The Brew Cabin

Hi

We are about to lay a new patio adjacent to the house. However, the garden slopes uphill away from the building. Immediately the other side of the patio is a ground level pond which will have stepping stones to cross it, so I can't drain it that way. The drainage has to run towards the house.

My question is, what type of channel would be most appropriate? We are using a textured concrete buff coloured slab, laid at an angle of 45 degrees to the house. As it is a new house, the builders have sealed the bottom of the downpipes - there is no open gully there, although I assume that this is easy enough to remedy?

Has anyone any idea on what type of gully and channel I can use that won't look too horrendous immediately adjacent to the house? And how do I link it to the sealed downpipe?

Thanks

DebH

Hi Deb,

it is pretty easy to replace the sealed rainwater pick-ups with a gully. There's a bit of digging involved, and some fiddling to persuade the gully to sit just where you want it, but it's an hour of a job, if that.

Once you have your gully in place, you could use a number of solutions to direct the water away from the brickwork of the house and into the drainage system. The two simplest options for diy'ers are....

1 - use a dished channel. Lay this tight against the house with endfall towards the gully and allow the patio to drain towards it. The surface water will trickle along the channel and disappear into the gully.

2 - use a linear drain. Again, this can be laid tight against the house, but there's no ned to lay it to a fall (unless you've more than around 10 metres or so). Also, it is possible to omit the gully if you use a linear drain, as it can be connected directly to where the rainwater pick-up was, and you can feed the downspout directly into the linear drain.

There's a good explanation of these techniques on the Drainage for Pavements page.