my house is built on a hill side and has a celler under the top part of the house. The celler is in the hillside and has been stacked up with mud and rocks and most of the rubbish left over from when the house was built. Water has been dripping through the celler wall into the bottom part of the house so I started digging the celler out to find a puddle of water. My neighbour told me that it is caused by natural springs running down the hillside and he has one as well.
Questions
1. Can I dig out the celler and tank it out?
2. If so how do I then divert the water down the side of my house so it doesn't just build up above the wall thats been tanked?
Thanks
Phil
diverting natural spring that runs through my celler
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84-1093879891
There's no quick answer to this, Phil. You need an on-site survey to determine what would be best.
It may be that the cellar has to be tanked or lined with a drainage composite, and the groundwater diverted via a land drain to some convenient outfall, but it's not the sort of project that I can advise on over the interweb. You need to bring in a structural, civil or drainage engineer to assess the problem and design a suitable solution.
Sorry I can't help more than that.
It may be that the cellar has to be tanked or lined with a drainage composite, and the groundwater diverted via a land drain to some convenient outfall, but it's not the sort of project that I can advise on over the interweb. You need to bring in a structural, civil or drainage engineer to assess the problem and design a suitable solution.
Sorry I can't help more than that.
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danensis
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- Location: Derbyshire
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If this is an older house it may be that the stone drain has become blocked. Many older houses were built with stone drains at the foot of the retaining wall, sometimes inside, sometimes outside, and sometimes both. When I had a house which was part of a terrace built into a hillside there were stone drains on both sides of the walls, and on the party walls as well.
A stone drain usually comprises a line of flat stones standing on edge about three or four inches from the base of the wall. If its an inside drain the flooring forms the roof of the drain, if its an outside drain it may be covered with flat stones before the backfill was heaped on top.
Over the years, these drains become silted up, or the neighbour decides to dig a bathroom into the hillside and ignores this line of stones he comes across. He then wonders why his new bathroom fills with water.
To clear mine, I took out a few bricks near the base of the cellar wall (well away from the side walls) and formed an opening into the hillside. I could then see the stone drain, and managed to flush it out with a hosepipe, going uphill first, and then flushing all the sludge downhill.
The drains running from the hillside alongside the party wall were more tricky, as someone had decided they made a handy route for the gas pipe!
A stone drain usually comprises a line of flat stones standing on edge about three or four inches from the base of the wall. If its an inside drain the flooring forms the roof of the drain, if its an outside drain it may be covered with flat stones before the backfill was heaped on top.
Over the years, these drains become silted up, or the neighbour decides to dig a bathroom into the hillside and ignores this line of stones he comes across. He then wonders why his new bathroom fills with water.
To clear mine, I took out a few bricks near the base of the cellar wall (well away from the side walls) and formed an opening into the hillside. I could then see the stone drain, and managed to flush it out with a hosepipe, going uphill first, and then flushing all the sludge downhill.
The drains running from the hillside alongside the party wall were more tricky, as someone had decided they made a handy route for the gas pipe!