Ideas for flooding lawn...... please....

[thunt]

Really stuck for a budget solution for our lawn.

It´s a new build, we moved in as 2nd social housing tenants in July.
Housing and developer not interested in doing anything, so we are on our own.

Water pools worse bottom right - gravel board constantly black - but does pool all along the bottom line, and ground very soggy up to half way towards the house.
The lawn does slope down to that bottom fence and there is no drain hole down there.

Where there is pea shingle i done that myself - used the ground grids and filled them with shingle and that sorted the flooding issue there - but we want to keep grass as want to get a puppy.

I´ve done 2 lots of hollow tine aerating with zero effect.

Obviously a clay issue with minimal top soil.

There is a rainwater drain up towards the house, but as i say the lawn slopes down from there.

Any ideas with the minimal budget on what i can do to help the situation please... we are desperate?

It may look good, but that´s because we keep off it, haven´t been able to tread on it for other a month now.

Really desperate to help solve this issue, even if it means losing part of the lawn to shingle or flower beds, we just want a size of lawn we can use.

Many, Many Thanks.

 

[Mike13]

look on magic.defra.gov.uk for your postcode and find out what sort of soil you have in your area. It has a lot of geology options that take a while to find. If it is a deep clay bed area then your options are limited. the builders may have bought a lump of clay and thought it was acceptable "top soil", if so you need to find the more porous lower layer (it might be deeper than you wish) use an Auger to punch a 4-6" hole deep into the garden and have a look at the type of soil that comes up at different depths, you will need to buy or hire an auger that lets you go quite deep though.

 

[thunt]

look on magic.defra.gov.uk for your postcode and find out what sort of soil you have in your area. It has a lot of geology options that take a while to find. If it is a deep clay bed area then your options are limited. the builders may have bought a lump of clay and thought it was acceptable "top soil", if so you need to find the more porous lower layer (it might be deeper than you wish) use an Auger to punch a 4-6" hole deep into the garden and have a look at the type of soil that comes up at different depths, you will need to buy or hire an auger that lets you go quite deep though.

Thank you for the link.
Doesn´t look good - High groundwater vulnerability, and for soilscape it´s Loamy and clayey floodplain soils with naturally high groundwater.

I guess this confirms there would be no budget option to improve this.

The warning signs were there as there are quite a few of those floodwater holes around the estate....if we could just tap in to the storm water drain, but the lawn slopes away from it.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

It may look good, but that´s because we keep off it, haven´t been able to tread on it for other a month now.

Really desperate to help solve this issue, even if it means losing part of the lawn to shingle or flower beds, we just want a size of lawn we can use.

My lawn was similar, though multiple times larger. What I did gradually, was dig a french drainage system. Basically channels, dug in the soil, with leaky pipes laid in them, back filled with gravel, the soil on top. You can buy the pipe ready drilled, but I made my own from 40mm plastic. Bur the drainage system, will need omewhere to drain into - that part was easy in my case, I had a multitude of drainage manholes to choose from.

Originally, after heavy rain, I would get a couple of inches of water collecting at the low points. It could then linger for days. It still does sometimes collect, but an hour later will have drained away.

 

[Mike13]

I have a mostly sandy soil on a significant slope, near the bottom of the garden we occasionally get springs popping out that come and go or move occasionally. A next door neighbour had it bad, planted some shrubs in a boggy bit and a few days later they had actually sunk deeper into the ground, they also had to put porous pipe drains and it is now a nice lawn for them. we are luck that the lowest point of the garden borders on a real stream so we have somewhere for it to run to.

 

[thunt]

My lawn was similar, though multiple times larger. What I did gradually, was dig a french drainage system. Basically channels, dug in the soil, with leaky pipes laid in them, back filled with gravel, the soil on top. You can buy the pipe ready drilled, but I made my own from 40mm plastic. Bur the drainage system, will need omewhere to drain into - that part was easy in my case, I had a multitude of drainage manholes to choose from.

Originally, after heavy rain, I would get a couple of inches of water collecting at the low points. It could then linger for days. It still does sometimes collect, but an hour later will have drained away.

I have a mostly sandy soil on a significant slope, near the bottom of the garden we occasionally get springs popping out that come and go or move occasionally. A next door neighbour had it bad, planted some shrubs in a boggy bit and a few days later they had actually sunk deeper into the ground, they also had to put porous pipe drains and it is now a nice lawn for them. we are luck that the lowest point of the garden borders on a real stream so we have somewhere for it to run to.

Cheers guys, this is my problem - the only place i have to run the drains off to is at the top of the slope..... and with the fencing the way it is, i can´t increase the height of the lawn.

The private property directly at the back of me has paved all his area, which probably isn´t helping my situation, but cured his.

I don´t mind the hard graft of laying channels of perforated pipe but i haven´t anywhere to run it off to.

 

[thunt]

I have an update - after the social housing guy came round Monday he mentioned the storm drain cover, but never looked in it.

So just taken the cover off and yes it is storm drain - but also there is a branch heading to the bottom of the lawn.
The drain is 70cm deep so not too deep, but deep enough to create a slope from the bottom of the garden to the drain so we can tap in to it.

Reported this back to the housing guy and he´s going to raise a job on getting the cctv camera down and see where / how far this pipe goes - if it is perforated or maybe blocked.

Will let them decide if they can now do something about it - if not i´ll dig the trenches and put in french drains myself, tapping into this storm drain.