Hi guys.

 

Been reading up on how to install a soakaway system in clay soil. Would anyone here be able to point me in the direction of a good guide or installer?

Cheers.

Edited October 22, 20188 yr by Simon Ennis

We have twenty 200 litre Aquacell crates under our drive, these ones:

 

 

They are fine as long as there is somewhere for them to drain too, as they aren't a drainage solution on their own; they need some form of soak away to work, as the crates just provide surge attenuation.  They work by storing a large volume of run off in heavy rain, allowing it to drain away slowly over several hours.  Ours drain to a thin layer of permeable soil we found deep under the surface clay in one corner of our site.  That seems to slowly drain to the stream on the opposite side of the lane, as far as I can tell.

 

To connect up all the rain water drains to the crates we used normal 110mm underground drain pipe.  W did fit a length of the porous land drain pipe around the edge of the house, under a French drain, as a water collector, and fed that to the crates via another length of underground soil pipe.

 

The crates need to be the same size and make, for the interlocking clips and tubes to work.  To keep the crates stable they are all clipped together, once in the terram lined hole, and before the terram is wrapped over the top of the block of crates.  They also have different load ratings, so it may be that it isn't that easy to "pick and mix" different types in the same block.

 

You can pick them up for a good price if you hunt around, I bought all ours on eBay, from a local ground works chap who had a load of them left over from doing a highways job.