• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Why ditches beat French drains hands down!

RogerS

RogerS

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 21, 2014
Messages
15,532
Reaction score
1,262
Location
Somerset
In Malcolm's workshop build thread, I mentioned my preference for ditches over French drains every time. These two videos show the volume of run-off from an adjacent field following sustained torrential rain. Prior to installing this ditch and the two 15" diameter pipes to carry the water away underneath the drive to an adjacent brook, our drive used to get covered in a fine tilth. If I'd made a French drain then it would have got clogged up immediately.

This first video shows the volume of water running off the field.

[youtube]CEfXrMxKoks[/youtube]

and this second one the outpouring from the two pipes, laid underneath the drive, carrying away the water from the ditch

[youtube]p1OWyWvzFH4[/youtube]

Interestingly, a few minutes later I began to think that even this ditch wasn't large enough as the water level got very close to the top.
 
Wow, Roger!

I'm glad I've only got another residential street higher the the back of my garden. I would get anxious if saw what you've got each time there was heavy rain.

I am thinking of a small FD for the length of the shop, 5.5m, at the foot of the 1:1 slope to the rear of the shop to stop it running into the plinth.

Your vids remind me of when I got the mortgage for this house. The lender approved the loan, but when I asked the same lender, a high street name of town in a large county, for household insurance, they refused!! Because mapping had shown the property was within a 500m radius of a flooding claim. Agreed, this is the Exe Valley and I'm only about 600m from the river. But the clue is in the word valley, and the area rises up the side of the valley and our house is about level with the weather vane on the church steeple roof! So if we got flooded, the lender's shop would be under about 100' of water!
 
I think I might be tempted to install a length of that plastic drain channel with the open grid on top.
 
RogerS":34e7wlmf said:
I think I might be tempted to install a length of that plastic drain channel with the open grid on top.
Click to expand...

OK, thanks. Would that operate better than perforated tube on top of aggregate bed underlaid/overlaid with geotex?
 
Malc2098":29pt06lz said:
RogerS":29pt06lz said:
I think I might be tempted to install a length of that plastic drain channel with the open grid on top.
Click to expand...

OK, thanks. Would that operate better than perforated tube on top of aggregate bed underlaid/overlaid with geotex?
Click to expand...

I think so. You need to have somewhere at the end for the water to soak/drain away to. The covers are removable and so if they get clogged up, easy to clear.
 
I always seem to find one of those blasted ditches when I've had a few... :|

Hmmm hang on a minute... I could be mixing up the 'd' with a 'b' :lol:

:obscene-drinkingcheers:
 
That looks like a lot of soil erosion to me. I think I'd invest in some tougher ground cover in order to keep that topsoil.

Kirk
 
kirkpoore1":17xzkzlp said:
That looks like a lot of soil erosion to me. I think I'd invest in some tougher ground cover in order to keep that topsoil.

Kirk
Click to expand...

Is that reference to my videos, Kirk ? It's not my field.

As an aside, there are other areas where the water isn't draining away properly and I need to get out with my adze and open up a few channels on the drive. At least I live on high ground and water flows away easily. There's always a land drain I can tap into !

Our roads are flooded in the usual places due to the rain. Not too worried as provided it's no more than 20" deep I can get through with the Discovery. Mind you, if the rain keeps up I may have to get a snorkel fitted.
 
kirkpoore1":1qg9tctp said:
That looks like a lot of soil erosion to me. I think I'd invest in some tougher ground cover in order to keep that topsoil.

Kirk
Click to expand...

As I understand it soil erosion is a much bigger problem over here than it used to be. Something to do with farmers abandoning age old practices in favour of being greedy. :eusa-whistle:
 
firedfromthecircus":1rfx7wmx said:
kirkpoore1":1rfx7wmx said:
That looks like a lot of soil erosion to me. I think I'd invest in some tougher ground cover in order to keep that topsoil.

Kirk
Click to expand...

As I understand it soil erosion is a much bigger problem over here than it used to be. Something to do with farmers abandoning age old practices in favour of being greedy. :eusa-whistle:
Click to expand...

That's a very sweeping generalisation. For example, it's time dairy farmers were paid a better price for the milk they produce. And a lot of farming practices are down to the EU's agricultural policy and grants.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top