The Brew Cabin

Hi

I have recently installed a large area of paving in my garden. It is drained in two directions with soakaways where the edge of the paving meets the soil.

My neighbour is complaining that during very heavy rain surface water is draining into his garden. I believe he is purely suffering from the natural effect of heavy rain and is simply doing a Victor Meldrew.

What is the legal responsibility for water running off paving slabs?

Jim

It's a grey area, Jim. Your neighbour can argue that the paving is responsible for an excess of surface water being diverted onto his property, while you can counter that it is the heavier-than-normal rain that is the cause, and, in the meantime, the lawyers' wallets get fatter and fatter. Ideally, you are responsible for draining surface water from your own property and not allowing it to endanger or compromise any other property, but there are obvious limitations on this, as nature is no great respecter of the law and flood water will follow the law of gravity rather than the law of man.

We always work on the basis that no surface water should ever deliberately or knowingly be discharged onto a neighbouring property. I would strongly recommend that you attempt to find some amicable resolution and avoid getting shirty with each other. Maybe a better intercpetor drain is required, or perhaps a length of linear drain connected to a new soakaway. In these situations, the fact that you are attempting to find a resolution is often enough to dampen the fire in the neighbours' argument.

I've a similar situation here. My village is notrious for flooding (4 times in 2000, for example), although as far as we can find out our house has never been flooded. The borough council has been improving drainage, ditch maintenance etc. One of the latest 'improvements' was the reprofiling of the pavement at the entrance to people's driveways. The stated intention was to prevent any water on the road from running into the properties.

On Monday we had the first heavy rainfall since these changes and the results are distasterous. Once the ground was saturated the excess water in our garden pooled up on our driveway as usual. However, our neighbours' runoffs were diverted by the domed pavement into my garden (being lower than his.) I think our garden was holding the excess water from 5 houses. Fortunately the rain stopped before the water built up to the level of the house but we were concerned on Monday night!

I believe that a linear drain installed where my driveway meets the pavement (being the lowest point of all) connecting to the main sewer would sort out the problem - but who would install this? Would the council have to do it, or is it the responsibility of the local water company? How can I get someone to take action before the next downpour results in our house being inundated.

Perhaps I should add that the house is a 16th century Grade II listed building and as such the borough council and I have a legal duty to ensure that the buliding is maintained properly - quiet obviously, increasing the flood risk for the place is not compatible with this responsibility.

Finally, I'd also like the council to undo their reprofiled pavement as I am unable to drive my car out without bottoming on the new dome.

Many thanks for any comments

Regards

Neil

Hi Neil,

your idea of installing a linear drain at the threshold between your diveway and the public footpath has one fatal flaw - if the surface water system is already flooded and surcharging (tecnical term for "overflowing" ) where's your linear drain going to drain to?

It might work, if you can outfall the linear drain at some point lower than the floodwater level at the threshold, but, without surveying the site it's not possible for me to say for sure what would work and what wouldn't.

Anyway, if you were to go ahaead with this plan, then responsibility for installation depends on just where the linear drain is sited and to where it outfalls. If it's on your side of the boundary and it connects to the SW system on your property, then the onus is yours, but, if it's actually within the public footpath and/or connects to a sewer on public property, then it's the local council, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they will um and aah for a good 12 months before anything happens. If anything happens at all!

For now, I would suggest you contact the highways dept at your local council and ask for a site meeting to review your concerns over the flooding, the re-profiling work and the potential damage to your vehicles using the crossing. They'll eventually send out a totally disinterested technician-cum-inspector and it will be up to you to badger them into coming up with a suitable remedial plan.

Don't hold your breath. I had a similar problem on a property I owned in Wigan and it took the council 5 years to do anything about the surface water that came in through our front door on a regular basis. My lads could have done the job in less than a day, but we weren't official contractors to BigWiggin Metro at the time, and so we had to endure the comedy of errors performed by their DLO that they managed to stretch out to 5 days!

And even then, it still bloody flooded!!

Thanks for your info. If the surface water system was overflowing then I could accept, to some extent, the situation, but the water us not even making it as far as the drain due to the humps in the pavement. I don't want to bother you with too much detail but the surface drainage empties into a stream about 100 metres away. In the past the stream has been blocked due to lack of maintenance but since 2000 a proper preventative maintance regime has been introduced and the problem shouldn't recur.

On Monday, once the level of water in my garden had risen sufficiently I lifted a manhole in the garden and the water drained away quite happily.

Another thought occurred to me - once the water has run off my neighbours' gardens and onto the pavement, does the council have a responsibility to drain it, rather than rerouting it into my garden?

Regards

Neil

Hi Tony

Thanks for the information. It looks like my problem with Victor Meldrew is minor compared with the deluge being suffered by Neil.

The rain we have had in the last few days has certainly got Victor excited. If he spends any more time knocking on my door I will have to charge him rent.

As a last attempt at demonstrating that I have done everything I can I have decided to put a drain from the soakaway to the rainwater drain that is about 10 feet away.

I guess this simply means digging a sloping trench from the soakaway to the rainwater drain and inserting a reasonably large diameter pipe that needs to be somehow tapped into the rainwater drain below ground level. Is this a good idea? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Regards

Jim

Well, I've written a firm letter to the highway manager but doubt I'll get much response, so I reckon I'll be following Jim's drain/soakaway arrangement, plus a new drive.

(I should probably move this to another board but...) if I take off the existing gravel, raise the level of my drive by about 150 mm at its lowest (but nothing at the top) with DTp1, then cover the lot with gravel, will it affect the drainage for the ground which seems good to me (I estimate there was about 12 cubic metres of standing water on saturated ground at 2.30 am - by 6.30am it had all gone)? I assume I'll have to raise the level of the beds too with a load of topsoil but I was planning to redo the front garden this year anyway.

Many thanks

Neil

Neil wrote...

Once the water has run off my neighbours' gardens and onto the pavement, does the council have a responsibility to drain it, rather than rerouting it into my garden?

Yes - if water is draining from a public highway onto your property, the council has a legal obligation to rectify the situation. You should stress this in your letter to the Highways Dept.

Raising the level of the drive and the planter beds will not have any great effect on the groundeater situation. It might make your drive stand proud of any future inundation, but that can't be guaranteed. Given that the floodwaters drained away reasonably quickly, I think it might just work, but I don't think it will eliminate flood risk completely.

Next, to Jim, and your plan to construct an overflow from your soakaway...I'm still not sure how this would work. If the RWP that you intend to connect to is, in turn, connected to the soakaway, then nothing is being achieved. It can only work if the RWP is actually connected to a sewer.

And if it is connected to a sewer, then a better solution would be to route as much surface water to this RWP as possible. How feasible is that?

Thanks Tony - I feel a project coming on. I'm not bothered about eliminating flood risk - just reducing it to an acceptable level. I'll post details of my work on other boards as I progress.

Thanks also to Jim for letting me hijack your thread.

Happy new year!

Neil

Hi Tony

I have managed to expose a rainwater drain and this morning I have dug a 6 metre long by 40cm deep trench from the soakaway to the drain.

The master plan is to run a pipe from the soakaway to the drain so that on the rare occasions when the soakaway fills up and overflows the excess goes down the drain rather than in the direction of Victor Meldrew.

The soakaway is around 2 metres deep and 1.5 metres in diameter. It is filled with very coarse gravel. It is situated just off the edge of the paving and takes all the run off from that side of the garden. The water simply drains over the edge of the paving directly into the soakaway. I have also dug an overflow soakaway which is 3 cubic metres but if we get torrential rain the main soakaway and the overflow both fill up (clay soil).

Maybe I should have installed a gully but I would now have to start digging up the paving to drain the water directly into the drain.

I have learnt some interesting lessons with this exercise. Take advice first rather than last is the main one.

Is there anything wrong with my plan to run a pipe from the soakaway to the drain?

Thanks

Jim