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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Zoella: Girl Online. Let us celebrate the positives and improve ourselves.

Although we all moan, and, this blog more than most, I feel I have to come to the assistance of Zoella, who has recently been reported in the media as earning around £50,000 a month.  For those of you who are not familiar with the name, this is a young lady who originally developed a blog, and, then moved on to producing videos on youtube about her daily lifestyle including beauty, and, cooking advice.  Her output became so successful, that she attracted millions of readers/viewers, and, has since started utilising advertising, product endorsements, a subsequent book deal, etc., all of the associated peripherals that popularity (celebrity) attracts.

What has made me sad is that since this news broke, there appears to have been a backlash about the size of the income she is generating for what people perceive to be an easy job!  I mean for starters no one knows what is involved in her daily working life.  For me just writing this article alone involves a lot of effort.  The output that Zoella generates far exceeds my meagre labours.  Then there is all of the business side to her enterprise, I’ve no doubt that this in itself becomes time consuming and tedious.

The story just brought home to me how quickly people are to jump on the negativity band wagon to try and bring you down, and, criticise.  Why not celebrate all the positives?  Zoella brings happiness to her millions of followers.  I cannot imagine they listen to her to get depressed.  Think of all these people who start the day with a spring in their step, full of inspiration, wanting to push the boundaries of their own lives.  Then there is the amount she pays to the exchequer.  A salary of around £600k will generate over £300k in tax and national insurance, which will certainly help towards funding for instance the National Health Service.  In addition to this she no doubt buys in various goods and services to support her business activities, thus helping to stimulate employment within the economy.

I think the crux of the problem probably boils down to jealousy.  People look at what she is doing and realise that they too could have probably done the same thing (something that may be said about many entrepreneurs).  The issue here though is that they didn’t.  Zoella had the belief, getup and go, and, drive to see the project through and make it successful.  We should therefore celebrate this fact.  I myself have a resentment for Martin Lewis of “moneysavingexpert” fame.  Being interested in financial affairs, I wish I had set up such a website back in the day, but alas I didn’t, and, hence he is sat being a multi millionaire, whilst I live in poverty.  I have to admire him for seizing the opportunity, whilst the rest of us have to suffer, and, use these comparison websites, just to be able to afford our daily life.

And so to conclude let us celebrate when people do well, and, use it as inspiration to spur us on to improve our own daily lives.  Well done Zoella.

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Blogger: Implementing a third party URL and Upgrading your Adsense Account

Recently I read that the price of domain names was going to increase by over 50%, and, this spurred me on to purchase a unique resource locator (URL), i.e. a web address, to give my blog a more professional appearance.

Twitter Poll; Do you know what this object is?

Do you know what this object is? Please vote on my twitter poll.

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What is this? For #fun? If you #travel? Check the #blog. https://t.co/U1UW4MgUuP #competition

— Neil Davidson (@Views_Comment) March 21, 2016

Apologies for routing you to my blog, but the mighty twitter would not let me combine an image and a poll.  So I set the poll up on twitter, and, the image on this post.  It was the easiest way I could think of.  Feel free to let me know if there is an easier way.

Anyway I came across an article in a newspaper that stated a large percentage of people did not know what the object in the picture was at the top of the post.  I could not believe this.  Is it the case that I am so old now?  I didn’t feel particularly old until I read the press report, and, now I feel positively ancient. I used to have loads of these in my childhood.  It could have even been considered in those days as being at the forefront of technology.

So please do not hesitate to vote, and, see it what I read is actually true.  Please vote honestly, and, don’t worry about hurting my feelings!

For information if you are wondering how I produced the image above, I composed it in a free open source graphics package called “GIMP”.  I am still getting to grips with this package at the moment, and, just a word of warning, it is not the easiest software to use.  The above image was my third attempt at getting it right, and, let’s face it there is not a lot to it!  This post has also been good for me in another way as it is the first time I have introduced an image in to a blog post, and, I must admit it look pretty good!

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Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Analysis Year to Date; First three months data back to 1984.

Following my analysis of the FTSE 100 stock market index, I thought it would be useful to undertake a similar review of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index, in an effort to determine where we are in the cycle.  In the UK during the first few months of the year all the stock market news was about how it had been the worst start of the year for thirty years, but when I checked the data things had gotten back on track.  I suspect the same has happened with the Dow.

As of 04/03/16 the DJIA index closed at 17,006.77, a fall of 418.26 points form the start of the year, representing a decline of around 2.4%.  This is obviously a far cry from the doom and gloom, the media commentators were expunging.  Having said that we have to take a look at the market low point for 2016, which occurred on 11/02/16, when the index finished the day at 15,660.18, a fall of 1,764.85, over 10% from the start of the year.  This was a significant decline often termed as a correction, but instead of falling further the market found its’ feet and rallied to the position we are at now.

It is also useful to consider where we currently stand in relation to the all time high the Dow achieved on 19/05/15.  On this day the index closed at 18,312.39.  The decline in the index to the low point achieved this year on 11/02/16 is 2,652.21, which represents a fall of 14.5%.  While this is substantial it does not represent the index moving in to a bear market phase, which the experts say is 20%.  Just for information in the UK the FTSE from the all time high to the low in 2016, fell by over 20% (potentially triggering a so called bear market phase).  From the all time high until the close on 04/03/16 the index has fallen by 1,305.62, representing just over 7%, so at the moment we are no longer in correction territory.

I have provided below the percentage change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the first three months of the year since 1984.

Year January February March 1984 -3.02% -5.41% 0.89% 1985 6.21% -0.22% -1.34% 1986 1.57% 8.79% 6.41% 1987 13.82% 3.06% 3.63% 1988 1.00% 5.79% -4.03% 1989 8.01% -3.58% 1.56% 1990 -5.91% 1.42% 3.04% 1991 3.90% 5.33% 1.10% 1992 1.72% 1.37% -0.99% 1993 0.27% 1.84% 1.91% 1994 5.97% -3.68% -5.11% 1995 0.25% 4.35% 3.65% 1996 5.44% 1.67% 1.85% 1997 5.66% 0.95% -4.28% 1998 -0.02% 8.08% 2.97% 1999 1.93% -0.56% 5.15% 2000 -4.84% -7.42% 7.84% 2001 0.93% -3.60% -5.87% 2002 -1.01% 1.88% 2.95% 2003 -3.45% -2.02% 1.28% 2004 0.33% 0.91% -2.14% 2005 -2.72% 2.63% -2.44% 2006 1.38% 1.18% 1.05% 2007 1.27% -2.80% 0.70% 2008 -4.63% -3.04% -0.03% 2009 -8.84% -11.72% 7.73% 2010 -3.46% 2.56% 5.15% 2011 2.72% 2.81% 0.76% 2012 3.40% 2.53% 2.01% 2013 5.77% 1.40% 3.73% 2014 -5.30% 3.97% 0.83% 2015 -3.69% 5.64% -1.97% 2016 -5.50% 0.30% Rises 20 22 22 Falls 13 11 10

It is difficult at the moment to predict which way the index will go.  It is a fine balance whether we will head again into correction or even worse bear market territory, or, the possibility of heading back towards all time highs.  I have a feeling that it may be downwards, but that is just my view, and, I would be very interested to hear yours, so feel free to post a comment below.

At the end of the day we all make and take responsibility for our own investment decisions, and, as such I provide this data for information only as a means of debate.  It should not be used for any investment decisions you make.

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FTSE 100 Analysis Year to Date; First three months data back to 1984.

On putting together this post I was actually quite surprised with the numbers it produced.  Being an avid market watcher (maybe not as good as I believe!), my initial reaction would have been that we have had quite a dreadful year to date on the FTSE 100.  The main reasoning behind this was the amount of doom and gloom that seems to have been generated in the media.  I recollect headlines of this being the worse start to the market in the past 30 years, etc., etc.  However, on crunching the numbers, all is not as bad as it first appeared.

The year started out at 6,242.3, and, as of Fridays close (04/03/16), the FTSE 100 was at 6199.4.  This means that the index for the year to date has fallen by 42.9 points equating to 0.69%.  This cannot now be considered to be the worst start to the year.  Indeed the table below shows other years where far more pain was inflicted, for example in 2009.  It must be a case where all the bad news is reported, but the good news gets pushed to the wayside.

In fairness to balance up the argument, the lowest point for the FTSE 100 in 2016 was reached on 11/02/16 at 5537.0.  At this time it represented a fall in the index for the year of 705.3 points equating to a loss of 11.3%.  This number is quite striking, and, is over the magic 10% correction territory; however, it shows how quickly the market can turn itself around to recover.  A good strategy would have been to buy when the magic 10% had been achieved.

With regards to the markets position in relation to the last all time high which was achieved on 27/04/15 at 7104.0, we are now 904.6 points below this which represents a 12.7% fall.  At the low point on 11/02/16, the FTSE 100 index stood at 22% lower than the previous all time high, thus representing heading into bear market territory.

I have provided below some data on how the market has performed I the first three months in previous years back to 1984.

Year January February March 1984 -1.20% -2.14% 6.94% 1985 3.94% -1.65% 1.37% 1986 1.59% 7.59% 8.09% 1987 7.70% 9.45% 0.93% 1988 4.49% -1.23% -1.49% 1989 14.43% -2.41% 3.63% 1990 -3.52% -3.50% -0.33% 1991 1.25% 9.70% 3.18% 1992 3.13% -0.35% -4.76% 1993 -1.38% 2.17% 0.37% 1994 2.15% -4.69% -7.26% 1995 -2.41% 0.59% 4.27% 1996 1.90% -0.84% -0.75% 1997 3.82% 0.76% 0.11% 1998 6.29% 5.66% 2.86% 1999 0.23% 4.73% 1.95% 2000 -9.55% -0.57% 4.94% 2001 1.21% -6.03% -4.80% 2002 -1.01% -1.24% 3.35% 2003 -9.47% 2.47% -1.16% 2004 -1.93% 2.31% -2.37% 2005 0.79% 2.39% -1.49% 2006 2.52% 0.54% 2.99% 2007 -0.28% -0.51% 2.21% 2008 -8.94% 0.08% -3.10% 2009 -6.42% -7.70% 2.51% 2010 -4.15% 3.20% 6.07% 2011 -0.63% 2.24% -1.42% 2012 1.96% 3.34% -1.75% 2013 6.43% 1.34% 0.80% 2014 -3.54% 4.60% -3.10% 2015 2.79% 2.92% -2.50% 2016 -2.54% 0.22% Rises 18 20 18 Falls 15 13 14

Due to the size of the recovery so far this year, it feels like there is the chance for another correction in the index.  Presently there appear to have been a number of profit warnings, with the resultant cut in the associated dividend.  Only time will tell, but another dip could provide a buying opportunity, but maybe only for part of any investment funds available.

At the end of the day we all make and take responsibility for our own investment decisions, and, as such I provide this data for information only as a means of debate.  It should not be used for any investment decisions you make.

As always I will be interested in your views and comments.

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Top 30 Unloved Shares; Most Shorted UK Companies; Friday 4th March FCA Short Selling Disclosure.

Below I have listed the the top thirty most shorted shares on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).  The data has been collated from the information provided by Financial Conduct Authority as produced at the 26th February, 2016.

The percentage is the total amount of the companies issued share capital that is short sold, and, can be made up of a number of different companies who have shorted the shares.  As always any comments you have will be greatly appreciated.

Company % CARILLION PLC 20.82 OCADO GROUP PLC 17.84 WM MORRISON SUPERMARKETS 13.29 SAINSBURY (J) PLC 10.91 PETROFAC LTD 9.25 ASHMORE GROUP PLC 9.24 TULLOW OIL PLC 9.16 MITIE GROUP PLC 8.13 HMV GROUP PLC 8.08 AGGREKO PLC 7.72 NEW MELROSE INDUSTRIES PLC 7.35 ASOS PLC 7.28 GLOBO PLC 7.03 Hansteen Holdings plc 6.89 LANCASHIRE HOLDINGS LTD 6.83 INTU PROPERTIES PLC 6.28 SERCO GROUP PLC 6.22 Marston's plc 6.09 IMAGINATION TECH GROUP PLC 6.06 ADMIRAL GROUP PLC 5.97 LADBROKES PLC 5.84 ABERDEEN ASSET MGMT PLC 5.66 ENQUEST PLC 5.63 JUST EAT PLC 5.58 NANOCO GROUP PLC 5.5 ASHTEAD GROUP PLC 5.26 WH SMITH PLC 5.25 Dialight PLC 5.24 WEIR GROUP PLC/THE 5.19 DRAX GROUP PLC 4.98