Cheap/easy surfacing for drive

[Jim K]

does your back garden drain onto a highway?

Jim K

[Phil L]

If he starts getting those people involved, they will find a way to triple the cost of anything he wants to do, making it un doable.[1] If he just goes ahead and does it, it's been there for the past 15 years and so it's not subject to any regulations, and in any case, we don't know that the drive slopes towards the pavement, it could have a drain already installed, in which case it will just drain into that.

Of the 18 drives I've done since this legislation came into place, over half of them drained onto the path / road. No one from any local authority have been in touch with either me nor any of my clients, IE, they don't care, as they know it can't be policed, if they had been involved from the start, they would have photographed it and kept an eye on it watching for any changes. If the drains are at the house end and the land runs away from them, there's no way to collect water at the road end and get it back uphill to the house drains, soakaways aren't allowed so close to the highway, and the LA won't allow you to connect into the road drains, so what is there left to do but ignore these idiotic rules....what they want you to do is pay an extra £10k so they can dig up the pavement and put an extra drain in for you, but who's gonna do that on a £500 job?

[dennis]

Have you applied for the planning permission? They won't get in touch if they don't know. However it is not their responsibility to apply, maybe not even yours. At worst you will only have to dig them up and replace them with porous sub-bases and surfacing and you might even get paid if its the owners responsibility.

It only makes floods further down stream more likely so its not going to be a problem for you unless you are down stream of lots of other people putting in non porous surfaces.

[Tim Lamb]

I think 6mm *drive* tarmac is pretty pervious anyway. Our yard was done with *wearing coat* which seemed to include fines. Water runs off and is collected by a gully which feeds it under the house to a drainage ditch.

[Phil L]

Happy days, this was the idea.

I won't be replacing anything and it's never going to happen where the council try and force someone to remove a driveway when they've no way of proving it's only been done since the legislation - how can they prove it's been done since and not been there for 10 years? - they have to prove this and the customer doesn't have to prove anything, nor even speak to them if he chooses not to.

Not really, the country didn't suddenly start flooding when we built the motorway network. And it's nothing but a money making scam anyway, what difference does it make if it drains off into the house drains, or into the road and into street gullies? - everyone pays for surface water removal and it all ends up in the same place anyway

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Phil L writes

It makes those of us who live next to streams: downstream from conurbations very nervous.

I think the concept of not adding to surface water run off is a wise one, particularly in the South East where existing aquifers are barely keeping pace with consumption. There is also the issue of overloading sewage treatment plant leading to discharges of untreated water to rivers and annoying the anglers.

[dennis]

Google may well be able to show when stuff was done.

The motorway network is a minor thing compared to all the building work done and some bits of country side do flood when it rains on the motorways. They didn't flood before the motorways.

The idea is that it doesn't run off into *any* drains. As you say there is little difference between the rainfall drains of a house and those of the road. It should not run into either these days as it is intended to keep as much of it in the soil as would have been if there was no impermeable surface.

Its all quite simple really..

1" of rains falls. It either soaks into the ground and then seeps into the rivers as it used to. This takes a few days so the rivers don't rise much.

Or it all drains into the river from hard surfaces almost immediately and causes the rivers to rise quickly.

[Tim+]

I suspect agricultural land drainage has a lot to answer for when it come to flooding. Not that there's an easy solution to this though, if we want productive fields, we have to drain land.

Tim

[charles]

when in the train to Edinburgh in early November and seeing all the flooded fields, SWMBO (a biologist) remarked that a large part of the problem was that organic feritilizers (aka manure) were no longer used. This means that the soil is not as aerated as it used to be, so water simply lies on the surface instead of draining through.

[dennis]

Fields don't normally drain fast, even when drainage has been built in. The soil structure soaks up the water, its what the plants need.

However it can get saturated if there is a lot of rain, then the water runs through a lot faster. Its still slower than water off a drive and down some pipes.

[Phil L]

The OP isn't adding to surface water run off, and if he did it according to my earlier suggestion of leaving a patch at each side for gravel, he will be decreasing it

[Phil L]

You mean google satellite maps? - the view of my house is from 1998

They were fields before the motorways and were'nt monitored for flooding

impermeable surfaces do not allow water to soak through - gravel may allow a small amount to soak away, but holed blocks filled in with rock hard soil don't allow anything through

Maybe we shouldn't be living so close to rivers and streams? - it's all self explanatory really, you build a house 12ft away from a watercourse, expect flooding, and the minute amount that has contributed to the flood that has come from someone's front garden wouldn't make one iota of difference even if you multiplied it by 10,000 - look up the amount of paved over land in this country - only a tiny fraction of that is people's front gardens, which is what this idiotic legislation is about - it doesn't cover patios, side drives or anything else - front gardens only, IOW, it's pathetic

[dennis]

Are you sure its only front gardens?

[Jonathan]

I read that 75% of flooding in houses is from surface water not rivers.

Jonathan

[The Medway Handyman]

Look at any page in, say the London A-Z and you will see at least a third of it is green.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The pint is that mostly house rainwater drains are required by law to go into soakaways, which store and disperse the water into the ground. |Not into the local waterway, at least not immediately.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not really. There is a considerable lag between a heavy shower and land drains staring to show decent flow. And that land will only drain ones its totally sodden at which point its all running off the top anyway.

whereas with housing and paving, the water is instantly flushed towards either what local surface drainage exists, or to whatever local land is available to absorb it. IN the former case the peak flows into rivers can be extremely high as there is little or no buffering. Agricultural land is a good buffer. As are flood plains.

[The Natural Philosopher]

,

A half truth at best.

On heavy soils where compaction exists, there is considerable work done to break up and mulch in last years crops as part of the subsoil ploughing.

You dont need organic matter to create porosity any more - you can use mechanical means. Also the stalks of the last years crops are mulched in anyway. They don't have much nutrient, but they have,mechanical value.

Finally the optimal cost benefit is to go extremely light on fertilizers anyway. They are very expensive, and the best profit is just enough sprayed when its relatively dry so it doesn't get washed away. ]

[The Natural Philosopher]

I haver cured surface flooding in several areas by using limestone MOT type I covered with soil. The limestone allows the surface water to drain. You can if enough is used, even safely run cars over it. Heavy use will wear back to chalk, but occasional uses does little harm to the soil surfaces.

My drive is about 4" of crushed MOT top dressed with about 4" of gravel., Up till this year it has always drained well, but now the gravel in the high traffic entrance is all mashed down and full of mud, so it needs another 20 tonnes or so whacked on top.

[Jim K]

subsoiling every year? sounds unusual...once every few years is more usual

Jim K