Johnspenceuk wrote:Dod101 wrote:All of this reminds me that my rainwater coming from the roof gutters simply goes into soakaways and not surprisingly, over about the 25 years or so since these were installed, with some of the downpipes, the underground pipe leading to the soakaway is obviously blocked with muck and silt and no amount of rodding seems to work. What is the answer to that? Get it dug up and then cleaned and reinstated?
Dod
Hi
What you should have between the downpipe/drainage & soakaway is a silt trap I found a neighbours under a concrete paving (flag?) slab if you have no silt trap it could be your soakaway has silted up over the years.
John
Your and Dod's post reminded me that one of the reasons I had hedgehogs installed was that around 15 years my porch downpipe used to "back up" and water then overflowed the gutter. (This occurred at first floor level but the porch gutter also took virtually all the rain (plus leaf and moss sludge!) from the front of the house because the upper storey pipe emptied into it.)
I got Dyno -Rod to jet the downpipe toward the soakaway. The operator reckoned it was fairly clear afterwards, but it still didn't take a full water flow in a heavy rainstorm. Once I installed hedgehogs, this must have reduced the the major flow of sludge into the downpipe and I realise the backing up hasn't occurred again despite some major thunderstorms. Contributing to this thread, it has now occurred to me that, with a fairly modern house, it's very possible that the silt trap was being overfilled with rotting leaves and moss and couldn't do its job.
So my suggestion for Dod would be to consider installing something like hedgehogs or similar to see if, over time his soakaway improved. That's a lot less hassle than digging up all the pipework. And another advantage for hedgehogs?
regards
Howard