The Brew Cabin

Posted: **Fri Aug 31, 2007 6:03 pm**

Hi. What a great site! Am having a conservatory built and they have dug a soakaway to take account of the rain/surface water...however I'm abit worried.
1. I've read the advice on soakaways and although my new soakaway is 5m from the house it's only actually 3m from where the front edge of the conservatory will be. Is that a problem?
2. The residual patio area adjacent to the new cons. has only a gulley/trap about 4ins square which as far as i know is topping a pipe with drain holes in it and filled with shingle. It doesn't appear to drain to a soakaway so some sort of SW drainage is required to prevent flooding etc.The conservatory company is not currently involved in this bit but the guys building the conservatory say if it were them they would dig another soakaway but this would be just around this 'trap' and could be much smaller. however it would be really near the house (about only 2.5m away) when i queried this they said 'well you're only making your existing gulley bigger'.
another garden landscaper has suggested running the trap into the mains sewer but i'm not sure if this is allowed. How would anyone know anyway? i would really appreciate some advice and apologise for the length of this post.
Thanks very much. looking forward to hearing from you.

Posted: **Sat Sep 01, 2007 10:55 am**

i think you will be OK with 3m. is your patio falling away from the house to the garden?hopefully they have put the pipe in on a gradient would of liked to see a pipe without holes away from the gully, as silting up could be a problem. it is hard to visualise without seeing though, so maybe a picture. its not the done thing to drain into the foul.

Posted: **Sat Sep 01, 2007 1:17 pm**

Conservatories tend to have shallow foundations and so the risk from the proximity of the soakaway is much reduced. The reason soakaways are supposed to be a minimum 5 metres from any building is to prevent wash-out or water damage to the foundations, but with typical conservatory foundations, 3 metres might just be OK.

As for the patio drainage, if it can't be directed to the existiong soakaway, then I'd opt for a new one, ideally a minimum 5 metres from the house and minimum 5m from the other soakaway.

Posted: **Tue Sep 04, 2007 7:38 pm**

Thanks very much for your replies.

The Brew Cabin

Soakaway