The Brew Cabin

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:59 pm**

Hi there!

We have a problem Houston... The problem is that when it rains heavily, surface rain water runs down the lane at the top of our drive and then peels off down the slope towards our front door.

The drive has a gravel covering but sits on old tarmac. As you can see from the images, the water almost forms a channel down our drive, floods the garage, pooling outside our side door.

We do have a drain outside the garage but it can't cope with the huge quantity of water running off down the drive from the lane. The garage also has a basic linear drain at the front but this seems ineffective.

The lane is owned by the council, we were wandering if they have any responsibility towards preventing run-off from their roads.

Most of the other houses have some kind of raised tarmac hump that stops the rainwater from peeling off into their drives.

Would you be able to recommend a solution to this problem?

The other problem we have is that the guttering we have always overflows when it rains a lot. The downpipes have reasonably small square bores and some of them just end and drain out onto a concrete surface.

Any help would be much appreciated! Many thanks in advance.

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 5:15 pm**

personally i would install an aco drain right across the front of your property next to the road ,thats problem A solved
as for the leaking gutters, replace them!!
its as simple as that
if you live in a wet area or have a high area of roof then i suggest deep flow guttering and 100mm downpipe (just put some up today on a council job,they prefer deep flow) as for pipes they should go into a storm drain or a soakaway http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain08.html here for info
regards tony

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 5:56 pm**

A friend of ours had this sort of problem a few years ago. She lives in a counrty lane with no footpath or kerb. After some work had taken place up the lane, she started to get water running down her drive and accross the garden when the rain was heavy. This water would then run into the air vent at one side of the house... under the house .. and out the other side like a waterfall . She contacted the council highways dept, they came out and installed a small section of kerb accross her drive so that the water was sent down the lane.
all was then OK

regards kevin

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:51 pm**

It is the highways responsibility to stop the water run off from their roads entering private properties of this nature. Do not install any kind of aco drain as suggested at your expense. Get the highways to do it, and if they dont budge, they need a legal threat.
I recently was told I could not install gravel up to a proposed new drop kerb edge "in case it spills onto the highway". They also insisted that the entrance be hard standing, 5m in from the edge, and that the surface water from the drive MUST NOT run onto the highway, but be drained on the property.
This rule applies the other way round too!
Annoying thing was, they would not install the new dropped kerbs until all this was done, almost holding the customer to ransom.

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:14 pm**

i know what you mean dan but councils can be right a**e holes about stuff like this
i recently removed the hedge from the front of my house(actually i sold it on ebay for 99p ==> see the guys face when he realised he had to dig out and removed 30 feet of privet ,then cart it away)and built a flint wall
anyway the hedge overhung the footpath by a good 2 ft so i built the wall back at the boundary
because in the last 10 years they have tarmaced all the pavements round here this left a good 9 " of dirt in front of the wall which i reported as a hazard
the council guy then informed me that they were going to charge me Â£750 to dig it out and tarmac it!!!?!??!??
go forth and multiply i thought,so i then change tack and said "when your contractors tarmaced the path why didnt they put and edging in,instead of just running the tarmac to nothing in the hedge??"
this stumped him for a while and when he came back to me the result is no charge
basically they will try and fob you off but its worth perservering
thanks for the info dan ,it will come in handy
regards tony

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:16 pm**

BTW besage that aco drain near your house looks like it good do with a clean out mate
tony

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:46 pm**

Thanks for your advice and ideas lads. Much appreciated. I'll certainly get on to the council about their part of the deal. You might be right about that aco drain in front of the garage!

Another puzzle for you..

If the back of your house has a thick decorative concrete patio slab around it , I mean 2 feet thick, how do you put a drain in for the downpipes? The clever chappy that designed it didn't seem to mind run-off washing out all over the patio???

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:26 am**

take some up dig a pip in and build a soakaway ,then reinstate the flags
look on the soakaway page for advice first tho mate
regards tony

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:24 am**

Only problem is that they're not slabs, it's a single slab of poured concrete with a coloured slab effect on the surface. If I damage it, repairing it will be very ugly. Any other ideas? ???

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:54 am**

can you not change the falls on the guttering so your outlet pipe is somewhere else more suitable? somewhere with no concrete to dig up??
cheers tony

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:01 pm**

Probably. Good idea Tony. Do you have any experince with rainwater harvesting systems?

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:02 pm**

well what i have at home is a flat roof 9which is soncrete) so i have an old metal tank up there that collects rainwater ,then the hose is connected to the base of this so that i have a 2.4m head on the water which enables me to water the garden (if needs be ==not at the moment)
most guttering can have the falls reversed especially if you use deepflow and start again from scratch
plus plastic guttering is relatively cheap
if you can find an area away from the concrete you could dig a pipe in and build a sokaway
regards tony

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 8:51 am**

lutonlagerlout wrote:i know what you mean dan but councils can be right a**e holes about stuff like this

Totally agree - I've seen friends go and work for the local council and turn into right 'little hitlers'

They think they own everything and enjoy the power trip! :O

The Brew Cabin

Road run-off problem to tarmac/gravel drive - Help needed!!! driveway drainage problem