Should I be worried about a soakaway ?
HarpingOn
my conservatory guttering (it's been up 2 years) after lots of it got
ripped off in the big snow in January.
Anyway, having done that and cleaned it out, I noticed something I don't
know if I should be worried about or not.
My spur for replacing the guttering was watching an episode of 'Help My
House Is Falling Down' whereby most of the house problems were caused by
faulty guttering causing all the rainwater to run on to one corner of
the house, undermining the foundations.
I find now that the conservatory guttering, even though we asked the
builders to move the drains (which they did) just runs into a hole in
the ground.
They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.
Should I worry about this? Is it normal? Would you consider it a faulty
installation?
Appreciate anyone's thoughts please.
Thank you.
d...@gglz.com
What sort of roof area (square metres) is draining into this
soakaway?
This sort of thing certainly *does* cause problems.
I'm finishing off a chapel conversion, and in the early days found a
collapsed drain responsible for allowing half the roof area to drain
into the soil at one corner of the building. There was clearly some
slight cracking and building movement as a consequence. All new
underground drainage laid, cracks repointed - and absolutely no
structural movement since.
Dave Liquorice
> They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
> filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
> of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
> that undermined.
I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...
--
Cheers
Dave.
HarpingOn
>
> What sort of roof area (square metres) is draining into this
> soakaway?
>
> This sort of thing certainly *does* cause problems.
>
> I'm finishing off a chapel conversion, and in the early days found a
> collapsed drain responsible for allowing half the roof area to drain
> into the soil at one corner of the building. There was clearly some
> slight cracking and building movement as a consequence. All new
> underground drainage laid, cracks repointed - and absolutely no
> structural movement since.
That's what I was worried about. It's a base of 6.25 M sq. so the roof
being pitched will be a bit more than that.
Bob Minchin
an exclusion for for surface water from such a small roof.
Bob
Arfa Daily
"Bob Minchin" <bob.minc...@YOURHATntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:iuru4e$o8k$1...@dont-email.me...
My main house rear guttering discharges to a soakaway which was put in by
the house builders. This is right at the bottom of the garden probably 30
feet from the house. When the extension was built, by lads that worked for
the original builders, another soakaway was dug about half way down the
garden. When the conservatory was built, this was subject to planning and
building regs due to its size and my 'free' allowance having been used up by
the extension. This was drained to a further soakaway, again at the bottom
of the garden. I can remember the buildings inspector having quite an
argument with the conservatory guys about the construction of this, and how
far from the conservatory foundations that it should be, and I'm sure I
remember him with a tape measure, humming and hah-ing about whether it could
be got far enough away. As I recall, it was eventually a discretionary
decision as, strictly speaking, it couldn't be quite far enough away, but as
we are on the top of a hill, backing onto a field, and built on what he
called 'free-draining ground' he would let it pass. I'm not sure whether
this was an official regulation that he was 'bending', or whether it was an
advisory condition that he was using his discretion to over-rule in my
particular case.
You might find something about it on here
http://www.conservatoriesonline.com/index.htm
I found that there's a wealth of useful stuff on there about planning and
building regs etc, when I originally had mine built a few years back
Arfa
Tim Watts
I vaguely recall 5m from the building regs, but I might be wrong... If it's
a little bit of roof, logically one could bring it closer.
--
Tim Watts
The Natural Philosopher
> After locating some gutter brackets, I finally got around to repairing
> my conservatory guttering (it's been up 2 years) after lots of it got
> ripped off in the big snow in January.
>
> Anyway, having done that and cleaned it out, I noticed something I don't
> know if I should be worried about or not.
>
> My spur for replacing the guttering was watching an episode of 'Help My
> House Is Falling Down' whereby most of the house problems were caused by
> faulty guttering causing all the rainwater to run on to one corner of
> the house, undermining the foundations.
>
> I find now that the conservatory guttering, even though we asked the
> builders to move the drains (which they did) just runs into a hole in
> the ground.
>
> They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
> filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
> of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
> that undermined.
>
Depends how big the hole is.. guttering/rain drainage is only about
getting water into the ground without splashing the house or soaking its
feet.
HarpingOn
> Depends how big the hole is.. guttering/rain drainage is only about
> getting water into the ground without splashing the house or soaking its
> feet.
>
>
It's about 6" square, 4" deep and that 4" is full of little pebbles.
It looks purely cosmetic to me.
Bob Minchin
constructing a soakaway within 5m of a building or roadway.
I'm sure this used to be less than 5m more like 3m when I extended my
house in 1982. The I'm pretty certain I bought a 3m length of pipe,
laid on the ground and started digging when it ended - but it all seems
a long time ago. A few years later I built on another bit which took the
building to within 1m of the original soakaway. The inspector did not
ask questions and I certainly did not tell him the route/location of the
soakaway.
25 years of more on, we have no subsidence problems but we do have a
very gravelly soil and so it drains very well anyway.
I found something elsewhere which gives the volume of a soakaway to be
given by the plan area to be drained divided by 40 (area in sqm and
volume in cu m)
So depending whether the OP quoted the roof size properly, he either
needs 1 cu metre (1000litres) or a trivial 0.15 cu m (150 litres) soakaway
Bob
TheScullster
"HarpingOn" wrote
If the builder "moved the drains", did they not add/move a gulley to an
accessible location?
Can you modify the guttering to reach this gulley?
Phil
docholliday
<bob.minchinREM...@YOURHATntlworld.com> wrote:
> Arfa Daily wrote:
>
Though even the smaller of these is considerably bigger than 6"x6"x4",
which works out to be about .00225 cu. m....
Mike
HarpingOn
> If the builder "moved the drains", did they not add/move a gulley to an
> accessible location?
> Can you modify the guttering to reach this gulley?
>
Possibly. The soil drain got moved from atop the patio that the
conservatory got built on, to just to the side of the dwarf wall, on the
same side as the downpipe from the gutter. They didn't connect the
downpipe to the drain in any way. It's a soil drain so I wouldn't want
to have an open entry in to the top of it, I think to fix it would need
the (new) patio on the side of the conservatory taking up and a proper
connection put in to the sewer.
I'm quite annoyed about this.
RobertL
I happen to have a letter from building control about my own soakawy.
It has to be:
"5 metres from any building, road or unstable ground. "
Robert
Hugo Nebula
chimpanzee, "Dave Liquorice" <allsortsn...@howhill.com>,
randomly hit the keyboard and wrote:
>I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
>soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
>recomendations. Have a google...
The current British Standard (ICBA to look up the number) recommends
5m, but that has increased over time. Pragmatically, if the discharge
from a small roof is downhill of the foundations in a reasonably
free-draining ground, then it should be sufficient.
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have I strayed"?
Gib Bogle
The base (i.e. area projected onto a horizontal surface) determines the
amount of rainfall intercepted. The slope is pretty much irrelevant,
assuming the rain comes from all directions.
Mark
wrote:
Yes. A "soakaway" that size would not cope with much water.
Can you not join on your conservatory drainage to the extant house
drainage? This might be soakaway or storm drain.
--
(\__/) M.
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