Drainage Solutions for Gardens

Garden drainage solutions

Do you get garden drainage problems? Land drainage or soakaways are principally used to solve waterlogging in lawns. If you have clay in your soil then this makes the absorbtion of rainwater difficult, hence pooling and soggy gardens. If your problem is severe, then an underground drainage system may be your only solution. These systems can be installed yourself with some research, or you can hire a professional, such as a landscape gardener, or drainage expert, to design and fit them. Such systems involve a lot of digging into the soil to install a pipe system that helps either to collect and disperse evenly, or collect and drain away completely the excess water lying in your soil to a drain hopefully helping to maintain a dryer lawn.

Deck drainage solutions

Firstly choose a deck board that’s grooved for better water drainage with a slight fall of 1 in 100 built in to the deck structure, and with the fall being away from the house. Always keep the grooves swept free of debris and moss to aid the flow of the water, and prevent pooling of water on the boards. If there’s soil below the decking then ensure you use an adequate weed barrier that’s able to absorb water, as well as prevent weeds etc from growing up through the decking. If your decking is on a hard surface such as concrete or gravel, then you could install a simple gutter at the lowest point using a rainwater gutter to drain the water to  the nearest drainage point or create a gutter shaped valley in the concrete to do the same.

Driveway drainage system

Inadequate driveway drainage can lead to problems such as flooded homes or garages, so a suitable drainage solution should be devised and built. The simplest solution would be a drive with a surface layer of loose gravel over a sub base allowing the water to soak through to the soil below, or at least if creating a ‘hard’ surface, then where appropriate if  possible it is to angle the surface, to simply allow water to run-off into an adjoining lawn or flower bed. Driveways should always be sloped away from your home, and any soakaways, or diversion channels, shouldn’t direct the water near the house walls. Also to prevent flooding into garages, directly in front of garage doors or any areas where the slope leads down to the structure, you could use a trench drain system, which catches and diverts the water to a nearby drain. These systems can be bought in kit form for garages or could even be designed and made using concrete and a suitable mould such as a rainwater gutter.

Balcony drainage

Keeping a balcony slip-free, and dry is very important, especially for its users, and also to prevent excess water dropping on the surfaces below, and causing hazards there as well. Rainwater collection systems can be integrated into the balcony structure itself on construction of the balcony, or terrace, or it might also be possible to simply use a standard gutter system attached to the edge of the surface as you would on a house using downpipes to then carry the rain away to the drains.

For further information on drainage solutions for gardens, please do not hesitate to contact Speedy Plastics and Resins on local number (0844) 8586670, and our team will be delighted to help.