Renewing a soakaway

[xpabu]

Hi all

My/my neighbours gardens and the valley between our roofs drain into a soakaway. I noticed recently that the gardens were getting very soggy and so have begun to investigate the current (apparently very old, full of large rocks and rubble) soakaway -- using Soakaways (main site) as a guide. I've dug about 600mm down so far (around the where pipes enter the soakaway); it is very very silty and, unsurprisingly, very wet -- when I dig I can see streams of water coming in from the rest of the soakaway.

Being 600mm down and digging with all that water isn't too easy up against a fence. When it rains, water collects but does not drain. I've got a submersible pump to make life a bit easier.

I'm getting a bit disheartened; we do have 'clayey' soil. I'm hoping that it's just the siltyness of the old soakaway which is stopping the water from going. Water does drain from the rest of the garden on the whole but nearer the soakway less so.

Could it be just the crud in the existing soakaway causing the water not to drain? Is it worth me continuing to dig down in this old soakaway?

Thanks in advance all!

[Tony McC]

It may well be down to silting, and the usual remedy for such situations is to abandon the old pit and start a new soakaway some distance away.

On space-limited sites, it may be that the old soakaway has to be completely dug out and replaced with a new 'modern' soakaway using storm crates simply becaus ethere is nowhere else for it to go.

[xpabu]

Great, thanks -- I'm going to try again to dig it out I think... I'll come back and post here for future generations as to how I got on.

[xpabu]

Well, I promised to come back here with an update. I dug the hole down to 1.2m and found that water collected there but never soaked away. So I started another test pit away from the first. Same thing happened; I had two ponds (and three resident frogs)! So it wasn't just silting up, a soakway would never have worked here. So looks like I'll need to come up with another solution.

[jell1234]

the usual remedy for such situations is to abandon the old pit and start a new soakaway some distance away.

Out of interest, what is the reason for starting the new soakaway some distance away? what would be the issue with doing it right next to the old one?

[Mikey_C]

the ground around the old one has usually silted up rendering impermeable, but this depends on a lot factors.