Osma drainage channel - question

[SunDiver]

Hi Folks,

Last year we had some block paving done. Very happy with it - Marshalls - looks great, laid well etc. Driveway falls slightly towards the house and just in front of the house is a long OSMA drainage channel - 1 metre lengths - maybe 60mm wie I'd say. Drains just fine and half way along it's length at the low point is the fall into a pipe leading to a soakaway below. I have a grille over the fall pipe leading to the soakaway to discourage leaves falling in there. The thing is the OSMA grates on the top of this channel have pretty large holes in them. The channel gets loads of leaves into it and the grille blocks up. Then the channel won't drain for obvious reasons.

Can one buy alternative grates with a fine mesh structure so that water goes in but leaves stay out? We could then just sweep over the grate from time to time when we sweep the drive. Right now, when we sweep it just pushes the leaves into the channels through the grates. I appreciate I need to clean out the channels once in a while - especially from grit and left-over sand from the paving job but having to clean leaves from over the grille gets old real quick.

If not, I'm considering buying some mesh from B&Q and cutting strips of it for the underside of the grates - I'm fairly sure that would work... Thoughts?

All the best,

Alex

[Tony McC]

I'm not familiar with the Osma linear drain, especially one that's only 60mm or so wide, so I'm not sure if alternative gratings are available or not, but with many of the non-budget brands, particularly those designed for commercial use as well as driveways, there is a wide range of interchangeable gratings on offer.

Have you checked on the Osma web site?