Driveway Drainage Problems - Help please!!?

Lizbetty

Hi everyone!

We have a very sloping old concrete driveway with a garage at the bottom.

My husband blocked up the bottom of the garage door as some of the water would run into the garage if it rained heavily, although there would also be quite a large pool at the bottom of the driveway too.

And so...when it rained heavily this week there was a larger than normal pool at the bottom of the driveway... :eek:

My husband swept the water away (which smelled quite stagnant) hired a breaker and dug into the concrete in a section 1ft x 6ft, about 1 ft deep, hoping it would drain away, but something rather odd has happened.

The hole seems to be filling up! :eek::eek:

Our neighbours house/garden is raised a couple of feet above ours, and the water appears to be seeping from their lawn area, and dripping slowly into the hole. The hole is now 3/4 full, and I can still see the drip going. This wasn't a problem before, and so I really don't understand what may have happened.

We have clay soil and so I can understand the water not draining away very quickly, but the fact it's filling up again is really worrying me.

If anyone has any suggestion, we'd love to hear from you. I am really queitly panicking and so is my husband, but of course he's pretending it's fine, we'll sort it out...cough. But we have 2 toddlers and a small garden, every bit counts and now we have a huge dangerous pool in their play area! Eek!

Thanks in advance everyone for reading this. If you need any more info please let me know :beer:

Best wishes
Lucy xx

ps incidentally we have an old filled manhole cover which has been showing cracks and seems to be sinking into the driveway - this is at the top of the drive though. This adds to my worries as I feel like there's some disaster waiting to happen

designermatt_2

If you have experienced alot of rain, it will drain into it and take a while to drain away again if it is in clay soil.. what you need to do is to dig a soak away, if possible away from your garage and lay a gulley in the drive, (make sure you get a metal one) and connect this to the soakaway. For that kind of area you may need a reasonably large soakaway.. perhaps 1.5m X 1.5 m X 1.5 m in depth below the inlet pipe.. This can act as a storage/ soakaway for the water. Ensue your soakaway is a minimum of 5m from any building and the same from the highway and you should be fine

square_bear

Can you post some photos so that I can get a better idea of what your problem is?

Moneymaker

If it helps, I could post a picture of rainwater?

Lizbetty

Thanks so much for your replies folks :beer:

Sorry for the delay in getting back, but we've been sorting out the problem which did get worse quite quickly...

Turns out that someone further up our road had been putting sanitary towels and PLASTIC BAGS down the loo, and it had caused a back up which caused the immediate neighbours drains to block in a couple of places, and the water and stuff leaked into our garden. Which caused the gallons of water and bad smell.

So the puddles my toddlers had been splashing about in post heavy rain fall were in fact our neighbour's ablutions. :eek: Yuck yuck yuck.

We've managed to sort of the blockage, as our immediate neighbour, my husband and my neighbour's wife got some drainage rods, a coathanger, some sticky tape and a bamboo cane, and a mirror. And some gloves. Bob's your uncle!

Now we know that the water smelt because it was poo and wee and washing up water, rather than it being stagnant rain water which hadn't drained away. Which was a relief, but then how annoying is it that people have caused this by sticking things down their bog and not using their brains.

My husband is now contemplating sticking a note through neighbour's letterboxes saying if you haven't eaten it first, down flush it down your bog. Whether he dare post it is another matter.... :rolleyes:

The rainwater may still be a problem but the soakway should make it manageable, if not we may have to do a gulley to the house roof drain thing, techinically speaking.

Thanks again for your replies! I really appreciate it. I hope noone else has this problem, especially in this weather. Been out with the dettol and pressure washer all afternoon trying to get rid of the poo.

Best wishes
Lucy x