Summary of soakaway and drains pipes set up

The first thing that you will need to think about when undertaking any DIY plumbing and drainage are the regulations issued by your Local Authority. They can determine what you are allowed to build and require you to correct any errors in your soakaway or drainage setup.

You need to explain your work plan in detail to the authority if you wish to install a new sewage system or alter an existing one. This can apply to major soakaway works. The officials will then go through the plan to check if it is in accordance with the established rules. However you do not require authority approval for replacement of failed joints or cracked plumbing and drains pipes, similarly their rules may not cover soakaway minor redevelopment.

When rain falls on your house and property, it runs across as surface water and has to be drained properly, perhaps into a rainwater soakaway. An earlier method was to directly discharge this surface water into the sewage drains bypassing any soakaway, but modern homes use a surface water sewer or watercourse or soakaway to drain or absorb rainwater. Air escape from the drains is stopped when rainwater pipes are discharged into the foul water drains through gully traps in an older combined system. However with the new sewage systems, the foul and the surface water can be kept apart. To comply with modern planning regulations you should always make sure that the foul water and surface water sewage system do not connect. When in doubt about the how the modern sewage system works, consult the Building Control Department.

Before starting your drainage or soakaway work, finalise the routes the waste pipes would take to the foul drains or to your rainwater soakaway. The main things to consider when planning the route of a waste or soil pipe are to keep the route as straight and short as you can. Also, make sure none of the pipes are laid at too steep an angle. With the help of a surveyor’s site level, you will be able to determine the fall of a drain over a distance. In the absence of one of these, create a datum point and set levels with a hosepipe filled with water and compute the fall from the datum in this manner.

You will need to guarantee that you do not impact on the stability of the house whilst installing your drain ditch or extending any soakaway in the garden area. The foundation of the building should not be undermined by your digging if the drain pipe runs parallel to it.

While installing a new drainage system make sure that you do not dig too long before laying the pipe. The pipes should be laid quickly and the trench back filled after the system has been examined thoroughly and tested as required.

Depending on the depth and soil conditions, the ditch or soakaway walls may require support. It is no advisable to not take any risks. If you have any worries, you should support to the ditch to reduce any risk of collapsing side walls during the building phase. Keep the ditch as narrow as possible, but allow room to work in the trench. Ensure that the trench bottom is flat and free of stones, tree roots and soft spots. If the exiting material is not suitable then you may need to import a suitable material for the base of the ditch.

You should definitely not use hard materials such as bricks to support the pipe in the trench. Even if used for just a temporary support this can damage the pipe. The bedding should be properly compacted with hollows made to accommodate the joints in the pipes. You will need to provide a continuous and uniform support for the complete length of the pipe.

An important criteria for pipe layout and soakaway placement is that you should be able to access any point with a drain rod to clear blockages even to a rainwater soakaway which can fill up with debris over time. Therefore, a run of drains should be as straight as possible between two points. As a general rule, any change in direction of the pipework should be provided with an inspection chamber to allow rodding access.

Keeping these points in mind, you can carry out your own drainage and plumbing work smoothly and almost professionally.

Before you begin sewage fitting and soakaway construction do this

Before you undertake DIY soakaway reconstruction, plumbing and drains work it is essential to understand the national rules and regulations formulated by the local authority.

If you are considering altering your existing drainage, or installing a new soakaway or sewage system you will almost certainly need to present some detailed plans of the work that you intend to undertake and it will need to be inspected as the work progresses making sure that it complies with the local building rules. If you are simply replacing damaged sections of the soakaway or drainage, in most circumstances they do not need to be informed.

If you hear the term ’surface water’ in any drainage documents this basically means rainwater, the water that drains away into a porous soakaway. This can discharged into a soakaway, watercourse, surface water sewer or, particularly in older properties, into the foul water drainage system. If gully traps are fixed at the junction of the rainwater pipe and the waste water drain, foul odour can be controlled. However, the latest systems are designed in a way which separates the foul water and the surface water. To comply with modern planning regulations you should always make sure that the foul water and surface water soakaway system do not connect. You should get advice from the local authority Building Department before you start any work in a situation when you are not sure about the drainage and soakaway system around your house.

Designing the path of the waste passageways will be your first task. The basic thing which you have to care about is to keep the route as straight and short as you can while designing the route of a waste or soil pipe, this will help to reduce the likelihood of stoppages. Steep pipes should be averted during the path design. Using surveyor’s site level you can calculate the fall of a drain over a distance to check the values. In the absence of one of these, create a datum point and set levels with a hosepipe filled with water and compute the fall from the datum in this manner.

When installing your drain trench, you will need to make sure that you do not impair the stability of the building. If placing a drain or a soakaway alongside the building, you need to make sure any foundations are not weakened.

Try to leave as short a time as possible between digging the trench and installing the drainage system as an empty trench represents a risk with the potential for a sidewall collapse. Make certain that the pipes are laid as soon as possible and then bury them immediately after the testing and inspection are completed.

Because of different depth and soil conditions the ditch will probably need to be supported. Take the utmost care when doing this work. If you have any worries, you should support to the trench to reduce any risk of collapsing side walls during the building phase. The ditch should be narrow, but spacious enough for people to work with any required tools. The ditch base must be smooth and clean, there shouldn’t be any bricks or protruding stones around. The base should be good so you may need to import material if the existing soil structure is not up to the mark.

The pipe present in the trench should not be supported using bricks or other such materials. This should not be used as support for the short or the long run because it will damage the pipe, the pipe needs to be fully supported over its full length through to the soakaway or drain. The base should be tightly packed in the appropriate manner with holes carved out to fit in the protruding pipe connections. A good guideline is that support should be provided for the entire length of the pipe.

An important criteria for pipe layout is that you should be able to access any point up to the drains or soakaway with a drain rod to clear blockages. So that is why a run of drains should be as straight as possible between two points or inspection chambers. An inspection chamber should be present at places where the pipework changes its direction, this is important so that it remains accessible to drain rods and they do not need to go around corners.

DIY plumbing and sewage is certainly within the bounds of most DIY enthusiasts.

Guidance on what home plumbing projects to tackle

Most householders who have lived in their house for more than a few years develop the basic plumbing system and repair skills necessary to take care of small breakdown jobs. There is usually a sense of accomplishment when you deal with toilet obstructions or pipe leakages without having to get in the services of a plumber. By doing these small maintenance tasks on your own, you can save hundreds of pounds, increase the value of your home, and feel good about maintaining your home on your own.

Although working on small repairs by yourself might be fine, larger problems should be left to the professionals since your attempt to fix them could be quite detrimental. Take the case of reinstalling a water heater. Although you may feel confident enough to do this yourself, most homeowners would be wise to allow a professional to do deal with it. Complex and risky repairs are not the place to experiment and learn; they could cost you much more than a few pounds.

Taking on extensive and dangerous repair tasks could harm both your hard earned savings as well as the folks at home. For the sake of the safety of your family members, never attempt to repair or replace water pipes, gas pipes, gas boilers and other large appliances. Some of these tasks might become unexpectedly scary if they are being handled without the right tools, skill sets and number of people. Unless you are 100% confident about being able to complete the job you should call out a professional.

Another result that might be less hazardous but still costly that can be caused by you trying to fix your own large drainage problem is the destruction of parts of your property. There are plenty of examples of overzealous homeowners who caused thousands of dollars worth of damage to their property because they didn’t want to pay a plumber to fix the problem. Especially when dealing with gas lines, water lines and sewer lines, do not attempt any significant repairs or replacements without first contacting a professional plumbing company.

You should be proud of your ability to repair small drainage problems that may occur in your home, but don’t let stubbornness keep you from calling in a professional for jobs you can’t handle alone. Every home at some point will need something to be repaired or replaced by a professional plumber.Spending a little money ahead of time on a breakdown job that is less intrusive and destructive to your home will go a long way in saving you hundreds or even thousands of pounds in the future.

Blocked Drains – A Stellar Concern!.

This has happened to all of us – the water fast submerging our toes while are taking a shower. Yuck! A clogged up drainpipe. Or while brushing your teeth by the sink, all of a sudden the sink starts to fill up. Everyone hates plugged drains because they not only create problems but are also unhygienic and can create a mess. However it is something that every household has to deal with, sooner or later. The most preferred approach is to prepare ahead of time for such a predicament by educating oneself on how to fix bathroom drainage when the drainpipe pipes become obstructed.

Why Do They Happen?.

plugged drains can occur when some material such as hair, dust and particles become trapped in the area between your bathroom drain pipe and the drainage pipes that follow underneath. The problem aggravates when bathroom products like soap, shampoo, conditioner, detergent, and the like begin to accumulate on the mass. When the offending mass becomes too dense to allow any water to flow through freely, the problem is identified as a plugged drain pipe. If the water has started building up quickly in your tub or sink, then without delay you should unclog the drain pipe.

Clear Up Your drains fast.

If you want your water to start flowing freely then there are a few things you can do to rectify the problem. Of course, in either the sink or the bathtub, the first thing you should do is remove the plug. You can easily remove the stopper by pulling it off from the bathroom sink, however if it’s fixed under the sink then you need to unscrew the nuts. With your bath tub, you can either unscrew the plug right at the drain pipe or removing the overflow plate to remove the assembly.

Once you remove the stopper, you may then be able to see the source of the clog. Whilst messy, it is nothing, but a mound of hair and fragments around the components of the bathroom drain. Reach down into the pipe and pull out as much as possible. You may find it difficult to get at the blockage, in which case you could use something like a wire clothes hanger to fish the material out. There is a good chance that by removing this mass of material the problem will be rectified and your water will flow smoothly.

If you need to disassemble the drain pipe and notice that the clog is not even within reach of a wire hanger, you will have to try another method. clogs which are very deep can be removed with the help of a drain pipe plunger. Ensure that you have placed a wet rag on the overflow drainpipe – this will produce better suction pressure from the plunger. Next, place the plunger directly over the drain opening and methodically pulse the plunger up and down several times. You may find that this suction-push action of the plunger loosens the blocked debris down the pipe and the collected water now drains freely.

However, if this method also fails to have any affect you might have to use some sort of chemical cleaner. This method should only be used as a last resort because the chemicals used are dangerous and can be harmful to your bathroom fixtures.

You can always take professional help if this concerns you.

If after trying the various do-it-yourself methods you are still unable to unclog your drain, it is a good idea to call your local dependable plumber for some help. Plumbers have special equipment to clean the choked drains speedily and effortlessly such as a drains snake, drainage contractors also employ water jetting to clear blockages and cctv drainage cameras to view inside the drainpipe. Although availing plumber services can be a costly proposal it gives you the much needed peace of mind as the water starts flowing and the mess is cleaned up.