Surface water - tricky question i'm told..

[cwight]

Hi,

Sorry to keep asking so many questions. I've decided to go with tarmac for my drive. As advised I got contractors out to provide quotes. All of them tell me I have a problem of how I will deal with the surface water. my house is built on a hillside and the drive comes down about 25 m to a main road with a drop of about 1 in 6. At the top of the drive is a turning area of about 50m2. At the bottom of the drive I'll be dropping the kerb. All the contractors say that I'm not allowed to just let the surface water run down the drive and into the mainroad gulleys. So my question is what I am to do with it. It rains a lot here and when it does there is a substantial flow of water that comes down the drive, even in its current state of hardcore track. When I do this in tarmac I suspect the flow rate will be quite high. But what do I do with this water if I'm not allowed to let it flow into the gulleys at the side of the road (and hence into the storm drains)?

Thanks

[Tony McC]

I know it varies from place to place, but most LAs turn a blind eye to private driveways discharging small-ish quantities of surface water in the public highways drainage system. If it was likely to result in a cascade running across the footpath, they might have summat to say, which is fair enough, but I jnow of thousands of driveways, including my own, that drain towards the public highway, and they've never, ever been challenged.

I wonder why your contractors all seem to think there'll be a problem with your driveway?

[cwight]

That was my view. Maybe it's because my drive meets my neighbours and they are worried about the total volume of water that will run over the pavement where we drop the kerb. I was wondering if they were to be concerned about it whether I could suggest putting a linear drain at the bottom of the drive, just before the pavement starts, and tapping that into the storm drain. They've let me build here so they have to come up with some solution.

Anyway, I was pleased to see you views on this.

[cwight]

Sorry tony, I forgot to add. Thanks for you reply, but it's maybe that I've asked the wrong contractors. You don't know of any in the Huddersfield area that I could try do you?

[TheRobster]

I know it varies from place to place, but most LAs turn a blind eye to private driveways discharging small-ish quantities of surface water in the public highways drainage system. If it was likely to result in a cascade running across the footpath, they might have summat to say, which is fair enough, but I jnow of thousands of driveways, including my own, that drain towards the public highway, and they've never, ever been challenged.

Just thought I'd mention that some LA's are thinking of changing the current regulations to be stricter. In the near future, if you want to pave over a permeable area and turn it into a driveway (or whatever) it may become necessary to obtain planning permission to do this.

This is because large numbers of people have paved their gardens over in order to give them somewhere to park their cars (especially now that there are a lot of 2 car families) and this has led to overloading of the sewer network in some places.

As far as I know, no LA has done this yet but I hear on the grapevine that it is something that may be introduced in the future via a planning consent requirement.

[cwight]

Yes I've contaced the local highways Dept and they are insisting that I put a drain at the bottom of the drive (an Acpo or something they called it - is that a linear drain?) to catch the water before it runs over the pavement, and then we have to take the water from the collector drain underneath the pavement into the storm drain. This is all going to add quite a bit of expense to the job because we need to get a contractor to open up the road and connect the drive drain to the storm drain in the road; need to apply for a license etc... There was me thinking all I had to do was to drop the kerb!!