Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 10:11 pm
Have trawled through your great pages and don't think I've found the answer to my problem. Apologies if it's there and I've missed it.
We've had "flooding" from our drive (30ft x 30ft area) close to the house for the three years we've lived here every time it rains. Discovered that there was only soakaway drainage so dug from down pipe until we found a collapsed, silted up, rubble filled soakaway approx 12ft from house. Emptied it and realised that it was surrounded by clay so dug..... and dug.... and dug, only to find..... you guessed it - more clay!
Local geological plans show - yes, clay! Deep! The existing hole is approx 4ft square x 4.5ft deep. Needed a pump to get rid of water whilst digging and hoped that we'd find the hole empty next day - 10 days later we think it might have stopped filling and we don't know whether we're looking at the water table or just saturation of the surrounding ground (water level is about 3ft below ground level. We've heard now from the neighbours that the surface water drainage has always been a problem to this property, so much so that they had to put up curb stones to stop the flow from our property to theirs! Neighbour the other side had a similar problem so lay a deep gravel drive. Looks like this soakaway has never worked! No SW mains available to tap into.
Drive slopes down towards the house from the road and we're obviously keen to get a solution before the autumn, otherwise we're going to have to get some carp to put in this bloody hole. Any suggestions?
Thanks
We've had "flooding" from our drive (30ft x 30ft area) close to the house for the three years we've lived here every time it rains. Discovered that there was only soakaway drainage so dug from down pipe until we found a collapsed, silted up, rubble filled soakaway approx 12ft from house. Emptied it and realised that it was surrounded by clay so dug..... and dug.... and dug, only to find..... you guessed it - more clay!
Local geological plans show - yes, clay! Deep! The existing hole is approx 4ft square x 4.5ft deep. Needed a pump to get rid of water whilst digging and hoped that we'd find the hole empty next day - 10 days later we think it might have stopped filling and we don't know whether we're looking at the water table or just saturation of the surrounding ground (water level is about 3ft below ground level. We've heard now from the neighbours that the surface water drainage has always been a problem to this property, so much so that they had to put up curb stones to stop the flow from our property to theirs! Neighbour the other side had a similar problem so lay a deep gravel drive. Looks like this soakaway has never worked! No SW mains available to tap into.
Drive slopes down towards the house from the road and we're obviously keen to get a solution before the autumn, otherwise we're going to have to get some carp to put in this bloody hole. Any suggestions?
Thanks