Is my soakaway designed correctly - lots of excess water
Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 11:25 am
We have been having a lot of problems with drainage since we bought our house a few months ago. I have had all the drains cleaned,and done some investigation with a camera and am a bit surprised by what I found.
Rainwater is collected from down pipes and from the gutter across the garage door and taken by two pipes to the soakaway at the back of the house. We are at the bottom of a slope so a lot of street surface water comes down our drive as well, meaning at times it needs to cope with a lot of water.
In the back garden is a manhole cover, giving access to a huge 25 ft deep pit made of those concrete rings with slots in them.It is lined with black fabric to stop roots growing in. Dynorod lowered a guy into the pit to try and find the drain inlets, but after a day of looking they decided no pipes were entering the pit.
The ground around the outside is always saturated, so I did a little exploratory digging, and
was able to pick up the two pipes from each side of the house as they come across the garden. They both stop about a foot short of the outside of these concrete rings.
It looks like a huge hole was excavated, rings placed in it and lined, and a manhole cover on top, and then drainage pipes layed to the outside and remaining annulus filled with drainage stones. Now, the pipes are full of stones, and the water clearly can't get into the soakaway which is nearly always emtpy, even when the garage is flooded with water.
I would like to get flow ports cut in the soakaway and the drains extended the final foot to allow water to run freely into the pit.
Any thoughts or comments very much appreciated.
Jeff.
Rainwater is collected from down pipes and from the gutter across the garage door and taken by two pipes to the soakaway at the back of the house. We are at the bottom of a slope so a lot of street surface water comes down our drive as well, meaning at times it needs to cope with a lot of water.
In the back garden is a manhole cover, giving access to a huge 25 ft deep pit made of those concrete rings with slots in them.It is lined with black fabric to stop roots growing in. Dynorod lowered a guy into the pit to try and find the drain inlets, but after a day of looking they decided no pipes were entering the pit.
The ground around the outside is always saturated, so I did a little exploratory digging, and
was able to pick up the two pipes from each side of the house as they come across the garden. They both stop about a foot short of the outside of these concrete rings.
It looks like a huge hole was excavated, rings placed in it and lined, and a manhole cover on top, and then drainage pipes layed to the outside and remaining annulus filled with drainage stones. Now, the pipes are full of stones, and the water clearly can't get into the soakaway which is nearly always emtpy, even when the garage is flooded with water.
I would like to get flow ports cut in the soakaway and the drains extended the final foot to allow water to run freely into the pit.
Any thoughts or comments very much appreciated.
Jeff.