Boggy garden

sacol4940

Hi all

We're in the process of buying a house, contract was sent back last week and now are just waiting for the mortgage offer to be sorted.

We originally viewed the house back in Feb and the grass in the back garden was wet and boggy under foot - we just put this down to rain. But we went back on Friday to view it again and take some measurements and the grass was still really wet and spongy.

I've asked the estate agent and she's contacted the seller and the seller has apparantly said that it's not always like that, it just takes a while to drain if there has been a heavy downpour, but apart from today i cant remember that last time we had a heavy downpour

There's nothing i can see that would explain this in the HIP pack or other searches that were done so i've emailed our solicitor to see what he says.

What does everyone think? Should we be worried about this?

JayZed

Have you had your survey done yet?

sacol4940

JayZed wrote: »

Have you had your survey done yet?

Yeah and there was nothing mentioned on there about the garden at all

BlondeHeadOn

As the previous poster said, the survey should hopefully pick this up. On our survey he even noted down 'moss on the lawn' because this suggested it might not drain well.

violettasomerset

We had a similar problem shortly after we moved in. Turned out that the water mains pipe had burst, so we had to get it replaced.

Things to look for, to see if it might be that - if the property is metered, can you look at their meter and see if it's moving when the taps aren't running? Is there a bulge in the lawn? it might "slosh" back and forth if you poke it. Check the water pipe plan that should come with the searches, to see if the wet ground matches with the pipe location.

Fingers crossed for you that it's not that! Though if you've not signed anything, you can get the existing owners to sort it out. Even if the ground is very heavy clay (like ours, and we have lots of moss too), it shouldn't be boggy for very long after rain. Do you know what kind of soil it is?

chickmug

It could be just that some gardens do not soak away rainwater as well as others in which case a land drain would be needed.

alleycat`

Is the area particularly "clay" heavy?
It should come back on some of the searches what the land type is.

We had a lot of problems with the ground holding water in the winter and i had to dig about 7 tons of "heavy clay" out of the back garden and replace it along with putting in a "soakaway" to help water runoff.

Haven't had a problem since - and it made the lawn much easier to lay as i knew what i was starting with and the rotavator didn't get clogged up

lincroft1710

Don't buy a house next to source of Thames/Severn/Humber/Medway etc, or in a rice paddyfield. Seriously you do need to investigate this.

mark5

My new build had a boggy garden and 2 french drains (soakaways) sorted the problem out. A boggy lawn with poor drainage can take months to dry out. My soakaways cost me about £150 and took me a weekend to do. google poor lawn drainage.

sacol4940

thanks for the replies everyone

I think the ground is clay-like but not sure how "heavy" it is