Dear all,
it's two months now that a lawned part of my back garden is soaked with water that I suspect may be coming from my neighbour's garden and, having lost any hope of the water disappearing before winter kicks in, I am looking for suggestions on my next move.
I live at the bottom of a gently sloped road and both my neighbour's garden and house sit on some 50 cm higher ground. A couple of years ago this neighbour built a small pond (2 m x 1.5 m, approx. 50-60 cm deep) just in the middle of his back garden, in a lower part that is at the same level as my own garden. My understanding of this pond is that he has laid some underground water pipe to fill it and that there is some (short) underground waste pipe to disperse the water in the surrounding ground if the ponds needs to be emptied. It comes without saying that, although we live in a conservation area, he asked no council permission to build the pond (and the surrounding garden features); he just did that himself as a DIY work. However, being a DIYer myself, and having seen a number of his DIY outcomes, I don't rank him among the top 10%...
The neighbour went away for more than two months over the summer (July to beginning of September), during which we could hear the faint noise of running water presumably coming from the pond. He may have a pond pump that recirculates water, so that may have accounted for the noise. However, our water is not metered, he's a rather stingy kind of guy and I suspect that his idea of water circulation is tap and drain open at the same time, just to save on the electricity...
There is a layer of compact clay in most of my garden, sitting some 50 cm underground; on top of that there seems to be a natural underground stream for water coming from the hilltop, exactly where my neighbour's pond and my flooded areas are positioned. In winter, snow seems to melt more rapidly in that stripe of land, grass is always greener, but I never had any flooding. In Victorian times, there was a natural pond nearby (now filled, tarred over and transformed in a parking area) and water could have collected there running underground over the clay layer.
To cut a long story short, I asked the neighbour if his pond had anything to do with my problem, which he denied, also adding that the slabbed area around his pond is also soaked with water, so that he is not filling the pond any longer (!). He claims that higher than normal rainfalls over the summer, in conjunction with the huge amount of grit spread last winter, which are partially blocking the sewage system, are responsible for the flooding. To me, this is plain rubbish as (having checked MetOffice Data), 2010 rainfall levels here in the NE are just 10% over normal and I am not aware of a sewage system to collect underground garden water...
A survey may find out the cause of the problem; however, this is expensive and it would take time to arrange it. In the short term, what could I do, at least to try and find out the most likely cause(s) of the problem?
I would be grateful for any suggestions
W.