The Brew Cabin

Hi,

Not sure if you can help, but my neighbour is being very difficult regarding standing water in our back garden. We live on the side of a 1 in 4 hill, so any water from our garden naturally drains onto hers, being lower than us. We have a paved garden with a small wall on the opposite side to our neighbour with a lawn & rockery sloping down to the wall. When it has been raining we do get puddles on the paved area, but it couldn't possibly be called flooding. However, she insisted that our drains must be blocked, so we rodded the drains only to discover that they were fine. She also called out the water board last winter, but I assume they told her everything was fine as they didn't contact me. Now she is trying to get the Environmental Health agency involved - I appriciate that the drainage on the paved area probably isn't great, but should I really consider ripping it up & relaying it just to keep her quiet or will it make no difference? pics of the house & garen are at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.snowden if it helps.

Having taken the extensive (and exhausting! ) tour of the Mansion House, I reckon you should install an interceptor at the boundary between your lands and the adjacent property.

There are two types of interceptor that you could consider - a surface interceptor, and a sub-surface type. The sub-surface type is normally used when there are problems with groundwater draining into an area, but you neighbour's concern seems to be regarding the surface water, so I'd opt for a surface interceptor.

The two simplest types of surface interceptors are Dished Channels, as illustrated on the Road kerbs page or the Linear Drains described in the Drainage section of the site.

Lay these on a concrete bed and haunch, as shown, and connect to the nearest SW drainage point, which will probably be a gully or rainwater pick-up. Dished channels, of the decorative type, cost around a tenner per linear metre, and you can get a cheap linear drain for that sort of price from B&Q or HomeBase.

The Environment Agency have a special team to deal with 'over anxious' callers who plague them with complaints about impending disaster only to find the lake on a neighbouring property is actually a bird bath, and the industrial extraction unit is a kitchen Xpelair! ;)