Overflowing Guttering: A DIY Project for Locating and Clearing the Pipe to the Soakaway.

During a particularly heavy storm last summer, I noticed that rain was pouring over the side of the guttering on my bungalow.  This prompted me when the weather was fine to check out what was causing the problem.  My initial hope was that the guttering would be full of leaves, etc. thus causing the overflow, but alas it was clear.  It therefore appeared that the issue was probably with the downpipe and drainage system.  To check this I poured a bucket of water in to the downpipe, and, low and behold the water duly backed up.  Judging by the amount of water I had poured in to the pipe it seemed that the problem was at the point where the downpipe hit the underground drainage pipe.  At this point my heart sank.  I was sure that such a problem would turn out to be very expensive to fix.

With a heavy heart I went away to undertake some research on how I could rectify the issue.  At this juncture I must point out that I am not a builder, but I am able to undertake DIY tasks to some level of competence.  The research suggested that the downpipe probably connected to an underground pipe that went to a soakaway.  Now a soakaway is the technical term for a large hole underground that collects and stores the water from your roof via the guttering system.  This water then soaks in to the ground naturally.  As you are aware water does not soak in to the ground instantaneously, so the soakaway has to be large enough to hold a decent quantity of rain.  If you build a soakaway now you have to adhere to the building regulations for the size, for example, an average house usually has two soakaways (one at the front, and, back), which measure around one metre square.  They also have to be a certain distance away from the house so that the foundations are not affected by the water being held, and, dispersed.  Nowadays soakaways are built using plastic structures, so that they are strong and allow a maximum capacity of water to be held, but in the past the holes were filled with brick rubble but this method restricted the volume of water that could be held.

Having decided to try and have a go at fixing the problem myself, I set about firstly removing the downpipe.  Fortunately the area where this joined the underground pipe was under shingles so I didn’t need to break up any concrete.  On removing the downpipe, I found the start of the underground pipe to be blocked with what seemed like mud.  Wearing rubber gloves I proceeded to scoop out the underground pipe.  After removing all the mud I could reach, I was hopeful that this would solve the issue of the pipe being blocked.  I therefore obtained another bucket of water and poured it down the pipe.  Alas no joy, the water started backing up again.

The next step was to try and follow the underground pipe to see where it lead.  At this point you have to accept that you will destroy the part of the garden that falls in the path of the underground pipe.  Another consideration is where you are going to store the soil that you dig up.  At first following the pipe was relatively straight forward as it only descended by the tens of centimetres.  At this point I could leave a gap in between the holes I was digging to follow the pipes trajectory.  After about two metres distance from the bungalow the pipe descended a lot more rapidly, and, so I now had to dig a constant path to follow it.  I have to state that it was hard work digging the hole, as it started descending to a metre deep.  Eventually I found the end of the pipe, which you can see at the top of the image to the left.  The pipe is made of clay and there are two bricks at each side of its end.  Feeling the end of the pipe revealed it was blocked again by what seemed like mud.

Now that I had found the end of the pipe I had to commit to digging a much bigger hole, than the channel I had initially dug.  The image on the right gives another view of this channel, which provides some idea of the rate of descent of the pipe after about two metres from the bungalow.  The piece of work in digging the channel had taken me around four to five hours to complete.  Due to the fact that the pipe was blocked with mud, and, that it appeared to end in the middle of nowhere with no soakaway in sight, I was at this point resigned to the fact I was going to have to dig a hole that would house a new soakaway, which I would need to construct.  I therefore started work on digging a new square hole of about one and a half metres square starting at where the end of the pipe had finished to install the new soakaway, as pictured in the image above on the left.  It was my intention to install a new pipe from the downpipe to the new soakaway.  

Due to the physical effort involved in digging and removing the soil from the hole, I had to split it into two tiers as shown in the image on the left.  It took me between four and five hours to dig this hole.  You can see from the picture on the left that I have further dug out around the end of the drainage pipe.  During this work I poured a bucket of water on to the soil at the end of the pipe to see how quickly it drained away.  It didn't.  However, for some unknown reason I stuck my shovel in to where I had poured the water and jiggled it about.  To my amazement the loosening of the soil and mud caused the water to disappear down a hole.  This prompted me to dig down further, utilising a trowel as well, which then exposed the top of the original soakaway.  You can imagine my happiness on this discovery.  I was even happier when I poured around thirty consecutive buckets of water in to it, which all disappeared more or less instantaneously.  The discovery of the original soakaway would at least save me the expense of buying a new plastic one.  The image below left gives a closer view of the top of the soakaway.  You can see how clean the bricks are from the water that I had poured down the hole.



So the good news was that I had found the original soakaway, which was working fine, but I still had the problem of the blocked underground drainpipe.  As you can see from the above image on the right, there is a black mud like gunk blocking the pipe.  I still had in my mind that I would have to replace the pipe, but I thought I would give it a go to try and clear it.  Luckily I had some drain rods, and, used these along with the clawing tool to gradually pull the mud out.  Working steadily I pulled the mud from the pipe.  My biggest worry was when I thought I was about three quarters of the way up that it started getting hard to pull the rods back down, and, there appeared to be roots in the mud.  However I persevered until I eventually could push the rods up no more.  Again my heart sank as I thought I had just come across a wall of mud that couldn't be moved, however, to my delight I had reached the other end, and, there was a lot of gunk that the rods had pushed out.  So the good news was that the pipe was now clear.  To be sure that the pipe was all clear I also tied a piece of rag to some string and pulled this up and down the pipe several times just to give it a good clearing.

So the next stage was to build a structure around the the pipe and above the soakaway, so that it could be protected when I filled the hole with soil, and, reconstituted the garden.  I did this by digging out around the sides of the soakaway hole and pipe, which I then lined with house bricks, that I found lying around my garden.  I also put in cross members to ensure that the structure had strength, and, would not cave in at the sides, as shown in the picture on the left.

On top of the bricks I laid some old tiles that I also found around the garden.  Then on top of this I placed a layer of protective plastic, that is designed to stop weeds growing through soil.  This was to ensure that any roots would not be able to penetrate the soakaway, and, block it up in the future, although I am not sure to what level roots grow in to the ground.   I then covered the sides of the plastic sheet with further small pieces of rubble that I had found lying around.

Further images of this process are below.

And so now at this point all that was left to do was to fill the hole back up with soil, and, replace the grass on top.  I must admit that it was quite heart breaking filling up the hole.  It felt that I had spent so much time working on this project that I should leave it permanently on show, and, I would be able to keep an eye on it to make sure it did not block up again.  I have included further pictures below.  The right picture is the grass that was laid on the day the hole was filled up.

And below is the grass as it looks today, quite a bit of an improvement I hope you will agree.

Well that's the end of this project.  The total cost in terms of money was zero, it just took quite a lot of my time, but the sense of achievement you feel when you have completed a project is quite massive, and, you have the satisfaction of knowing it has been done well.  The important thing is not to panic.  It has been suggested that if I had employed a trades person to undertake this work it would have cost in the region of £1,000.  The final video below which is connected to my Youtube page, shows the water that is collected from the guttering system, and, flowing in to the soakaway.  It was filmed during a fairly heavy downpour of rain.

Just one final thought and potential money saving tip.  If your house guttering drains in to a soakaway, check your water bill does not include an element to deal with surface drainage water.  If it does you are entitled to have this removed, which will save you some money.

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