Soakaway Installation

A soakaway is usually needed when rainwater has nowhere to go: downpipes discharging onto open ground, a garden that stays wet for days after rain, or an extension or driveway that has added roof and hard surface without adding drainage.

Building Regulations ask that surface water is dealt with on site where the ground allows, before a sewer connection is considered. Getting that decision right early keeps water away from your foundations.

We dig a trial hole and run a percolation test to measure how fast water soaks away. That figure, with the roof and paved area draining into it, sets the size — clay ground needs a far bigger chamber than sand or gravel, and in some clay a soakaway is not viable at all.

Most of the soakaways we build use modular crates wrapped in geotextile, which hold more water per cubic metre than rubble and are less prone to silting. The chamber is sited clear of the building, connected with correctly laid and bedded pipework, then backfilled and the surface made good.

Heavy clay is common across parts of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, and a percolation test sometimes shows the ground cannot absorb enough. Rather than build something that will flood, we say so and set out the alternatives — an attenuation system that holds water and releases it slowly, a French drain, or an application to discharge surface water to the sewer.