Land drainage

In message , Bill writes

If anyone remembers this thread from a while back here is an update. After long and marginally tortuous investigation I have decided that I DO NOT like drains.

We came to a reasonable agreement with the developers over the run of their pipe and they are also going to extend ours. This was fine until we looked further into the existing pipe. At sometime in the last

10-15 years some one had attached a 3" land drain into our pipe work, this carried the out flow from 2 small ponds, not a major problem in itself apart from the fact we did not know they had done it! Plus it added a lot more flow to the "small ditch" at the end of the pipe during wet weather.

Any way the "water" was coming out of the ground 20m or so before where I thought the end of the pipe should be, on digging down I found that a join in the pipes had moved slightly. The water was now running in roughly the same route as the pipe but above ground. This had caused the bog to increase somewhat in size! Also there were areas that were decidedly dangerous, in one part I could push a spade down to its handle without applying much pressure, this was the area where my wellies were temporarily lost! Have you ever stood in mud etc. in stocking feet? A novel experience. Following the route of the pipe and after a lot of probing with a length of 15mm copper pipe I eventually found the end and dug down to it. Surprisingly enough there was no flow from the pipe, after pushing some rods up it and dislodging some of its contents I found a sponge and a quantity of cloth strips, no guesses as to what these once were. (These were tracked back to an incident sometime back involving 2 teenage girls who managed to totally block their parents septic tank!) I only managed to get the rods to go about 6m up the pipe before they would go no further, not really the right direction for rodding!

I think my next action will be to call in a professional to jet the pipe and try to remove as much debris as possible, hopefully if this works and there is a reasonable flow the bad joint can be made good and then things should be almost back to normal. We have also finally ascertained that there are 5 septic tanks emptying into the system, one appears to have been added about 15 years ago by running a pipe across a field into one of the others inspection tanks, with their permission, but without our knowledge. I also intend this week to write to all concerned to a) inform them as to what is happening and b) to suggest that they may like to contribute a share of the cost of the jetting and any other work that is needed. I have spoken to 3 of them already and they are OK with what has gone on so far but one is away and it also seems sensible to put it in print rather than just verbal.

Once this is done the developers have agreed to extend the pipe using plastic as far as the main water course.

Something else I discovered over the last week is that a small pond has been built about 500m down stream of our land and the other side of a railway line. ( the area seems to be populated by serial pond builders!). I wonder if the owners know where some of their pond water comes from? I'm going to have a chat with them next time I'm there. It could have been interesting to see it yesterday though as I used fluorescien dye to check on the source of some of the water.

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?_dyncharset=UTF-8&fh_search=drain+dye&x=14&y=8Also the environmental agency are to be involved as the new development have to get their permission to add to the water course, it should be "interesting" to see their views on the existing set up.

All good fun, I DO NOT like drains.