Soakaway Treasure Hunt!

[Evil Monkey]

Hi all - strange one this....
Basically I am having a double storey extension built to the side of my house. The front garden will now be block paved to become the driveway (which has been built over).
Now - the Building Regs guy called in yesterday and talked to my wife - he has given us a couple of things to get sorted but the strangest one is that on the front garden he wants a soakaway made - he actually stated that there may already be one in place and he wanted her husband (me) to dig around the garden to try and find this soakaway (if it exists...not sure why he asked me to do - the wife can dig pretty well... )
Now - he expects me to go around searching for a pipe that may or may not be there at a depth he doesnt know and the garden is 50m squared!! Is this a bit silly or is it just me???

 

[wotan]

invest in a pair of divining rods, or tell time team there was a roman viler on your land

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Don't you know where the existing drainage goes? If not how do you expect the Building Inspector to know and how do you expect to drain the extension? In short your designer should know if you have one or if not and if you're doing it on a Notice then that will be yours or your builders responsibility to find out.

 

[rjm2k]

Isn't the obvious way to start from a downpipe or whatever the soakaway is for and follow the pipe, or at least get an idea of direction?

 

[Arthur2shedsJackson]

Can't you use some of the safe dye used in drainage to establish if your downpipes go into the main sewer or indeed a soak away?

If you put dye into the drain where the downpipe puts the rain water into the drain, and it doesn't come out into the main sewer then I would have thought that it was then safe to assume that you have a soak away !

How old is your house? - I thought that soak aways were a relatively recent thing ?

I may be wrong there, but I'm sure Freddy will know

 

[Evil Monkey]

The house was built in 1969 - so my guess is that it wont have a soakaway. I just think the Building Regs guy wants to see me dig...
And to top it all - the ground is heavy clay - we had to dig down for the sewerage connection and the hole constantly has water in it just going nowhere.
The other thing is that regulations state that the soakaway needs to be 5 metres from the house - i would need to dig up the pavement in that case, lets see the Building Regs guy's face when I start doing that

 

[Arthur2shedsJackson]

Is this building regs guy young and keen ?

Judging by the age of the house and the dimensions of yur garden it's fairly certain that you don't alraedy have a soakaway.

Looks like your answer is in an earlier post
//www.diynot.com/forums/garden/soakaway-for-driveway-in-heavy-clay-soil.324337/

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

No, soakaways do not work in clay so unless the soakaway is beneath a layer of clay it sounds unlikely. The 5m rule is relatively recent, soakaways have been know to be built right next to foundations so just beacuse your garden would not permit one be built nowadays does not automatically mean it does not have one.

Anyway, you will still need to establish how the existing drainage works or how are you gonna drain your extension?

 

[foxhole]

My brother in law had an extension recently, estate built in 1970 all properties there used soak-aways, heavy clay soil, building control specified new soak-away, it works.