Hmm, well your rain water may be supposed to go down the gully, through a trap and either off to a rainwater drain in the road or possibly a soakaway a few meters from the house.
I bet it hasn't for any time in the last decade.
Are there any neighbouring houses with a similar set up (but no tree of course). Might be worth a look. If its going off to a street drain there should be manhole covers at all junctions and major direction changes, not the same ones as the foul water for the loo and sinks, which are generally deeper, so if one floods into the other, its not foul water leaking into rainwater drains that go untreated to rivers and ditches or whatever. If so, there may be telltale roots visible when looking down the manhole, giving a scope for the problem- being unobstructed roots can go suprisingly far along a pipe.
If its a soakaway, the pipe will go a few metres from the building and just end, in what was once a hole below the pipe end filled with stones and gravel, that is now probably a mess of weeds and rotting biomass.
In pre-war properties rain water and foul were not separated, but this leads to sewage works flooding when it rains, so nowadays they are very much kept apart.
Right now I'd be wondering if it was easier to plan for a new soakaway, or at least a new trap and a outlet pipe to connect lower down to the existing. I'd be extremely impressed if the tree can be removed with the drain intact, looking at the pics - I'd expect the roots of a thing like that to have expanded to a size to have already split the ceramic pipe below ground, just consider what damage dandelions can do to a concrete runway and scale it up. If the tree has broken the metal grid, its likely to have done the same for the pipe..
Equally, if its not giving flooding trouble, can the rainwater just be diverted on to a flower bed or similar and the old drain simply abandoned for ever, just sawing the tree off short, lets not over complicate it.
I bet it hasn't for any time in the last decade.
Are there any neighbouring houses with a similar set up (but no tree of course). Might be worth a look. If its going off to a street drain there should be manhole covers at all junctions and major direction changes, not the same ones as the foul water for the loo and sinks, which are generally deeper, so if one floods into the other, its not foul water leaking into rainwater drains that go untreated to rivers and ditches or whatever. If so, there may be telltale roots visible when looking down the manhole, giving a scope for the problem- being unobstructed roots can go suprisingly far along a pipe.
If its a soakaway, the pipe will go a few metres from the building and just end, in what was once a hole below the pipe end filled with stones and gravel, that is now probably a mess of weeds and rotting biomass.
In pre-war properties rain water and foul were not separated, but this leads to sewage works flooding when it rains, so nowadays they are very much kept apart.
Right now I'd be wondering if it was easier to plan for a new soakaway, or at least a new trap and a outlet pipe to connect lower down to the existing. I'd be extremely impressed if the tree can be removed with the drain intact, looking at the pics - I'd expect the roots of a thing like that to have expanded to a size to have already split the ceramic pipe below ground, just consider what damage dandelions can do to a concrete runway and scale it up. If the tree has broken the metal grid, its likely to have done the same for the pipe..
Equally, if its not giving flooding trouble, can the rainwater just be diverted on to a flower bed or similar and the old drain simply abandoned for ever, just sawing the tree off short, lets not over complicate it.