silted up soakaway

[coldshowerkid]

Hi

I noticed the other day that my garage floor was damp, i ran some water on the roof to find if there was any leak and it turned out the downpipe from the gutter was overflowing at the lowest joint. this is a cast iron pipe.
it would seem that the soakaway which runs under the patio is silted up.
the question is. will the quickest ,cheapest and easiest way to solve the problem be to divert the downpipe to a butt?

thanks and regards

 

[breezer]

not the cheapest, since if you dig out the soak away its free, and a water butt will cost, but yes a water butt is the easiset, but what will you do when the butt is full? (drill a small hole in the bottom?)

 

[coldshowerkid]

hi thanks for the reply
i have a small front garden with a manhole,could i divert the gutter to run the other way to the front of the house and run the water into the manhole. how legal is this? i dont know building regs but i remember hearing that a soakaway has to be 40 feet away from the house, my front garden is small 12 feet, would this be acceptable as legally any soakaway at the front would not be possible
many thanks

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

hi thanks for the reply
i have a small front garden with a manhole,could i divert the gutter to run the other way to the front of the house and run the water into the manhole. how legal is this? i dont know building regs but i remember hearing that a soakaway has to be 40 feet away from the house, my front garden is small 12 feet, would this be acceptable as legally any soakaway at the front would not be possible
many thanks

The actual distance from a house is 5m or 16'5" in old money but thats only for new ones, theres nothing wrong if its an existing one. Legally you need to sort out the existing soakaway instead of avoiding the issue. For new build you can only drain rainwater into the mains if a soakaway is impractical but as I say thats for new build. Building control would simply tell you to sort out the existing one. If you want to do this its down to you and you alone. Surely the cost of running a new drain down the side of the house and messing about with the waterboard's manhole will be as expensive as redoing the soakaway? Or are you doing a complete bodge job? New soakaways are lined with a membrane to stop them clogging up.

 

[coldshowerkid]

Hi thanks for the replies the house is 1938.to sort out the silted soakaway would mean taking up the patio. and this is layed on top of a concrete base layed many years ago to the rear of the house. my drains run on the side of the house with 3 manholes and the furthest forward of the three is in my front garden which is only a few feet away from downpipe if i moved this from the back to the front of the garage.
legally can this be done?

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

As I said legally you need to sort out the existing one unless building control considered it impractical to do so which it sounds as though they may, given that its been concreted over. presumably you don't really want to go down the legal route ie bother with building regs (understandably) so its down to you.

Lets be realistic though, the waterboard police are hardly likely to break your front door down at 5am and drag you off down to the police station in your Y fronts. unless they find out of course!