drainage advice

hi to stop my 3 staffies churning up our backgarden i have sectioned off an area near the house . trouble is the garden slopes towards the house and this bit floods abit when it rains ( 2" topsoil over clay) i have built it up using a railway sleeper on its side (200mm) which i am going to back fill and grass with a grass protector on top.

what would be the best way to fill it ?
just topsoil
gravel with topsoil on top

or any other solution cheers j

 

You can't rely on gravel to disperse the water.

You can buy relatively cheap plastic drain channels now which are easy to fit. They just clip together like plastic guttering. Lay them immediately in front of the patio or whatever hardstanding you have between the garden and the house, with a slight fall towards wherever you can divert the water, ideally a drain.

http://www.bcprofiles.co.uk/aco-hex.../cat_16.html?gclid=CNSx26OK8aQCFWf-2AodFR9g2g

 

trouble is there is no drain in our back garden to take the water to cheers j

 

nope gutter runs into nextdoors garden all waste pipes run inside house , weird design .
would sand drain topsoil betteras only have maybe 1/2" surface water which is enough for dogs to kill any grass there. the bed will be 200mm deep so may soak up enough water by its self cheers j

 

I would dig down a couple of feet at the edge of the patio, couple of feet wide. Line the bottom of the hole with broken tiles, small hardcore etc, then a layer of gravel, then the top soil. If you leave any spaces without a soakaway across the width of the patio, that is where the water will get through.

2 feet deep and 2 feet wide should do the job.

Good luck.

Chopper.

 

We have a "drain" across the front of our house - at the edge of the gravel drive and the lawn. Its a trench in which I put a perforated-drainage pipe (comes on a roll) and about a foot of gravel. The intention was to connect it up to a further drain pipe running to a tank so I could use it for irrigation - haven't done that part of the project as yet though :( In heavy rain we get a lake alongside the lawn (the drive slopes slightly towards the lawn (and drain), but within half an hour its gone. We are on heavy clay, so my reckoning is that this drain is actually acting as a soak-away by spreading the area over which it can percolate.

You could put a "sump" at the low end and an on-demand pump that shifts the water somewhere else?

 

P.S. Some good advice on the Paving Expert site (which is itself excellent if you want paving information):

http://www.pavingexpert.com/drainage.htm

 

cheers chopper thats what ill do , what sort of membrane do i need to put over the rubble to stop the soil falling through cheers j