drainage and soakway

[daveuk3031]

Hello Everyone

My question is what should I do about my drainage promblem?

Heres my story

I live in north east linclonshire in a town called Immingham. In my back garden there is a natural dip in the land. Everytime we have heavy rainfall the area floods. The soil content is mostly made up from clay.

In June 2007 we were flooded and my whole street became like a river due to the drains not been able to that much rain. My garage and conversatory were flooded and the whole house was surrounded by water. Luckily the water did nt get into my house. An inch more of water and I would of been completely flooded.

In January 2008 when we had alot of heavy rainfall again the dip in my back garden was flooded again. When my back garden floods the water is on the brick work of my house. Luckily my back door is on higher ground on the other side of the house.

I am determined to improve the drainage in my garden. I was going to dig up the area which floods in my back garden and build a soakway to improve drainage. I am not going to pipe it into the drain has the drains have proved they cant handle large amounts of water. I was goint to dig a hole 4 to 6 foot deep and fill the hole with rubble up to 1 foot before the surface. Then add small a layer of 10mm gravel and finsh it off my top soil and replant the grass.

Until Recently I have learned about the british regulation on soakways. Which says soakways must be 5m away from the building. Is this correct or have i miss understood it?.

The area which i was going to dig up and create a soakway was 42" away from my house.

What should I do?

Any ideas or advice about the situtition?

From Daveuk3031

 

[Bodgeit and scarper ltd]

Sell the house and buy one on a hill

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

A soakaway will do nothing to improve this situation, in times of heavy rainfall the clay surrounding your house and the soakaway will be saturated. A soakaway works by allowing water from a rainwater pipe or similar to flow into it and that water is allowed to soak into the surrounding earth, as your existing earth surrounding your soakaway will also be saturated it will never drain. Sorry, soakaways don't work in clay. Bodgeit and scarper ltd has your only viable solution, other than getting the local authority/waterboard etc to sort the drainage situation.

 

[Thermo]

is there any area in your garden that has good drainage, where the water could be sent via land drains?

You could also improve the structure of the clay soil and open it by adding ground conditioner, which will help the drainage, but clay is clay and does hold water very well!

 

[boosh2000]

As it's clay, you could consider digging a pond for the water to flow into.

 

[daveuk3031]

Hello

Thank you for your idea about the pond but the promblem is the area that floods is at least 13ft wide by 24ft lenght. The amount of water that floods is 10 inches deep.

It would have to be a big pond to hold all that.

I have a pond near the area that floods but its on higher ground. But in the June 2007 my fish were swimming around the garden.

We aint movng away because it took 17 years to pay off the mortage and I refuse to give in.

Can Thermo please tell me more about his ground conditioner idea

From daveuk3031

 

[Trazor]

If the whole area around your house floods, then no matter what you do, locally, it will have no impact at all.

As the drains/land around you cannot cope, then where do you think you will drain the water to...?

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

You're fu*ked! Sorry!

 

[bobby spray]

How deep does the clay subsoil go? You might be able to bore through it and find a permeable layer lower down. The distance a soakaway has to be from a building is indeed 5m. If you build one closer all you will do is force water into the foundations of your house and quite likely up under your floors! I know! With the wet weather we will likely experience in the future it in you best interests to find the most reliable, not the cheapest solution.

BS