The Brew Cabin

I'm planning to lay perforated plastic pipe drainage (the yellow coiled stuff) in the back garden to help get rid of surface water (there's not much top soil over clay). So....... I'm going to dig out some drainage runs in a herring bone pattern and lay 80mm dia perforated pipe on gravel (right so far?). I'm in an old house with a combined system, so I need to make the connection to the main run via a trapped gully (OK?). Questions:
How do I make the connection between 2 lengths of perforated pipe when they meet at an angle (just cut a neatish hole and push together?)
Do I need top worry about material (soil, grit etc) getting into the main sewer run?
How easy is it to connect new plastic pipe to old glazed ceramic pipe?
I will back fill the drainage excavation with clean stone and finish off with some topsoil and maybe even new roll-out lawn if I've got the dough!
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Thanks

Better late than never....

Connecting perforated flexible pipe at an angle - yes: cut a hole and push together, just as shown in a post made to this forum almost two years ago - have a look at this record of it in the Archive

You don't need to worry too much abouts silts and sediments getting into the main swers (they handle much worse than that!!) but the real threat is to the long term performance of your system, as the particles will clog-up the pipe, eventually. If you use a membrane around the land drain, as shown on the Land Drain page, it eliminates both potential problems.

To connect new plastic to old salt-glaze, you need an adaptor coupling as sold by most decent BMs.

I think you really ought to read the page dealing with land drainage - it has more or less all the answers you need, and lot more you haven't thought of asking!

Good luck!

Thanks Tony, much appreciated!

I'm planning to lay a perforated pipe, in a trench which will run parallel with the front of my house. This is to stop water from entering the house via the foundations. Can anyone tell me if there is a regulation or can give me advice as to how close the trench can or should be to the front of the house. Thanks for any replys.

I'm not sure how successful will be your plan. You'll need a good outfall, I know that much!

Anyway, there are no 'regulations' for such a construction, but you should never come closer than 1 metre to the house with a parallel tranch, and you should never cut the trench deeper than the foundation.

The exact layout of your property would dictate the best possible design - it may be that you should run the trench, say, 3 metres from the house and cut it 500mm deeper than the foundations, but without seeing the site, I can't really say.

The question here is where is the water coming from, and how is it "getting into the building via the foundations"?

We have a problem with water coming up the coal measures, but as the coal seams slops, we would need a very deep trench to intercept it before it reaches the cellar. Not only that, but the footings of our house are very shallow on the uphill side, and the cellar is on the downhill side.

So my solution has been to collect the water once it has arrived and drain it away smartish before it can make things damp.

You also need to remember that on a clay soil, if you start drying out things that have been wet for a long time, you may find bits of your building sinking.

The water enters where the main cold water supply enters the house. This leaked here previously before I replaced the lead cold water pipe last year. Looking at the local rain records for the last year, the water only enters when it has been a month of heavy rainfall. The water would seem to be entering the property at its lowest point. The property is situated at lowest point of the road where it is located and another raod adjoins this road directly in front of my property. This road also sloped towards my property. The front of the house has a bay extendiiing out, should this be the point at which I measure one metre away from to start digging my trench?

Can't you seal-up around the water feed pipe? A generous spadeful of good concrete or even some of that expanding foam-filler, perhaps?


If you're still intent on the land drain, then 1 metre from the bay window sounds about right.

The main water pipe coming into the property, has been passed through 4" plastic ducting, which one of the staight parts of the ducting has been cemented into the foundations. It is round the sides of the ducting where the water starts to appear. Besides putting a land drainage trench in, the only other idea i could think of is to put some shuttering in around the ducting and add another layer of concrete. If you think this or another idea might help, I would most appreciate the suggestion. The alternative is to get my spade out again and start digging !

What about trying to seal around the duct, then? Is that feasible? It's got to be worth 5 quid for a tin of expanding foam sticky stuff to see if it works, hasn't it?

Yes, Tony I agree. Just something I forgot to add. Where the ducting comes through the foundations is about 5" from the interrior dividing wall between the two semi-detatched properties. From the ducting to wall is a raised surface of about 1.5" high, which has bricks at the front and then a concrete top to the dividing wall. This runs parallel with the wall for about 20". The point of this being is that where the bricks are protruding out of the foundations (originally built like this) the bricks seem to have gaps in the mortar between them. This is where I think the water is entering through the gaps in the bricks behind the 4" ducting. This why I proposed putting some shuttering up and concreting over the bricks and ledge and around the ducting again. As you stated in your reply, I don't think I have nothing to lose, but everything to gain - thanks.

Just a thought, if this ducting runs from a stop-cock in the road, is the water sumping into the stop-cock well and then being piped to your property. I remember one of our workshops flooding when BT forgot to seal their duct, and our workshop was lower than their manhole.