Friend lives in a terraced house, back garden slopes to house but has no actual drains. Situation made worse as he has pretty much slabbed most of it so not much soak through.
He does have a downpour from the roof gutter that goes fully into ground, presumably into a waste pipe of some sort?
My question, how easy is it to tap into one of these pipes and make a drain away from the house? Down pipe is a square pipe but goes into a round base at ground level. I am thinking of one of the rectangular grid things like this
www.diy.com/departments/floplast-polypropylene-galvanised-steel-channel-drainage-grate-l-1m-w-120mm/1104821_BQ.prd
Is it easy to tap into the down pipe? Or special tools required! Not sure if it’s a case of cutting out a length and replacing with a T piece??
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It would be a case of taking off the downpipe, digging out the bit that goes into the ground a ways, sticking drain "hopper" piece onto it, drain your newly installed channel into it, then replace your downpipe with shoe, maybe build a single course brick surround around it.
Shoudl have done this when he slabbed it of course.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 27 Nov 20 at 15:51
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Where does the water from the downpipe go? I'd want to know that before I put any more water in it. Does it back up? If so it won't take any more.
It could well be a soakaway that quite possibly doesn't do much anyway, they don't last forever.
It might be connected into the foul drain. 'They' don't really like you doing that anyway, unless authorised it's considered a misconnection, and they really wouldn't like anyone draining a garden into it as well - in a flood somebody could end up with sewage in the house.
He might get away with it but on the other hand if he's unlucky he could end up 'pressurising' his downstairs bog, introducing damp, or washing away the foundation.
I certainly wouldn't give him advice, unless it's "get somebody who knows what they're doing".
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>>Where does the water from the downpipe go?
He should not do any more until he knows the answer to this. Especially since in a terrace row he could cause issues to his neighbours and that could go very badly and expensively wrong.
Actually doing the job is not particularly difficult.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 27 Nov 20 at 16:18
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When you buy a water butt kit you cut your downpipe and put a bit in to divert the water to the butt, until the butt is full.
It may serve your purpose too.
tinyurl.com/y4ndo4e6
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Cheers for input - yeah the first port of call is to dig around the pipe and see where it leads to.
If it leads into a suitable outlet, then the next job will be trying to cut into the pipe at below ground level in a restricted space!
The actual area to be drained is around a foot in width and 3 metres long and would probably lend itself perfectly to a French drain type thing but it wont be getting any traffic, foot or otherwise, so I am thinking the grid thing might be an easier job?
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Is the existing drain the low spot of the garden? And is the garden currently flooding?
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>> the next job will be trying to cut into the pipe at below ground level
Probably not necessary. 2" ish above the drain will be fine. Less is not good because dead leaves etc. and other stuff get caught, more is typically noisy.
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Few bits and bobs here to wet the appetite.
www.toolstation.com/lowback-p-trap-110mm/p71960
Definitely an investigation to see what that pipe connects in to.
Those square channel drains do connect with an adapter to the traps. If the drain is into foul water then, like the S bend under a sink, it has to incorporate similar to hold back the niffs.
I have something similar to do on the 'round to it' list at daughters terraced house. Its an end terrace and the rear gutter water has to travel along three properties before it hits the down pipe. Heavy rain and there is insufficiant fall angle on the gutter to get the water away and it overflows.
My plan is to terminate at the boundary and put in a down pipe as the main soil downpipe runs internally inside the house in the same location. So a bit of digging should find where it exits. Break into that and put in a trap for the exterior downpipe. Should be simples.
Nothing is ever simple. Probably drain disappears under next doors extension.
Last edited by: Fullchat on Fri 27 Nov 20 at 20:00
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Not supposed to put rain water & foul water into the same drain since one can overflow the other. And aside from the rules, I strongly encourage you not to do it. Nasty backups can result.
You'd be better to see how you might get to a street drain. Failing that, simply consider a soakaway. You could put an overflow into the gutter at the boundary so that it only uses your soakaway when the level is too high for the existing flow/drain arrangement.
Having said that, if the terrace is older than 1970 the drains may be combined anyway. I still would *not* tap a free flowing rain water drain into the household foul water drain.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 27 Nov 20 at 20:29
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>>Not supposed to put rain water & foul water into the same drain since one can overflow the other.
In our village we have a pumping station for sewage. It is rated to cope with 500 houses, there are IIRC only about 300 connected. Yet when we get a real deluge, as we did in October this year, the sewage pumping station surcharges, the pump stops, the manhole covers lift at the low end of the village, sewage (albeit heavily diluted by rainwater) comes out and a couple of houses are prone to overflowing toilets. Not good.
Thames Water insist the pumping station has sufficient capacity. They have spent a lot of money trying to find "infiltration" i.e. rain or ground water entering the sewers, that should'nt be.
Builders have a tendency to put roof water into chambers when they can get away with it. I had a conservatory built about 20 years ago and they were supposed to dig a soakaway but without consulting me they put in into the nearest chamber.
I think the infiltration is probably mostly groundwater getting in somewhere but they haven't found anything noteworthy.
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Yes a simple soakaway is probably the best bet. I would also consider removing some of the paving which is no doubt the root of the problem. Grass or a few shrubs is better to look at and would alleviate the problem. Driveways these days need to be permeable to avoid flooding problems. There is a need to consider the same issue when paving large areas at the rear of the house'
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>>Yes a simple soakaway is probably the best bet.
This year, neighbours have had the front garden " done ".
The brick paved area has a run off to a soakaway under the new lawn.
In dry periods a large rectangle of grass in the middle of the lawn turns yellow.
I assume either the soakaway is too near the surface or poor soil or both.
My patio was laid on concrete and the run off is to the lawn
I had my front drive replaced . It is also on concrete, but reinforced, plus a soakaway in its middle.
Our 1930 house has always had the rear rainwater sent to the sewer.
Saving the cost of running an underground pipe around to the front of the house.
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Tapping into a gutter down pipe - Zero
