logically what I try and tell myself, but it’s it’s directed into one spot only and washes it away..

Overthinking it, I think directing the flow into the water butt, having an overflow into a pipe with holes over the ground for it to disperse slowly when full, sounds like a sensible solution.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Yeah that’s logically what I try and tell myself, but it’s it’s directed into one spot only and washes it away..

That, is why you use a 'leaky pipe', to disperse the water.

 

[Odds]

If there's enough room, add another water butt to take care of overflow. I did so and it worked out okay.

 

[Cellophaneskies]

That, is why you use a 'leaky pipe', to disperse the water.

How did you connect your ‘overflow’ for your ‘leaky pipe’? Water butt I have is round (annoyingly). So it needs like a tap or outlet secured by washers either side..

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

How did you connect your ‘overflow’ for your ‘leaky pipe’? Water butt I have is round (annoyingly).

This>>>

So it needs like a tap or outlet secured by washers either side..

I just fitted some sort of bulk-head adaptor, ending in a 20mm copper pipe, over which I pushed the over-flow hose.