Help me out here 
I live in a five year old house. We're on the corner at the lowest level from our neighbours. Result is surface water runs over badly compacted surrounding gardens on to our badly compacted garden, usual builder's rubble dumped with top soil strewn on top.
In the corner at the lowest point, where the flooding is worst, I noticed the top of a rock showing through, just behind the kids' swing. I thought I better remove it, and did (it was pretty big) then proceeded to remove various bricks and bits of rubbish. Then a came across what I thought was some polythene sheeting. More investigations reveal it to be a sausage shaped bag, a bit like canvas or hessian, full of gravel. It's about 3 inches below the surface and runs for about 6 feet.
I know that the woman we bought our house from said there had been some flooding in that area (she was only here a year) and that the builder had come back and sorted it (she thought the builder had put in a deep soakaway). Turns out it was probably this bag of gravel they put in.
Now I'm quite keen to dig the whole &*%$£@# up, keep the gravel, dig deeper and make a proper soakaway to help with drainage. Question is, has anybody else come across this (bizarre) method seemingly used by the builder? It's only about a foot wide, if that.
I live in a five year old house. We're on the corner at the lowest level from our neighbours. Result is surface water runs over badly compacted surrounding gardens on to our badly compacted garden, usual builder's rubble dumped with top soil strewn on top.
In the corner at the lowest point, where the flooding is worst, I noticed the top of a rock showing through, just behind the kids' swing. I thought I better remove it, and did (it was pretty big) then proceeded to remove various bricks and bits of rubbish. Then a came across what I thought was some polythene sheeting. More investigations reveal it to be a sausage shaped bag, a bit like canvas or hessian, full of gravel. It's about 3 inches below the surface and runs for about 6 feet.
I know that the woman we bought our house from said there had been some flooding in that area (she was only here a year) and that the builder had come back and sorted it (she thought the builder had put in a deep soakaway). Turns out it was probably this bag of gravel they put in.
Now I'm quite keen to dig the whole &*%$£@# up, keep the gravel, dig deeper and make a proper soakaway to help with drainage. Question is, has anybody else come across this (bizarre) method seemingly used by the builder? It's only about a foot wide, if that.
