Hi all - I've been in my new house for around a year now and there is a patch towards the bottom of my garden's lawn that becomes sodden in water after even a small downpour. I was looking to sort this out when my neighbour has informed me that there used to be a stream between my house and the other neighbours that formed the border which the previous owner of my house filled with mounted up earth and planted a bunch of trees in. I was told the previous owner also dug up the entire lawn and ran 'corrugated black pipe everywhere' underground in an effort to stop flooding. It sounds to me like they have put in some sort of french drain system in but without digging up my lawn I'm unsure if the sodden patch is caused by a blocked/loose pipe in this underground system of pipes, or if they have simply run the pipes to a big soakaway in this area and it's just not enough to take it all away. Although there's no way of knowing for sure, I was wondering if anyone knew what the most common method was when using this technique - running to a soaraway or running to a drain. If this system is likely to be run to a drain then I can not bother trying to trace it back from the drain and instead maybe aim to increase the soaraway size and/or drain away from that soaraway to a second one or to a drain. Thanks for the help!
If there was a stream, there will still be a stream, blocking it up with soil doesn't remove the stream, it just dams it, so when it rains it will build up a cause a wet area, until it soaks away. As for your land drains they would normally be run to an outlet like a stream or brooke, you would need a massive soakaway to take all the water from a whole garden.
Thanks Phil - do you know if it's common to run a soak away/ french drain to a normal drain (ie where my storm water from guttering goes). I could dig around a couple of drains to see if they'd connected it up but not sure if that's highly unlikely.
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