Lost in land drainage..... - Where to from here?

[Rigsbin]

Hi, need some advice on the following (apologies if it's a bit longwinded). I have a victorian semi detatched house with a side passage to the rear. The ground slopes up from the front of the house to the rear. Recently I've excavated the back garden which was a terraced affair to make a flat space of around 30' by 30'. I want to lawn half of this and build an extension + pave on the other half. Next door has done similar and I've noted that the grass is often waterlogged. I wanted some drainage whilst everything is up so went to the builders supplies who reccommended the aquacell lite (x4) as a soakaway and perforated pipe leading in. After digging a great big hole, ordering the materials and reading this site, I'm now not convinced that it's going to work. The water table appears to be about 90cm below the ground and the ground is very much clay. I filled the whole with about 6" of water at night and it had barely gone down the next day. I think I'm just going to end up with an expensive underground pond! I've cancelled the order but I just don't know where to go from here, I still want drainage as the whole idea was to have a usable lawn. Can I use land drain into the existing drains with a silt trap? I know you're not supposed to, but there seems no other way? Any help/advice greatly appreciated.

[matt h]

suggest you get a local drainage engineer to have a look. see earlier posts ref soakaways in clay soil. for paving use linear drain, and with lawn try breaking up soil and adding some sand to the mix it may help:)

[lutonlagerlout]

have you any land at the front? or is it bang on the street?
i would have thought best to run the water to the front of the house if the clay is that bad.we use those green aquacells all the time and there is a calculator on this site for working out avg rainfall and volume required,it will definitely be better than nothing,remember to use non woven fabric (terram ) to stop the aquacells silting up
connecting to sewers is a big no no,its immoral, illegal, and unethical
LLL



Edited By lutonlagerlout on 1210954199