Waterlogged garden

[steve_f]

Hi

I have a terraced house with a 6mx15m garden. The garden slopes gently away from the house, towards the end of the garden, where I have a brick built shed.
My garden is approx. 6-8 inches lower than the gardens either side, and the public rear-access road at the end of the garden.

My garden floods dramatically, about 5 times a year, but the neighbours gardens are never even damp. I am sure that their surface water is collecting in my garden, but not sure how to prove it, except using basic physics and the fact that water will find the lowest point and settle there.

The ground is London clay, so doesn't look like a soakaway is the solution. I have a trial pit dug but when there is heavy rain, it fills and overflows. I pump it out with a sump pump into the public rainwater sewer which is on my land. It empties and a few hours later it's full again, even it it wasn't raining in the intervening time.

I have a few options in my head, from internet research.
A) Soakaway with crates, geomembrane etc with capacity of around 2000 litres, just for when there is sudden sustained rainfall, I'm hoping this will at least give the rain water somewhere to go rather than into my shed. This would be in the lowest part of the garden, which gets waterlogged first.

B) Get a rainwater drain fitted at the shed, which is the lowest part of the garden. I think I can get easily get a 1:150 or 1:100 fall and connect it into the public rainwater drain, if I am allowed to do that.

C) Get a digger in, dig up a hole in lowest area of 4 metres square and about 0.5 metres deep, and fill with pea shingle. Again just hoping that the water will go there rather than spread 3 inches deep across my whole lawn, and soak away over a period of days or weeks.

D) Build up the lawn to the exact same height as the neighbours, maybe putting a few inches of shingle and sand between existing earth and new earth. This would be my preferred solution, if it fixed the problem. I don't want to transfer the problem to my neighbour, but equally I don't want to be the drainage service for my neighbours. I don't wat their surface water in my property.

Budget is around 2-5k, but it needs to be done right, and don't want to break any regulations or make ahy changes that would be a red flag to a buyer if I ever decided to sell the house.

Many thanks for reading, sorry it's so long. It's an emotive subject for me!
Steve

[lutonlagerlout]

maybe get 30 tonnes of topsoil in and make your garden 2 inches higher than theirs?
problem solved
LLL

[steve_f]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't want to implement a solution that simply pushes the problem onto someone else, don't want to get sued or fall out with the neighbours (nice people).

[lutonlagerlout]

its basically option D steve
otherwise you are acting as their land drain
cheapest too
LLL

[steve_f]

There is lot of solid concrete paving in the flooded area, the water mainly gathers on top of this. It's about 4m x 4m.

It's nearly 8 inches deep, and I have no love for it, was there when I moved in.

Do you reckon it's worth getting it broken up and removed? It would increase the area of soil for the water to soak into.
Currently it just sits on the concrete.