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Waterlogged problem

abkirbsabkirbs Posts: 1
in Garden design
Garden easily waterlogged about 80mm topsoil clay below buried 4 soakaway crates to form a sump but it just fills up if I pump it away down a drain is that ok or not need help 

Posts

  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    In our last garden we had a pump that diverted excess water from a  sump into our drainage pond.  Worked a treat.  However, the sump had a manhole cover so we could maintain the pump if necessary.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Not sure about the legal position of pumping out a sump in the garden into the mains drainage system ... perhaps @raisingirl knows?

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    If you have a combined sewer - i.e. one that takes both rainwater and foul sewage, then you can connect a sump into the drain but there's always a proviso that there has to be no where else to put it (local stream, ditch, surface water drain, etc). If the sewer is foul only you could, and probably would, be prosecuted for putting rainwater into it. Having said that, they are much more concerned about foul discharges into rainwater drains than rain into foul. 

    Strictly speaking, you're not allowed to discharge ground water into the sewerage system in the UK. Although when I once asked a man from Thames Water what we were supposed to do with it he just shrugged and said 'connect it and don't tell us' which wasn't very helpful. In your case it's maybe hard to say whether what's in your sump is rainwater or ground water.

    If you consider the principle, the reason water companies don't want rainwater in the sewers is the risk of flooding during storms causing the foul stuff to come out of manholes and into people's houses. So if you, in effect, store rainwater in your storm crates during heavy rainfall and pump it into the sewer during dry weather they'd probably say that was a reasonable course if you don't have any option.

    Ideally, you'd pump it into a surface water drain. Best place to find one of those is the road outside your house. If there's an open grate that the rain water goes into nearby, run a hose from your sump to the grate and pump it in there as long as it's not backed up and flooding the street.
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    I just wrote a long reply but seem to have lost it. Ah well - shorter version then.

    The best option would be to run a hose to the drain gulley, if there is one, in the road outside your house. That way you are putting surface water into a surface water drain. As long as you don't do it when the gulley is backed up and the road flooded, there's no reason for anyone to have a problem with that.

    If you put it into the main drains, you could in theory flood the sewer and someone upstream could get foul waste backing up in their house, which wouldn't be neighbourly of you and you may very well be prosecuted if it happened often. Same thing applies though - if you only empty the sump when the weather is dry and the drains are clear it probably won't attract attention.

    They are more worried about people connecting foul waste into a rainwater drain than the other way around.
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
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