Just pondering - old soakaways

[David]

I've just been up a scaffold tower to unblock the downpipe from the guttering (again).

The North side of the house roof grows these green moss slugs which then tumble down and block the guttering.

Logic suggests that before the guttering blocks, quite a lot of "moss bunnies" have been washed down the vertical pipe to the soak away.

Over the years the soak away (and the access pipe) must be filling up with crap, which suggests that a soak away has a finite life before it needs digging out and replacing.

Given that it must be under the drive somewhere, this is not something which fills me with joy.

How do you tell when it is (nearly) full of crap?

Is the best solution just to interrupt the down pipe ad re-direct the rain water across the drive to soak away in the borders?

Cheers

Dave R

[John Akers]

You end up with standing water on the ground after only light rain.

Depends on the nature of the borders. If its clay, it won't soak away there.

[harry]

Vegetable matter rots away to very little. But soakaways do block eventually. You can only tell by putting a large volume of water down and seeing if it backs up and how quickly it disappears.

Ideally soakaways should have some sort of interceptor to catch crap but often they aren't.

Most of the problem with old soakaways is caused by surrounding soil migrating into the aggregate. Nowadays they are surrounded with a filtering textile to reduce this.

Alternative modern soakaways.

[Jeff Layman]

It doesn't answer your question, but have you considered fitting some gutterguards to stop most of the moss blocking your gutters/downpipes/soakaway in the first place?

[Tim Lamb]

Also. It might be possible to rejuvenate a plugged soak by feeding a garden hose in jet mode down the drain. When excavated I have found a few inches of black compost plugging the discharge point. If you could agitate this to a slurry, it might disperse into the rest of the soak. Mind you don't get the hose nozzle jammed! Soaks are supposed to be at least 5m from the foundations.

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[Vir Campestris]

I found an old sheet of corrugated iron under one of my flowerbeds. It's always soggy there, and I hoped it was the missing well. It wasn't. There was a bit of hardcore underneath - just a few bricks, not more than half a dozen - and that was all.

Only much later did it occur to me this might have been an old soakaway. Since after rain there is standing water in that flowerbed it can't be doing much. We are on clay.

Andy

[Chris Hogg]

I guess much depends on the size of the soakaway. We have a couple here, one of about a cu.ft. in volume, taking water off a porch roof, the other about 65 cu.ft., taking water off the rest of the bungalow roof. It's a box about 4 ft cubed under the main lawn. It's made of cavity blocks* loose-laid on their sides, with a bit of corrugated iron over the top and concrete poured onto that, with an access hole, covered with a bit of heavy slate, that you can just get through and crouch down inside the soakaway. Could have been a septic tank in its day, although we have one of those also. No sign of that filling up with moss or other debris, even after sixty years, nor likely to be.

• these things, . The bungalow is built with them; makes cavity wall insulation impossible and a waste of effort even if it were possible. Heavy to lift. Bastard invention.

[Broadback]

I have soak away/s,my puzzle is how does one locate it/them?

[David]

Dig down where the vertical pipe on the wall disappears.

Note the direction.

Dig down about a foot out from there to confirm the direction.

Then pick an arbitrary point out in that direction (say about 6 feet) and dig down again. If you hit the pipe, go out another 6 feet. If you don't, come back 3 feet. Wherever you run out of pipe, come back half way to last found pipe and dig.

This is a "binary chop" search.

At some point you should locate where the pipe goes into the soakaway.

Of course, this assumes that your pipes run under an area where you are both able and willing to dig.

Our front area is block paved so performing this kind of search would be a tad disruptive.

You also have to allow for the slope in the pipe - it may start to dip down quite steeply when it nears the soakaway.

Cheers

Dave R

[Chris Hogg]

The small ones, as David suggests. Our big one, being under the lawn with only about 2 inches of soil over it, goes brown in dry summers. Seems to recover in the autumn though.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Chris Hogg writes

Regulations require them to be at least 5m from buildings. Building control may have agreed something else depending on local site conditions.

The two under our lawn are rubble filled with 12" or so of soil over. They are still visible in dry spells as above.

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[Chris J Dixon]

I'm told that my property (1970s semi) has a soakaway somewhere in my neighbour's garden. Is this usual?

Chris

[Andrew Gabriel]

Once you know direction, just push the hosepipe down it until it stops. It was about 6m away when I tried it. Unless there are any obvious obsticles, the pipe is probably a direct line to the soakaway.

[Martin Bonner]

Ahem: *Modern* regulations require them to be at least 5m from buildings.

Where Victorian builders put them is anyone's guess!