[makedoandmend]

Folks,

We had 10 inches of rain in two hours last Thursday afternoon, the garden was already saturated so you can imagine the mess I'm left with.

My soil is heavy clay, although the ammendments made over the last few years have improved things significantly.

I have a soakaway / sump in one corner of the garden into which I can lower a submersible pump when it rains hard - it's been used several times already this year already, but it simply couldn't cope last week and I am fearful that the winter could be worse!

I am planning some drainage pipework and TWO underground pumps now and wonder if anyone can point me to suppliers they have found helpful / give advice on their own experiences.

I live in Newcastle Upon Tyne but work in Leeds so suppliers along the route are possibles.

Thanks in anticipation,

Make do.

[Aunt Sally]

Forget all that drainage work - just build an arc  

(Skews me spelin - shood be 'ARK')

[Paul Plots]

Forget all that drainage work - just build an arc 

'ark at that for a suggestion. 

We've lived in the sunny south for slightly more than 50 years. I now live in a parallel road to where my parents first moved years ago so have a good knowledge of the area.

Only once in that time have we had such torrential rain to cause wide spread local flooding. Our annual rainfall is not normally large. This year we had the lot in less than 48 hours.

Not knowing the area you are in I'd check with neighbours and on the environmental agency flood maps to see just how wet your area normally gets before investing too much.

Hopefully your wet spells will not be too frequent.

[DoubleDigger]

I have a 'sump' Well, which I constructed in the garden at home.  It is now my 'ground source' for free water.  It is 5'6" deep, & 18" wide.  The 'body' of it is is built using 18" wide x 18" tall "Drain Risers".  I spent a happy few hours drilling 1,000's  of holes into them to perforate them.  I 'lock wired' them together, then wrapped the whole lot in Mypex membrane then dropped it down into the slightly over-sized hole, which was backfilled with gravel to allow water to flow into it from the 'table'.  I dug it out by hand, using one of those 'hole digger' spades, the ones you thrust down, clamp together with the long handles & the lift with a'bite' of soil.  I had to dig a few level 'stages'  down to allow me to get the depth, but it wasn't that bad a 'do'.

We are "on" gravel, & have 18" of water through the house when we flood.  The idea of the Well is Dual Purpose.  It is generally at least a yard or so deep with water rising from the gravel for irrigating the garden with the Patay Pump/s up to 130l per minute with a bit of sweat.  For my 2.5" Petrol Pump to work in times of flood it needs a reasonable volume to allow it to keep running, so I hope, that as the flood water falls in over the rim of the risers, there will be enough in the sump to allow the pump to be able to keep running.

If there is any "good" news to be had,.....most of us are at far greater risk from March to September, than we are from September to March.
Big sump, big pump seems to be the best way....in our case it is just a case of trying to pump it back where it comes from quicker than it comes in & up  

[Paul Plots]

DoubleDigger - I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Pumping water away is great if you have somewhere to pump it too if not it'll flow straight back to where it came from.

Around here the water table in parts can normally be quite high. It copes with "normal" rainfall but once this is exceeded the water simply has no where to soak away to so fills the lowest surface areas first.

Here ground sumps are filled almost to the brim in normal rainy seasons.... pump them out and ground water flows back in. The answer here is simply to be just that little bit higher than surrounding areas.

We had pockets of flooding (lots of them) where properties, a few centimetres lower than their neighbours, were caused months of chaos by water damage.