After locating some gutter brackets, I finally got around to repairing
my conservatory guttering (it's been up 2 years) after lots of it got
ripped off in the big snow in January.

Anyway, having done that and cleaned it out, I noticed something I don't
know if I should be worried about or not.

My spur for replacing the guttering was watching an episode of 'Help My
House Is Falling Down' whereby most of the house problems were caused by
faulty guttering causing all the rainwater to run on to one corner of
the house, undermining the foundations.

I find now that the conservatory guttering, even though we asked the
builders to move the drains (which they did) just runs into a hole in
the ground.

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

Should I worry about this? Is it normal? Would you consider it a faulty
installation?

Appreciate anyone's thoughts please.

Thank you.

On Jul 4, 8:43*am, HarpingOn wrote:
After locating some gutter brackets, I finally got around to repairing
my conservatory guttering (it's been up 2 years) after lots of it got
ripped off in the big snow in January.

Anyway, having done that and cleaned it out, I noticed something I don't
know if I should be worried about or not.

My spur for replacing the guttering was watching an episode of 'Help My
House Is Falling Down' whereby most of the house problems were caused by
faulty guttering causing all the rainwater to run on to one corner of
the house, undermining the foundations.

I find now that the conservatory guttering, even though we asked the
builders to move the drains (which they did) just runs into a hole in
the ground.

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

Should I worry about this? Is it normal? Would you consider it a faulty
installation?

Appreciate anyone's thoughts please.

Thank you.

What sort of roof area (square metres) is draining into this
soakaway?

This sort of thing certainly *does* cause problems.

I'm finishing off a chapel conversion, and in the early days found a
collapsed drain responsible for allowing half the roof area to drain
into the soil at one corner of the building. There was clearly some
slight cracking and building movement as a consequence. All new
underground drainage laid, cracks repointed - and absolutely no
structural movement since.

On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:43:35 +0100, HarpingOn wrote:

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 04/07/2011 09:05, wrote:


What sort of roof area (square metres) is draining into this
soakaway?

This sort of thing certainly *does* cause problems.

I'm finishing off a chapel conversion, and in the early days found a
collapsed drain responsible for allowing half the roof area to drain
into the soil at one corner of the building. There was clearly some
slight cracking and building movement as a consequence. All new
underground drainage laid, cracks repointed - and absolutely no
structural movement since.

That's what I was worried about. It's a base of 6.25 M sq. so the roof
being pitched will be a bit more than that.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:43:35 +0100, HarpingOn wrote:

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

I'm *sure* you are correct. I *think* it is 2 or 3m but there might be
an exclusion for for surface water from such a small roof.

Bob

"Bob Minchin" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:43:35 +0100, HarpingOn wrote:

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

I'm *sure* you are correct. I *think* it is 2 or 3m but there might be an
exclusion for for surface water from such a small roof.

Bob

My main house rear guttering discharges to a soakaway which was put in by
the house builders. This is right at the bottom of the garden probably 30
feet from the house. When the extension was built, by lads that worked for
the original builders, another soakaway was dug about half way down the
garden. When the conservatory was built, this was subject to planning and
building regs due to its size and my 'free' allowance having been used up by
the extension. This was drained to a further soakaway, again at the bottom
of the garden. I can remember the buildings inspector having quite an
argument with the conservatory guys about the construction of this, and how
far from the conservatory foundations that it should be, and I'm sure I
remember him with a tape measure, humming and hah-ing about whether it could
be got far enough away. As I recall, it was eventually a discretionary
decision as, strictly speaking, it couldn't be quite far enough away, but as
we are on the top of a hill, backing onto a field, and built on what he
called 'free-draining ground' he would let it pass. I'm not sure whether
this was an official regulation that he was 'bending', or whether it was an
advisory condition that he was using his discretion to over-rule in my
particular case.

You might find something about it on here

http://www.conservatoriesonline.com/index.htm

I found that there's a wealth of useful stuff on there about planning and
building regs etc, when I originally had mine built a few years back

Arfa

Bob Minchin wrote:

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:43:35 +0100, HarpingOn wrote:

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

I'm *sure* you are correct. I *think* it is 2 or 3m but there might be
an exclusion for for surface water from such a small roof.

Bob

I vaguely recall 5m from the building regs, but I might be wrong... If it's
a little bit of roof, logically one could bring it closer.

--
Tim Watts

HarpingOn wrote:
After locating some gutter brackets, I finally got around to repairing
my conservatory guttering (it's been up 2 years) after lots of it got
ripped off in the big snow in January.

Anyway, having done that and cleaned it out, I noticed something I don't
know if I should be worried about or not.

My spur for replacing the guttering was watching an episode of 'Help My
House Is Falling Down' whereby most of the house problems were caused by
faulty guttering causing all the rainwater to run on to one corner of
the house, undermining the foundations.

I find now that the conservatory guttering, even though we asked the
builders to move the drains (which they did) just runs into a hole in
the ground.

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.


Depends how big the hole is.. guttering/rain drainage is only about
getting water into the ground without splashing the house or soaking its
feet.



Should I worry about this? Is it normal? Would you consider it a faulty
installation?

Appreciate anyone's thoughts please.

Thank you.

On 04/07/2011 11:29, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Depends how big the hole is.. guttering/rain drainage is only about
getting water into the ground without splashing the house or soaking its
feet.



It's about 6" square, 4" deep and that 4" is full of little pebbles.

It looks purely cosmetic to me.

Arfa Daily wrote:


"Bob Minchin" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:43:35 +0100, HarpingOn wrote:

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the
corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

I'm *sure* you are correct. I *think* it is 2 or 3m but there might be
an exclusion for for surface water from such a small roof.

Bob

My main house rear guttering discharges to a soakaway which was put in
by the house builders. This is right at the bottom of the garden
probably 30 feet from the house. When the extension was built, by lads
that worked for the original builders, another soakaway was dug about
half way down the garden. When the conservatory was built, this was
subject to planning and building regs due to its size and my 'free'
allowance having been used up by the extension. This was drained to a
further soakaway, again at the bottom of the garden. I can remember the
buildings inspector having quite an argument with the conservatory guys
about the construction of this, and how far from the conservatory
foundations that it should be, and I'm sure I remember him with a tape
measure, humming and hah-ing about whether it could be got far enough
away. As I recall, it was eventually a discretionary decision as,
strictly speaking, it couldn't be quite far enough away, but as we are
on the top of a hill, backing onto a field, and built on what he called
'free-draining ground' he would let it pass. I'm not sure whether this
was an official regulation that he was 'bending', or whether it was an
advisory condition that he was using his discretion to over-rule in my
particular case.

You might find something about it on here

http://www.conservatoriesonline.com/index.htm

I found that there's a wealth of useful stuff on there about planning
and building regs etc, when I originally had mine built a few years back

Arfa
I just looked up section H3 of building regs which talks of not
constructing a soakaway within 5m of a building or roadway.

I'm sure this used to be less than 5m more like 3m when I extended my
house in 1982. The I'm pretty certain I bought a 3m length of pipe,
laid on the ground and started digging when it ended - but it all seems
a long time ago. A few years later I built on another bit which took the
building to within 1m of the original soakaway. The inspector did not
ask questions and I certainly did not tell him the route/location of the
soakaway.
25 years of more on, we have no subsidence problems but we do have a
very gravelly soil and so it drains very well anyway.

I found something elsewhere which gives the volume of a soakaway to be
given by the plan area to be drained divided by 40 (area in sqm and
volume in cu m)
So depending whether the OP quoted the roof size properly, he either
needs 1 cu metre (1000litres) or a trivial 0.15 cu m (150 litres) soakaway

Bob

"HarpingOn" wrote

After locating some gutter brackets, I finally got around to repairing my
conservatory guttering (it's been up 2 years) after lots of it got ripped
off in the big snow in January.

Anyway, having done that and cleaned it out, I noticed something I don't
know if I should be worried about or not.

My spur for replacing the guttering was watching an episode of 'Help My
House Is Falling Down' whereby most of the house problems were caused by
faulty guttering causing all the rainwater to run on to one corner of the
house, undermining the foundations.

I find now that the conservatory guttering, even though we asked the
builders to move the drains (which they did) just runs into a hole in the
ground.

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want that
undermined.

Should I worry about this? Is it normal? Would you consider it a faulty
installation?

Appreciate anyone's thoughts please.

Thank you.

If the builder "moved the drains", did they not add/move a gulley to an
accessible location?
Can you modify the guttering to reach this gulley?

Phil

On Jul 4, 11:36*am, Bob Minchin
wrote:
Arfa Daily wrote:

"Bob Minchin" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:43:35 +0100, HarpingOn wrote:

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the
corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

I'm *sure* you are correct. I *think* it is 2 or 3m but there might be
an exclusion for for surface water from such a small roof.

Bob

My main house rear guttering discharges to a soakaway which was put in
by the house builders. This is right at the bottom of the garden
probably 30 feet from the house. When the extension was built, by lads
that worked for the original builders, another soakaway was dug about
half way down the garden. When the conservatory was built, this was
subject to planning and building regs due to its size and my 'free'
allowance having been used up by the extension. This was drained to a
further soakaway, again at the bottom of the garden. I can remember the
buildings inspector having quite an argument with the conservatory guys
about the construction of this, and how far from the conservatory
foundations that it should be, and I'm sure I remember him with a tape
measure, humming and hah-ing about whether it could be got far enough
away. As I recall, it was eventually a discretionary decision as,
strictly speaking, it couldn't be quite far enough away, but as we are
on the top of a hill, backing onto a field, and built on what he called
'free-draining ground' he would let it pass. I'm not sure whether this
was an official regulation that he was 'bending', or whether it was an
advisory condition that he was using his discretion to over-rule in my
particular case.

You might find something about it on here

http://www.conservatoriesonline.com/index.htm

I found that there's a wealth of useful stuff on there about planning
and building regs etc, when I originally had mine built a few years back

Arfa

I just looked up section H3 of building regs which talks of not
constructing a soakaway within 5m of a building or roadway.

I'm sure this used to be less than 5m more like 3m when I extended my
house in 1982. The I'm pretty certain *I bought a 3m length of pipe,
laid on the ground and started digging when it ended - but it all seems
a long time ago. A few years later I built on another bit which took the
building to within 1m of the original soakaway. The inspector did not
ask questions and I certainly did not tell him the route/location of the
soakaway.
25 years of more on, we have no subsidence problems but we do have a
very gravelly soil and so it drains very well anyway.

* I found something elsewhere which gives the volume of a soakaway to be
given by the plan area to be drained divided by 40 (area in sqm and
volume in cu m)
So depending whether the OP quoted the roof size properly, he either
needs 1 cu metre (1000litres) or a trivial 0.15 cu m (150 litres) soakaway

Bob

Though even the smaller of these is considerably bigger than 6"x6"x4",
which works out to be about .00225 cu. m....
Mike

On 04/07/2011 13:38, TheScullster wrote:

If the builder "moved the drains", did they not add/move a gulley to an
accessible location?
Can you modify the guttering to reach this gulley?


Possibly. The soil drain got moved from atop the patio that the
conservatory got built on, to just to the side of the dwarf wall, on the
same side as the downpipe from the gutter. They didn't connect the
downpipe to the drain in any way. It's a soil drain so I wouldn't want
to have an open entry in to the top of it, I think to fix it would need
the (new) patio on the side of the conservatory taking up and a proper
connection put in to the sewer.

I'm quite annoyed about this.

On Jul 4, 11:24*am, Tim Watts wrote:
Bob Minchin wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:43:35 +0100, HarpingOn wrote:

They haven't put the downpipe into a drain, they just dug a hole and
filled it up with pebbles. I never noticed before. This is in the corner
of the house where the conservatory adjoins the house. Wouldn't want
that undermined.

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

I'm *sure* you are correct. I *think* it is 2 or 3m but there might be
an exclusion for *for surface water from such a small roof.

Bob

I vaguely recall 5m from the building regs, but I might be wrong... If it's
a little bit of roof, logically one could bring it closer.

I happen to have a letter from building control about my own soakawy.
It has to be:

"5 metres from any building, road or unstable ground. "

Robert

[Default] On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 09:11:16 +0100 (BST), a certain
chimpanzee, "Dave Liquorice" ,
randomly hit the keyboard and wrote:

I *think* there are regulations about the minimum distance that a
soakaway should be from foundations. If not regulations then at least
recomendations. Have a google...

The current British Standard (ICBA to look up the number) recommends
5m, but that has increased over time. Pragmatically, if the discharge
from a small roof is downhill of the foundations in a reasonably
free-draining ground, then it should be sufficient.
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have I strayed"?

On 7/4/2011 8:15 PM, HarpingOn wrote:
On 04/07/2011 09:05, wrote:


What sort of roof area (square metres) is draining into this
soakaway?

This sort of thing certainly *does* cause problems.

I'm finishing off a chapel conversion, and in the early days found a
collapsed drain responsible for allowing half the roof area to drain
into the soil at one corner of the building. There was clearly some
slight cracking and building movement as a consequence. All new
underground drainage laid, cracks repointed - and absolutely no
structural movement since.

That's what I was worried about. It's a base of 6.25 M sq. so the roof
being pitched will be a bit more than that.

The base (i.e. area projected onto a horizontal surface) determines the
amount of rainfall intercepted. The slope is pretty much irrelevant,
assuming the rain comes from all directions.

On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:31:27 +0100, HarpingOn
wrote:

On 04/07/2011 11:29, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Depends how big the hole is.. guttering/rain drainage is only about
getting water into the ground without splashing the house or soaking its
feet.



It's about 6" square, 4" deep and that 4" is full of little pebbles.

It looks purely cosmetic to me.

Yes. A "soakaway" that size would not cope with much water.

Can you not join on your conservatory drainage to the extant house
drainage? This might be soakaway or storm drain.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.