Which drainage? - Puddles on the drive

[peril]

I am planning on renovating my very large gravel drive. I don't think it's ever really been done properly and in the winter we often get large water puddles forming in certain places. We have a single drive about 2.5m wide and around 25m long leading a very large open area shaped like a ractangle with a small island in the centre with grass and a tree. I am famous for over engineering these projects so I wanted to make sure that the drainage I put in is adequate but not excessive. I have read the section on land drains but any tips on how I should lay these out over the area? Presumable as they are going under trafic they need to be the rigid type? Can I run them into a main drain?

Thanks.

[Tony McC]

The best method of reconstruction would be to have the new gravel driveway laid to a camber and/or crossfall and have edge drains to collect the surface water. The edge drains could be a gutter/channel leading to a gully, a linear drain, or even a buried collector/fin drain.

If youp;re determined to have collecftor drains burioed beneath the driveway itself, then these should be constructed using rigid perforated pipes, wither the ribbed, reinforced plastic type or the heavier clayware versions.

Although you can, in theory, outfall to the SW system on your nproperty, if there is any chance of outfalling to a soakway, that would be the preferred option.

You might be interested to read the (relatively) new page that describes the installation of a small SUDS attenuation cell - these can be installed beneath driveways with very little trouble and may the perfect answer to your problem.