Roof water drainage pipe - Depth problems

[jonesymouse]

Sorry I think that I hijacked someone elses thread by mistake. I will re submit it here. I am digging out my drive to lay block paving. I have come across a clay pipe, 150mms. wide and 75mms from the top of my finished height, which leads to a soakaway. As I will be using 50 mm. blocks, my concern is I may damage the drainage pipe when impacting the blocks, or create an unstable area. An alternative could be to smash the drainage pipe, take it out and take the roof water to another gutter and dowpipe, in the hope that it will cope with the extra water. I will appreciate any help that you can give me. Thank you.

[Tony McC]

You say the pipe goes TO a soakaway, but where does it come FROM?

If it's redundant, best to yank it out and cap it to prevent crap getting into the soakaway.

[jonesymouse]

The pipe and soakaway are in use collecting rainwater from the roof. If the pipe is going to be a problem then the only alternative which I can think of is to slope the gutter another way, which would channel this rain water into another gutter and downspout which is in use. This would then make the exposed pipe redundant. But I could then be creating a problem of overloading the other gutter and downspout in heavy downpours, which hopefully will not happen very often. This downpipe rus into the main drain and not a soakaway. I take it that you do see the pipe being where it is as a problem? Thanks.