Cover over ditch?

[Alan Ambrose]

Along the front of our plot, there's a little ditch (which I've only ever seen dry) and some bits of 300mm plastic culvert with a bit of hardcore thrown over where the entrance to the plot is. This is also the end of the ditch as we're on the top of a very, very shallow hill. Extract from topo below - see the bit marked 'ditch' and 'line of u/g pipe'. It drains to the left/west.

 

I think we have to re-make the entranceway to support concrete trucks etc and I'm wondering whether we should just fill in the ditch entirely after ensuring we have adequate drainage there - maybe with 300mm concrete culvert instead of plastic with junctions for french drains etc from the driveway.

 

Can we do this with minimum official faff? If not, I plan to just redo what's there already and re-instate with a tougher make-up. Any thoughts?

[saveasteading]

Good information makes this easier than sometimes. 

The pan shows a 300mm underground pipe. If that is already there then the job seems to be done.

[kandgmitchell]

I'd agree; what's the worst that can happen - someone turns up and says "you should have told us". If the pipe is a direct replacement for the size and is stronger then there's not a lot they can say....

[Alan Ambrose]

OK understood.

[mjc55]

On 12/10/2023 at 15:16, Alan Ambrose said:

Along the front of our plot, there's a little ditch (which I've only ever seen dry) and some bits of 300mm plastic culvert with a bit of hardcore thrown over where the entrance to the plot is. This is also the end of the ditch as we're on the top of a very, very shallow hill. Extract from topo below - see the bit marked 'ditch' and 'line of u/g pipe'. It drains to the left/west.

 

I think we have to re-make the entranceway to support concrete trucks etc and I'm wondering whether we should just fill in the ditch entirely after ensuring we have adequate drainage there - maybe with 300mm concrete culvert instead of plastic with junctions for french drains etc from the driveway.

 

Can we do this with minimum official faff? If not, I plan to just redo what's there already and re-instate with a tougher make-up. Any thoughts?

 

We have a similarish issue to this at our plot.  There is a ditch to the front of the plot, running next door and then that is it!

 

The ditch doesn't run where the entrance onto site is but we have to move entrance to middle of plot frontage anyway.

 

How did you go on with this?

 

[Alan Ambrose]

We’re still waiting on planning, but intend to do something very much like I suggested above. A bit more complicated once we add in routes for services, a bin store, and drainage connections - but very do-able. SE says, yeah, replace with concrete pipe for load bearing. There’s also as old asbestos (and therefore fragile) water main running between the road and the ditch and parallel to both to add a bit of jeopardy.

[mjc55]

Thanks for that, interesting.

 

There is nothing in the ditch in front of our land, I am thinking that we might just end up filling most of it in.

[Alan Ambrose]

Be aware that there is the riparian requirement for the landowner to maintain the ditch - which probably includes not screwing up any drainage function. So, I guess you should be sure you won’t cause highways any problem.