Hi All, great site, been reading as much as I can and enjoying it so far. As a bit of background info I live in kent and have dug up my front garden, which had rose bushes, flower beds, pond, rockery, lawn and three walls. This has almost gone to make way for off street parking which is what I want more than anything. This space is about 50m2 which is idea for 2-3 cars
The weather has been very very wet October 2015 - February 2016. I've had water running down an existing shared block paved drive, pools of water by the front porch and damp issue in the front walls of the house. The damp isn't that bad but enough to make re-decoration point-less.
The area which I live is heavy clay (I'm sure the planet is made of the stuff) The House is 1930s and has no storm drainage what so ever and relies solely on French drains and soakaways, go figure.
I'm guessing that soakaways in clay must work to some degree as the house still stands and in reasonable condition. The down pipe from the roof was connected to a big clay pipe blocked solid leading to an old soakaway long since silted up, which probably accounts for my flapping wall paper in living room.
Using the info in the soakaway section I dug a hole 1.7 metres across and 1.6 metre deep. Dug two trenches 1metre deep filled with 6mm gravel and put 6 polystorm crates in the hole, connected the under ground pipes, under crazy paving to down pipes on main roof and porch.
I've also got some channel drainage to connect to the system to drain the hard standing.
The polystorm crates will drain 67m2 which I'm hoping will be enough for the hard stand and the main roof of the house.
Forestboy1978 wrote:Where's it going to go though when it's full?
Do the stones in the channels not need a textile membrane underneath?
Well, I'm hoping with an extra down pipe from the roof into a water butt that the polystorm cells will cope with storm water from roof and hard standing. It will be a lot more efficient than what has been in place for the last 80 years. Until the paving goes down at least.
The 6mm bedding gravel will give the plastic underground pipe its strength and the metre depth will insure it safe under traffic.
