The Brew Cabin

Hello all, Looking for any opinions on the following:

Just bought a terraced house , the front of which faces slightly up hill (the terraced houses on the other side of the road are approximately 4 feet higher). There is a garden at the front of the property that slopes gently down to the front of my property, this is always quite wet and this is affecting the walls in the property (even one internal cupboard under the stairs where the walls are deteriorating to the extent that it comes away in my hands at points)

I was considering digging a french drain out the front but, from reading this site, it doesn't seem like a good idea. Another problem is that there is no drain outside the front of the property that I could use as a run off fro any construction ( the nearest is two doors down that serves all of our gutters)

I don't really know how to proceed - I have thought that a last resort will be to build a driveway on the front garden that can be sloped back into the road. However, this is a last resort and is way beyond what I can afford to do at the moment! (first house!)

Oh yes, the house was built in 1917 - the walls are single layer (not cavity) as far as I can tell. They are rendered on the outside and there is a slate damp proof course).

Any suggestions welcomed!
thanks
AL

While a French Drain may not be ideal, you could use the modern equivalent, a drainage composite. I wrote about these in another thread just a couple of days ago.

Even if you did install a composite, you still have nowhere to outfall, unless you find that there's a SW sewer in the road and the council are happy for you to make a new connection. So, your first task should be to identify just where you can get rid of any water intercepoted at the front of the house. Once you've solved that conundrum, identifying a suitable drainage system becomes much easier.

The idea about installing a driveway confuses me. If the garden backfalls towards the house, how would installing a driveway drain towards the road? Surely the driveway would either have to follow the profile of the garden, and backfall towards the house, or be elevated somehow, at the house end, and so create fall out to the road.