My Drainage Nightmare

When we first moved into our new PPOR, one of the first things we did was put down a large slab that went from the house to the fence. This was the carport/entertaining area and has a dividing fence down the centre of it so that it provides parking for 2 cars and behind gates another area of a similar size. Prior to doing this, we hadn't had any really bad weather and didn't realise there were issues.

What we discovered is that the downpipes from the house feed directly into the dirt.:( They don't connect up to anything at all, but we cannot get to them because they are now under a slab. There is (was) a drain at the side of the house which has a pipe running from it and it goes under the slab diagonally and looks as if it should come out either at the storm water or the drain in the side of the gutter. It does not. We have dug up the front of the house in the direction of where this pipe feeds and there is nothing. It appears to just vanish, unconnected to anything at all. Mind you, I am not surprised by this as there are still other issues. We have put an eel down it and it stops completely while still underneath this slab.

In an attempt to get some drainage happening, Hubby has fed a pipe next to the slab, right at the fenceline and connected this to the outlet at the gutter. There is also an open drain thing that collects water before it gets to the slab and feeds it into this pipe. This takes care of a small part of the run off when we have storms, but it is nowhere near enough.

Over the winter months the back of the yard has been getting progressively boggier (is that a word), so we decided that we really need to feed this water out the other side of the house where access is much easier. Hubby starts digging from the front of the yard, up the side, to the back. While doing this, he uncovers a pipe from an original drain that was at the back of the house, parallel to the the one on the other side. It is connected to the down pipe at the back of the house on this side, of which the bottom is rusted out, because the water goes nowhere.

Hubby cuts this drain pipe and removes it from the down pipe, becasue we need to repair this anyway, then decides he will cap it at this end and put a whole new drain in. He removes the old drain and cuts and caps the old pipe but while doing this he has also had to uncover more of the old pipe in order to remove it.

Well, there is no wonder at all that the water goes nowhere. Underground, the original pipe was bent, meaning the water would have had to run uphill to get removed.:( Then, to make matters worse, at some time someone has tipped slurry from concrete down the drain and it has set inside, meaning that even if the water were to miraculously run uphill, less than half of the pipe is clear to use.

So, once we have finished this we will have full drainage from all the downpipes on the one side of the house, an open pipe/drain at the rear to catch any run off from the pool or neighbours properties and the part down the side that Hubby fixed last year.

Anyone got any suggestions on what to do with the downpipes on the other side of the house that drain into the dirt, under the slab? I'm not really looking forward to putting in new guttering, but I think that's what we're going to have to do.
 
Anyone got any suggestions on what to do with the downpipes on the other side of the house that drain into the dirt, under the slab? I'm not really looking forward to putting in new guttering, but I think that's what we're going to have to do.

I've got a similar problem at one of my IPs. Not quite as bad as the ground isn't boggy. Have you considered adding a rainwater tank on the side that drains into the dirt?
 
I've got a similar problem at one of my IPs. Not quite as bad as the ground isn't boggy. Have you considered adding a rainwater tank on the side that drains into the dirt?

Yeah, but I don't think we'd ever use the water in there. The only place we could use it would be in the laundry, but that's on the other side of the house, or the pool and that is uphill.
 
Yes, but once it's in a tank, as opposed to on the ground or under your slab, you can pump it elsewhere. Pumps are pretty cheap these days.
 
Sounds a bit like my neighbour - he had a 30cm gap in the pipe to his SEPTIC tank, courtesy of a previous owner who ran out of pipe.

Now that would have been a smelly job figuring out why his backyard was getting *cough* boggier :)
 
We have put an eel down it and it stops completely while still underneath this slab.


Anyone got any suggestions on what to do with the downpipes on the other side of the house that drain into the dirt, under the slab? I'm not really looking forward to putting in new guttering, but I think that's what we're going to have to do.
I'm going through the same problem on one we control in inner Brisbane
and i hope this does not happen to you,
 

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