Hi With all the rain I noticed there are quite a few areas of standing water on my garden slabs. They all seem to be near my external house wall (thankfully below the DPC). We are in an area with lots of clay, so drainage is rubbish generally. I want to add some gutters between the house and the slabs to stop this build up of water, however it looks like I would have to rip up the first line of slabs, put in the gutter and then put in half slabs...? This could look rather messy... Any ideas on how to do this in a way that is simple, but leaving the look aesthetically pleasing still? The photo attached shows a partial section and the red indicates where I want the gutter...you can see as a result I’ll be left with half slabs... Thank you.
Not good idea to have drainage next to your wall (soakaways for example must be a minimum of 5m from your wall) Best solution is to lift slabs and relay to correct falls.
Plan was to put something like this in, with an exit point into a down pipe...lifting and relaying the slabs would be ideal, but not practical (80 sq meters)...
Could look at using Aco Brickslot, not so intrusive as say Aco Hex Drain, but you still need to run water into a soakway or maybe a gully,if you have a combined drain system that takes sewage & surface water. https://www.aco.co.uk/products/hexdrain-brickslot
ACO would do the job but may not be necessary, assuming your slabs are 600x600, then given generally 1:60 is a good fall to prevent ponding (1:80 can work, but can still pond) then you could potentially only need to raise the side closest to your house by 10mm, assuming the rest of the patio drains?) Meaning you'd only need to lift the first row, raise by 10mm and relay. Just an idea.
Rather than lift the row of slabs which you will have to cut anyway why not cut a line in situ with a 9" diamond bladed angle grinder which will avoid some disturbance then use a bit of gutter pressed into a new mortar bed to create a channel the same colour as the slabs. The critical thing is disposing of the water at the end of the channel of course, as others have said.
"With all the rain" - exactly, in normal conditions nothing looks amiss so why worry, the water eventually goes unless it's a massive ponding issue because all your paving slopes to the house? You could always lift the slabs and replace the 150mm of earth near the house with 75mm land drain and pea gravel surround and run the land drain to wherever you propose to discharge the water with your proposed channel, and then put the slabs back down.
I’ve been looking into floor saws (I didn’t even know they existed) after your post, so thank you. Think this is the road I’ll go down!
Thanks for all the responses gents - apologies I don’t know how to multi-quote, but just to say it’s appreciated,