Walking on water (... or how to lay a raised path!)

[jamesamor]

Hi all,

I'm hoping for a bit of advice/consensus on the best way for me to walk on water!

My garden floods when it's raining.... and my shed & dog kennels are at the other end of the garden! I live near to the coast, and the top 6" of soil are VERY heavy clay and the water table lies about 8" under the soil! Land drains aren’t really an option due to the high water table, and neighbours who’ve tried them have had very poor (and expensive) results.

Current problem:

Once it’s rained the standing water takes about an hour to clear from the top of the lawn. The ground is left very slightly soft, but certainly not muddy/unstable. I'm not looking to lose the standing water, but would like to keep my feet dry en-route to the shed & kennel. I'm thinking of putting a raised path down to the shed, but am concerned about sinking/movement etc…

My current thought is to lay a tanalised frame with a decking top onto a compacted gravel footing. If I make the frame from 4" tanalised timber, and use A1 stainless coach-bolts to fasten the whole frame together, I'm hoping that any load will be spread over such a wide area, that sinking won’t be a problem.

Cross-section

Framing

I would sink 'legs'/posts into the ground as support, but suspect that the high water table would make this a pointless exercise.

Any advice/pointers/suggestions/recommendations would be very very very very welcome!!

Thank you!
James
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[r896neo]

a concrete path with some mesh in it certainly won't be going anywhere but is probably overkill.

I think you are perhaps being too concerned with the stability of the ground.
whilst it is obviously very poor drainage your not building a road.

Personally i think 4 inches of hardcore followed by some block paving which is slighty tolerate of movement is probably the best way forward.

It would be worth putting in some geotextile membrane between the clay and your sub-base to stop water and clay pumping up into the sub-base but really thats more of a problem on driveways where the load is big