Should I be worried about a soakaway ?

[HarpingOn]

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.

Should I worry about this? Is it normal? Would you consider it a faulty installation?

Appreciate anyone's thoughts please.

Thank you.

[dom]

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]

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...

[HarpingOn]

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]

I'm *sure* you are correct. I *think* it is 2 or 3m but there might be an exclusion for for surface water from such a small roof.

Bob

[Arfa Daily]

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

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.

[The Natural Philosopher]

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]

It's about 6" square, 4" deep and that 4" is full of little pebbles.

It looks purely cosmetic to me.

[Bob Minchin]

I just looked up section H3 of building regs which talks of not 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]

Though even the smaller of these is considerably bigger than 6"x6"x4", which works out to be about .00225 cu. m.... Mike

[HarpingOn]

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]

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.

[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]

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.