The Brew Cabin

In heavy rain the drain on our uneven drive fills up with water - covering the drive with a massive puddle and creeping into the garage. It appears that our drain is connected to the gully in the road and when that gets full it comes up on our drive. The road is unadopted - the house was built in the 60's and the builder didn't bother getting the road up to spec consequently we're now suffering the effects. What's the best way to tackle the problem? We're considering blocking our connection with the road gully and digging up the path at the side of the house to re-route the drainage. Does it sound viable?

Please help?!

This is known as 'surcharging' - it's when the water level in a drainage system starts to back-up and flows out of the system at the "wrong end", rather than into it.

The easiest solution is to ask the council to send their gully-cleaning wagon to come and have a poke about in the gully that's causing the problem. As this is an unadopted road, they may ask for a payment (I think BigWiggin Metro charge 60 quid +VAT for doing the gully on a private road near my sister's), but it's money well spent, as it will probably solve the problem, or you will get some good feedback on the underlying cause of the problem, and all for a lot less than a drainage consultant would charge.

Give this a try, and if it doesn't solve anything, come back to me.

Thanks for that .... I did ring the council and they were amazingly helpful ... shocking I know! He stated that as the level of our drain was below that of the one on the road it would be a waste of money to clear the gully (price quoted was min £75 + VAT ). I guess we have no choice but to dig the whole lot up now .....
Thanks for the suggestion tho - it was worth a try!

How did he know the levels involved?

Does this mean that the invert of your driveway drainage is lower than the invert of the road gully? If so, then how did your driveway drainage ever work at all? If it used to work, and now it doesn't then that suggests a blockage. It's highly unlikely that invert levels have altered!

If the road is unadopted, then it might be possible to make a new connection to the sewer within the roadway, one with an invert level sufficiently low to generate fall from your driveway drain. It means building a small access chamber or a MH, but it's a small price to pay for having a driveway that doesn't need a dinghy!

Hiya!
Yes the drain on on our drive is significantly lower than the road gully and I doubt whether the drainage has ever worked properly, I would imagine that as it was rented out before we bought it it would have been a bone of contention between landlord and tennant. We had a homebuyers survey prior to going ahead with the purchase but as it wasn't raining hard the problem wasn't apparent. We borrowed some surveyors equipment and took measurements of all the levels last night - there's significant diferences all over the drive with some aspects being 6 inches lower than others!
Will continue with the wellies for now!!!

Thanks

Karen