Running porch guttering along alleyway

[!lsx!]

I could do with some advice re a situation with the guttering for my front porch. Sorry for the long post.

I live in a mid-terrace property that doesn't have a waste water drain in the front garden.

Sometime in the last 20/30 years my property had a front porch added. Because there's no drain, whoever built the porch decided to just run the guttering for it onto the front garden. This means when it rains heavily you often see the parts of the garden alongside the porch a few inches under water. I know this is terrible for the house.

I was thinking of re-routing my front porch guttering so instead of running down the right-hand side of the porch into the garden, it would run down the left-hand side of the porch, down the alleyway next to the house and terminate in the waste water drain in the alleyway that's near the back wall of my property. This drain already has the guttering for my back porch and the neighbours boiler condensate pipe running into it.

I've attached two photos, 'front porch before' shows the current guttering in orange, 'front porch after' shows what I'm considering in blue.

The new route would involve the pipework running the full length of the alleyway, a horizontal distance of approx 8m, with the pipework clipped to the side of my property, which is also the party wall. The alleyway is owned by my neighbour.

Is my scheme hair-brained? Does anyone ever do anything like this?

I haven't spoken to anyone about this yet.

Thanks for any advice

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Sometime in the last 20/30 years my property had a front porch added. Because there's no drain, whoever built the porch decided to just run the guttering for it onto the front garden. When it rains heavily you often see the parts of the garden alongside the porch a few inches under water. I know this is terrible for the house.

If the porch had never been built, where would the rain that currently runs off the porch roof have gone?

 

[!lsx!]

If the porch had never been built, where would the rain that currently runs off the porch roof have gone?

Just into the front garden (I guess).

I think I get where you are coming from though

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Thought for a minute you were going to run gutter through the ginnel- yes your scheme will work, not much else you can do, councils don't like gutters draining onto the street these days (with the cast channels in the pavement)

 

[Nige F]

Your neighbour owns a flying freehold and therefore the alley. You can only ask and hope you don't get a flying ..........

 

[!lsx!]

Your neighbour owns a flying freehold and therefore the alley. You can only ask and hope you don't get a flying ..........

I think the neighbour owns the alleyway and it's within the boundary of his property. IMHO it would only be a flying freehold if I (or someone else other than my neighbour) owned the alleway.

But relations with that neighbour have always been 'strained' so I would rate my chances of him helping me out as about -99%. I am very likely to get a flying......

The thing is running the gutter along the alley/ginnel might look a bit cr*ppy and I'm not sure whether you might end up catching the pipework with your shoulder as you walk down the steps.

The neighbour two doors down (who also has no drain) 'solved' the problem by running the guttering down the left-side of their porch and their downspout just empties onto the stone slab (roof of the coal cellar) that runs from the front porch to under the garden gate. He's been doing that years, but it's s*ds law I'd get caught for copying him.

I've had a look at the drainage survey (Safe Move) that were carried out when we bought the house. As expected they show nothing re the drains the neighbours have for their front guttering.

I'm thinking I'm left with getting some waterbutts. At least the missus will be happy.

 

[^woody^]

Perhaps an ACCO channel (or normal drain pipe) running towards and along the back of the front wall and some weep holes or 32mm pipe through the wall just above the path.

Or a land drain in to the front garden , but you'd need to be sure how porous the ground is.

 

[!lsx!]

Just an update...

I spoke to my neighbour who owns the alley/ginnel and *unbelievably* they don't have a problem with me running my guttering along it. It's like Christmas come early in a boring adult way.

The only problem is my neighbour has the condensate pipe from his boiler, running in 40mm waste into the same drain I want to run my new guttering into.

I'll either need to jump over his 40mm pipe, or more realistically replace the lower section of his 40mm pipe with a hopper and gutter downpipe and then run both his condensate pipe and my new guttering into the hopper.

I was hoping I could get away with using mini-flo pipe, but imagine that's a bad idea because it will be a run of approx 10 metres total. I've added some photos with the orange line being my proposed route.

Any advice appreciated

 

[Mw Roofline]

It’s a lot of pipe and faff just for that porch, plus any 90 degree bends will drip unless you gunk them up. Miniflow will get blocked as soon as a leaf drops in. Personally I’d do a little mini soak away in the front garden

 

[!lsx!]

It’s a lot of pipe and faff just for that porch, plus any 90 degree bends will drip unless you gunk them up. Miniflow will get blocked as soon as a leaf drops in. Personally I’d do a little mini soak away in the front garden

I agree re the faff and the cost.

The problem is the boundary of my front garden is only 2.3m from the front wall of the house.

So say I did a mini soakaway and the soakaway was 500mm across, the distance from the soakaway to the outer wall of the house would be less than 2m. Although 2m would be better than nothing, I think I've read they need to be at least 5m away?

One other option I can think of is (probably v expensive) installing a rain water tank in the coal cellar with a pump on the overflow running along the alley into the drain. But I don't think that offers any real advantage over the guttering running along the alley itself.

Other than that, I've thought of ducting the rainwater into the cellar and pumping it through the cellar (attached to the ceiling) to the drains at the back. But with the cost of electricity going up, installing a pump seems the wrong way to go.

 

[elisa123]

Have you got space for a water butt in the front garden?

 

[Mw Roofline]

Yes soakaways need to be 5m but we’re talking about a little porch. I’d just dig a hole in the middle of the garden and bang a crate in there.

 

[noseall]

Have you got space for a water butt in the front garden?

Probably need a dozen for the UK.

 

[!lsx!]

The missus was all up for getting a water butt and so we were planning to buy a small 100 litre one to setup as a test.

I was thinking 100l might only be enough to last a couple of hours in heavy rain so realistically we'd need at least two (probably loads of them) for them to be useful. As per usual the missus was thinking 100l would last forever.

So last week when it was raining *not very much at all* I shoved an old 10l washing up bowl under the gutter shoe and thought I'd check back in a couple of hours. Amazingly it was almost to the brim after just over an hour.

Without knowing how much more water falls in heavy rain compared to light rain, I imagine it's a factor of at least 5. In my case a 100l water butt would be full up in about 2 hours.

Probably need a dozen for the UK.

 

[!lsx!]

Just an update...

I've decided to go with something like Retrofitting Water Butts - Slow The Flow (https://slowtheflow.net/retrofitting-water-butts/).

In short this involves:

• Chopping the existing gutter downpipe, running it into the top of a water butt instead of the ground.
• Fitting an additional tap in the top-half of the butt (but on the back side so you don't see this unless you look for it) and leaving this permanently open.
• Using pipes / tees etc from waterirrigation.co.uk, routing a standard hosepipe... down the back of the butt, round the garden at say 100mm below ground level clipped to the underside of the stone slab that forms the top of the coal cellar and then along the back of the front wall. This means it will be protected from people walking on it.

So in the end, this is a bit like what Woody said but using hosepipe instead of ACCO channel.

Perhaps an ACCO channel (or normal drain pipe) running towards and along the back of the front wall and some weep holes or 32mm pipe through the wall just above the path.

I'll probably need to find some way of tee'ing the hosepipe into some PVC pipe to run through the wall. Although I'm not sure whether I could just run hosepipe through a masonry wall.

The idea is that as soon as it rains enough for the water level in the butt to reach the height of the second tap, any further rain will run down the hosepipe and exit out of my front garden wall.