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The front garden of our terrace house is fully paved. Under the flags are sand and then a concrete base.

The paving makes the ground level too high so the top of the paving slabs is about 1.5" higher than the bottom of the airbricks at the front of the house.

I'd like to get rid of the paving and concrete, get the ground back to the original level and and reinstate a front garden. However ideally I'd keep a strip of the existing paving for a path to the front door (there is a modern porch which was built to the new ground level) and a strip at the front for the wheelie bin.

At the minute the paving slopes nicely away from the house. Once I remove the area near the house the surface will be lower beside the house, but the paved area at the front will be higher than the ground beside it. Do I have any drainage worries? I am hoping the garden will just absorb the water, but do I need to worry about damp coming back under the house? The gap between the house and the paved area at the front will be 2.5 metres.

(The house is a Victorian terrace with minimal foundations.)

Thanks
Liz

Having a little trouble visualizing the situation so u have wall - gap - paving sloping to the road - what u want to end up with is gap - path - garden. So i cant see how the situation changes other than the water run off will now be into the garden nearer the house instead of the road. I doubt the house was paved in fron originally so it should not cause any difficulties. However if it does it should be fairly easy to rectify - but adding a french drain along the path and then away from the house. French drain basically gravel filled trench. I would be more concerned about the gap between the house and the paving but if this has caused no problems in the past it shouldnt do so buy removing paving the other side of it.

Hi Ocean, thanks for your reply. Sorry it's taken me a while to respond. I had to wait til I had enough time to get drawing :)

[quote="ocean"]Having a little trouble visualizing the situation so u have wall - gap - paving sloping to the road - what u want to end up with is gap - path - garden.[/quote]

Not quite, this is what we currently have:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3410/349 ... 683b_o.gif

And this is what we will end up with:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3649/349 ... 64e9_o.gif


So it's not house - gap - path - garden we end up with, it's house - garden - path, with the path about 4" higher than the garden.

My gut feel is it's ok because rain will just drain straight into the garden so the higher path at the end doesn't affect anything. Do I need to care that the rain that currently ends up on the street will go into the ground round my house instead?

Thanks
Liz

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