Conservatory soak away location

Hazel1980

Looking for some advice.

My neighbour has a sizeable conservatory with a soak away next to my fence so approx 2ft away. In heavy rain we get quite a bit of water there but not sure if it's from the soak away causing it.

We're having an extension built soon. When checking for our guttering and drainage I saw that a soak away is supposed to be 5 metres from a wall and 2.5 metres from a boundary?

Is my neighbour having their soak away so close to where my extension will be possibly going to cause subsidence etc to my property in the future and if so what can I do about it? Or am I worrying for nothing? We're starting the building work next month so if anything needs sorting I've not got long.

Doozergirl

If you have a structural engineer for your extension, it's probably worth asking them if and how it might affect your foundations. If they're designed correctly it will have no impact. 

Can you ask your neighbours how large their soakaway is? 

Conservatories don't have to meet  building regulations, hence you've ended up with a bit of an anomaly.    It shouldn't be wet there after rain.  

Do you have room for a compliant soakaway on your side?  

Hazel1980

I've got an architect so can ask him if it'll cause a problem. 

I actually think what's going to happen is once we've built our wall it's going to flood back into their garden in heavy rain as it's just a hole filled with gravel for a 4x5 metre conservatory. Tbh their conservatory has stood for eight years without sinking so I can't see there being to much of an issue for me.

It's just when I checked as I thought that their's is next to my fence which might not be correct as we do get flooding very occasionally. 

Ant555

Although not an answer to your specific question,  my neighbours garden runs along the back of mine. After he installed a soakaway in the middle of his lawn, I definitely seem to get more water in my garden. 

Its not a major issue but noticeable, first 10 years I lived here and I saw very little water on my patio running off the grass into the tiny stones around my conservatory or in my (level, non raised) flower beds that run round the edges, neighbour soakaway installed, almost immediately and the 10 years since = always waterlogged flower beds after a decent amount of rain and water sitting around my conservatory at around the level of the stones - it does drain away fairly quickly and never over the dpc but it happens.

Hope this helps

Section62

Ant555 said:

Its not a major issue but noticeable, first 10 years I lived here and I saw very little water on my patio running off the grass into the tiny stones around my conservatory or in my (level, non raised) flower beds that run round the edges, neighbour soakaway installed, almost immediately and the 10 years since = always waterlogged flower beds after a decent amount of rain and water sitting around my conservatory at around the level of the stones - it does drain away fairly quickly and never over the dpc but it happens.

Is the neighbour's soakaway at a higher level than your garden? If not, then I'd say it was unlikely to be the cause.

If it is higher, then I'd expect it to take hours (or even days) for significant amounts of water to percolate from their soakaway into your garden. If the water is being seen faster than that after the start of rainfall it would point towards there probably being another cause.

The water running off the grass thing - is that only after very heavy rain? Do you ever aerate the lawn?  Runoff from grass is often due to the upper layers of soil being too compacted so the rain can't drain down quickly enough. You could try experimenting by aerating one half of the lawn and see whether you get less wetness on that side of the patio/garden. If so, do the other half and see if the problem goes away altogether.  Sometimes things can appear to start suddenly, but the cause has been building up undetected for a long period of time.