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Before you begin soakaway design do this







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.

Posted in Drains


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