Soakaways in older properties.

totly

But unless you live somewhere like Worthing, it doesn't get into the foul drains unless there is a tropical downpour, when it ends up dumped into the sea via a series of outfalls that terminate well *above* low tide line.

Southern water have helpfully put up notices advising of 'poor beach conditions' after heavy rain !

what a load of s**te

soakaways get blocked over time and have to be redug.

Doesnt matter much if rainwater overflows a few times a year.

But it does matter if like ours it goes into the sewer and the sewer overflows.

george

fact. Along the coast at Brighton, surfers/swimmers created an action group SAS (Surfers Against Sewage) because they were getting ill all the time.

Southern Water finally fixed? the problem by using a Tunnel Boring Machine to make a massive chamber under Brighton promenade which captures excess sewage/rainwater after heavy rain. Then they can pump it out and treat it after the storm has passed.

It must be big. The quantities involved can be massive. I remember reading about when United Utilities tried to charge Peel Holdings for rainwater drainage from the Trafford Centre (until Peel pointed out that their run-off went into the Manchester Ship Canal ... that they owned). The figure for the Trafford Centre and its car parks was 10 tonnes per second!

open original image

I have found soakaway weels in the two victorian semi detached house I have owned both covered with adome of bricks about two feet below soil level. In my present house the soakaway is about amter wide bricks not morter bonded about 14 feet deep when I took the dome offdry snad at the bottom I put a false 'bae' in three feet from the top old mutiwall platic over anold aluminum laddre let into the sides bricked up to half a meter above ground level and put a pondliner in protected with a thin layer of sand under the liner. Pond now twenty years old roof water runs in and then over the top down the sides,understandably now covered with green moss.A shrub has rooted in the side of the bricks will have to go soon as starting to lever the top layer of bricks appart. Birds daily bathe in the pond I guess they fel less exposed than in the ground level pond to my sworn enemies local cats

How big are your meters ?

The circular brick pond looks like a well one meter wide as is the water well that was once used by both semi detached 1866 large semi detached houses under the garden wall . The other semi I owned in Ipswich had almost identical soakaway well kitchen and roof drained into the soakaway. There must be many Victorian houses that have these that will be brick domed top untouched about half a meter below the garden surface if you are lucky, unfortunately some will have been discovered and used as a dump. They are a valuable drainage asset. Of course soakaways in the form of a well have bricks that are unbonded. Do not take run off from a flat roof covered with Cromapol it makes water toxic to much pond life as Cromapol advise. Another fibreglass pond in the garden takes the run off from a plant covered flat roof,unfertilised alpines as a result is healthy.