What is this inside my drain?

It'd be nice if the image link worked:

try clearing out the very bottom of the gulley, often soil, stones etc in that puddle of water at the bottom of the gully which can cause slow flow.

As for the plastic insert, if the actual drain goes to a soakaway or to a storm drain, then you don't actually need it.

If its a foul water sewer, then the insert prevents smells.... but more to the point, storm water should not be going into a foul water drain.

Thank you SH.

I may leave them out for the moment. I will check where the water flows to.

Appreciate the advice!

That fitting is typically used to connect the grey water waste from kitchen sink etc where the waste pipe goes through the wall then into a hopper like this, outsde which is then connected to the foul drains.

It serves two purposes,

and possibly 3) makes it more difficult for rattus rattus to get inside the house.

You do find that "professional" Block laying tradespersons don't always appreciate the finer points of drainage such as storm water drains vs foul water drains.

Foul water covers both grey water and black water, grey water is what comes fron kitchen sinks, baths, showers, and hand wash basins whereas black water is from toilets.

You do find mis-connections do happen where surface water off block paving gets put into foul water drains instead of into soakaways or storm water sewers.

Storm water sewers do not whiff at all (its all rain water, leaves, soil and moss) whereas foul water sewers can be rather overwhelming :-)

In the case of a french drain like yours, I'd expect to see a rodding point and Tee rather than a gully seeing as theers no obvious other waste pipes discharging via the top grid.

In many areas of the country they have to. Here for instance, we are on very heavy clay soil, so soakaways are pretty well ineffective and there are no separate storm drains.

Is it a bodge due to a leak in that part of the pipe? Not able to see it but from your explanation it has to have been put there for a reason. Brian

Well you say that, but many older ones do, as they do around here, ie roofing downpipe drain seems to go into the same pipe as the toilets do, and has been like that since the houses were built in 1939, and nobody is going to pull up everyones patiios to change that now!

Brian

Oh, you don't need to qualify the statement - "Block laying tradespersons don't always appreciate the finer points of drainage" will do.

When we moved into our our previous house, I noticed our neighbour had a drain outside the kitchen which was under the garden tap. All we had was block paviours. I removed a couple of paviours to find the drain underneath. It was earthenware, and the top had been smashed off to allow the paviours over it to be at the same level as the others. As it would have been a major job to replace the smashed pipe, I bought a plastic hopper, cut it to the right length and used car body filler (I'm sure that TNP is nodding approvingly...) to build up the broken pipe to the correct height for the hopper and receive it as a good fit. A black plastic grid finished it off, and I cut the paviours to fit flush.

You might find that the sewer is actually a concentric tube where the s*1t runs along the bottom curve while the storm water travels along a channel suspended above it. When there is heavy rain the storm water can over flow into the actual sewer.

This is how the drainage system seems to function in many south coast towns. Along the beach at Worthing are outfalls that take the excess foul+storm water out to sea and there are warning notices about 'poor water quality after heavy rain'. IN Brighton they used a TBM to dig massive tunnel along the length of the promenade as far as Hove. This capture foul+storm water after heavy rain and this then pumped out to the normal treatment works.

No. One combined sewer/drain from each property, a single, 4", glazed pipe, to a single sewer along the middle of the road. The sewer in the middle of the road is split into about half-a-dozen separate lengths, each having two cross connections to the bigger sewer in the next road. That, in turn, connects to the large sewer, under the main road, which arrives at the sewage works, 30-odd feet below ground level and has pumps in the (deep) basement of the pump room, to get everything up to the settling tanks - I've been there, quoting for new control panels after a flange gasket burst and sprayed the whole interior of the building, making a right mess and destroying the electrics 30-odd feet above!

(that link doesn't work)

Quick and dirty (no pun) solution: have you a pressure washer? If Yes: have you one of these:

I got a drain cleaner extension a few years ago. I've only used half a dozen times, but BOY it's fantastic at keeping my drains clean! (We tend to get roots invading, every couple of years).

It's also wonderfully satisfying to use. Cathartic. A kind of ecstasy.

John

Our town doesn't have storm drains and sewers as separate infrastructure. Choice of everything into the sewer or rainwater into a soak away. I assume that thisa is down to l,ocal convention in the 1930s (or 1890s).

Cheers

Dave R