Soakway advice

marky · Post: # 99782Post **marky** Mon Jul 07, 2014 9:07 am

Myself and a few neighbours have recently bought some land between our houses. The area of land is approx 650m2 in size.

We need land drains putting in as the land is mostly clay and water does not drain away properly.
A test hole has been dug and it shows that there is a couple of feet of soil then 4-5 feet of clay then a sandy type soil.

We have had a few quotes on installing land drains and they have ranged from Â£4,000 to Â£20,000.

One of the quotes (the cheapest !) wants to dig a massive hole at the lowest point and fill it with bricks (I have a garden wall than needs pulling down). Then lay drainage pipes to flow into this pit.

My concern is should we use bricks to fill the pit?
Will the pit fill up very quickly?
Is there a ball park figure on what you should pay for land drainage? We are in the South Manchester area.

Cheers

Mon Jul 07, 2014 9:51 am

hi marky
no there is no ball park figure for anything really
every site is different

what do you and the neighbours plan on doing with the land?

LLL

marky · Post: # 99787Post **marky** Mon Jul 07, 2014 9:57 am

Thanks for the reply.

The land is to be turned into gardens. So a mixture of patio/paving, turf and borders.

My existing garden is turf and it gets squelchy underfoot very easily.

Post: # 100228Post **seanandruby** Tue Aug 05, 2014 8:11 pm

No don't fill with bricks, use crates or a purpose buit soakaway as bricks will reduce the volume of water in the soakaway. look on main site under soakaways.

Post: # 100230Post **Dave_L** Tue Aug 05, 2014 8:58 pm

What he said ^

Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:43 pm

i think i quoted for this?

Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:44 pm

i quoted for a 4m3 attenuation and soakaway using crates if i recall, the guys youd had in to clear the area had made a real mess? is it that job?

r896neo · Post: # 100263Post **r896neo** Thu Aug 07, 2014 8:35 am

make sure you use a decent contractor who can give you references for land drainage work that has worked.

There are plenty of have a go johnnys who can dig a big hole and some trenches and throw in some 'hardcore' but the detailing is important.

scooby73466 · Post: # 100325Post **scooby73466** Sat Aug 09, 2014 9:14 am

Why the soakaway in the first place ? Is the land level ? If not then it must have some fall on it. Is there a watercourse close by that you could drain into ? Not knowing the situation but is it possible to chat to the owner of the adjoining land with a view to putting a land drain across that property to get into a watercourse ?

I hate soakaways. You can do all the porosity tests you like, that doesn't prove a thing. When the water table is high any water will just sit in the hole.

Sat Aug 09, 2014 11:29 am

if its the one i went to then it abuts a park, shrub and waste land and the park is higher than this ground

no logical place to drain it to and its ringed almost entirely by houses

thats why its a soak away/attenuation cell the idea is you temporary store it then get rid of it.

Edited By GB_Groundworks on 1407580218

scooby73466 · Sat Aug 09, 2014 10:06 pm

GB_Groundworks wrote:if its the one i went to then it abuts a park, shrub and waste land and the park is higher than this ground

no logical place to drain it to and its ringed almost entirely by houses

thats why its a soak away/attenuation cell the idea is you temporary store it then get rid of it.

That's not an easy one. But we are experiencing more and more extremes of weather now than we did 20 years ago. It was very dry in '76 but that was a freak year but we seem to get all or nothing now.