Well it is as good a method as any. You can either randomly put in spikes and risk hitting something like the sewer, or you can try divining. I find it works for me, and for a lot of people. At least then the area to be spiked is narrowed down.
I know a lot of people don't believe in divining, but I think there is a good scientific basis for it; used in all the best geophysics equipment.
The joy of science is that it doesn't matter if you believe in it, or not. The facts remain the same.
as "divining" seems to work for some people some times in the "real world" but utterly fails in a well constructed test where the secondary clues (topography, geology,floral and animal variations,prior knowledge of common practice in pipe laying, etc etc ) tend to zero i would hypothesise that any successes above chance (which in some situations would be significant due to less than subtle examples of the clues above ) are due to conscious or subconscious interpretation of the some times gross but sometimes extremely subtle secondary clues.
it is the use of subtle clues that creates the impression that some trackers and "intruder" detectors appear to have "magical powers" when they are actually observing the marks of minute touches their "prey" created as it passed through the environment or interpreting the locations of bird ground predator alarm calls (or silences) or the faint aroma of washing powder and toothpaste drifting through a forest etc etc .
After a lot of digging on a hot day (and the loss of 3 kilos in sweat) I have found a joint between a plastic pipe and a clay pipe. That joint was split and letting roots in, that was problem number one. After that it's still blocked so a few more test pits need to be dug to find the pipe which I then cut into (I'll put a ridding point in there later). That's packed solid with silt but I can clear the 8m upstream but only 1.5m downstream.
By the time I finish my garden's going to look like the Somme!
Last edited by Jb on Tue Jul 19, 16 12:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
well done for getting the first one,it might be another plastic/ceramic junction you need to find at the site of the blockage or the "soakaway" might just be a pipe end in the natural.
Fairly sure the pipe carries on down the garden because that would end it only about 10m from the house and it could run for another 30m but mostly because there's a section where the garden drops a few steps and just after that it feels like I can feel an gravel / rubble line about 20cm under the grass. The rest of the pipe seems to be about 60 - 70 cm down so there's a lot of digging to sort this out!
well done for getting the first one,it might be another plastic/ceramic junction you need to find at the site of the blockage or the "soakaway" might just be a pipe end in the natural.
the garden will recover
You're right, a bit more digging and it turns out the next blockage is where the pipe ends in a buried rubble drain. That drain also appears to be blocked. I've no idea how old that is but it's just a collection of brick bits covered with a thin piece of metal, which has long since disintegrated, buried and now largely silted up.
I'll probably dig out the trench and replace the french drain. I'll still put in the new rodding point but I want to make it so that its cover is not water tight. Then if it blocks again it will overflow through the rodding point and not next to the house. That means a warning that it's blocked and no water pooling next to the house.
I'm guessing at the construction of the rubble drain based on what I can see is already there as being basically a trench filled with rubble covered with something to prevent too much soil falling through and then buried but advice is welcome.
I'm guessing at the construction of the rubble drain based on what I can see is already there as being basically a trench filled with rubble covered with something to prevent too much soil falling through
basically yeh, just a hole filled with rubble.
Building control round these parts is usually happy with a 1m cube hole filled with rubble (half brick max), capped with a polythene sheet (dpm stuff).
When I did soakaway for my house I used plastic crates wrapped in membrane - but only because I scored a bargain on ebay.
I capped it off with concrete garage sections - but only because they were there.
And I fitted a silt trap immediately behind soakaway rather than fitting individual traps at downpipes.
the best shape of hole depends on the local soil,slopes ,volume to be soaked etc etc this linky is a bit technical but covers the issues fairly clearly.
In my case I am planning on building a long french drain. So instead of a cube it will be a trench and allow it to flow down the length of the garden. It is on clay so may well not soak away but if it does reach that point it should flood across the bottom of the garden which would have been the natural result without the drainage but now it won't flood near to the house
OK - a few buildery questions about french drains.
20mm or 40mm aggregate to fill it?
DPM (impermeable keeps the drain clear) or woven geotex (permeable so helps drainage but will it let silt and mud through from the surrounding soil) to cover it?
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