A collegue of mine is having problems with rainwater ponding in her garden and against her house, as shown in the following pictures:
It can be seen from the pictures that the problem mainly arises because the garden slopes towards the house and there are no drains to pick the water up and take it away. As a result the main path into the house and parts of the lawn flood when it rains. I was hoping for some advice, so my questions are:
1) Can anyone suggest a solution to this? My first thought was some aco-type channel drains, which could be placed around the garden path in order to route water into a surface water drain.
2) If aco-type drains are used, would there be an issue with discharging additional water to the sewer system? I'm not sure how bothered the local water utility would be about additional drainage been attached to the existing system.
3) The house itself is about 8 years old so I was wondering if this type of problem would be covered under the house builders warranty (which I think lasts for 10 years?). Clearly the cause of the problem is due to the fact that the garden slopes towards the house. Best practice would dictate that the garden should slope away from the house (or at least not slope right up against the edge of the house) so could the housing developer be made to come back to correct the work?
4) If my collegue had to pay to have the work done herself, can anyone give me an indication of the likey cost? (Say if aco type drains were installed around the edge of the house where the flooding occurs).
5) If the problem is not solved, is it likely to cause any damage in the medium to longterm? E.g. damp problems, structural damage to the house etc.
I'm not sure if a soakaway would work. The fact that water ponds in the garden would suggest that ground conditions aren't suitable for a soakaway.
what lies over that wall adjacent to the house robster?
it looks like a retaining wall to me
has a trial hole been dug?
it is sacrilege to run rainwater into sewers,are there not any RWP nearby you can run to? on a house this age there may be proper land drains instead of soakaways
has this ever happened in the previous 8 years? has anything changed recently?
LLL
lutonlagerlout wrote:what lies over that wall adjacent to the house robster?
it looks like a retaining wall to me
has a trial hole been dug?
it is sacrilege to run rainwater into sewers,are there not any RWP nearby you can run to? on a house this age there may be proper land drains instead of soakaways
has this ever happened in the previous 8 years? has anything changed recently?
LLL
There is some kind of allotment behind the wall adacent to the house. It is a retaining wall and the land behind it is at the top of the wall. My collegue has said that no water appears to come from this area though, not even through the drainage pipes located at the bottom of the retaining wall.
With regards to the front of the house, apparantly this area floods whenever there is moderate to heavy rainfall. Nothing has been changed in the 8 since the house was built.
There is a rainwater downpipe on the right in the first picture, so this could be a possible discharge route for surface water (assuming it would be okay to put more water into this pipe).
Initially i would install a filter drain following the profile of the right hand side of the path, if the water is travelling from the boundary wall to the property you could install a line parallel with the wall to intercept the flow. You can always add a linear drain in the path at a later date if the owner is still having problems.
Connect into the line downstream of the front downspout, it would be worth investigating this line first to make sure where it discharges and to check that it isn`t blocked and causing the problem in the first place.
