A garden that floods after every downpour, a driveway that won't drain, or a soakaway that's silted up and stopped working — diagnosed properly and fixed, or sized and installed correctly if you're starting from scratch.
A soakaway takes rainwater — from a roof, a driveway, a patio — and lets it disperse into the surrounding ground, rather than sending it into the sewer. When it's working, you'd never know it's there. When it isn't, the sign is almost always the same: standing water that takes hours or days to clear after rain, often in the same corner of the garden every time.
Soakaways fail for a handful of reasons — silt and fines washing in and clogging the surrounding ground, root ingress, structural collapse of an old rubble-filled pit, or simply being undersized for the area actually draining into it. Which one it is changes the fix, and "just dig it out and start again" isn't always the right answer — sometimes the existing soakaway is fine and the problem is upstream of it.
New installation and existing-system repair both start with working out what the ground can actually take.
A soakaway sized without testing the ground first is a guess. We test how fast water actually disperses on your site and size the soakaway to that, not a rule of thumb.
For a new driveway, patio or extension where surface water needs somewhere to go other than the combined sewer — sized and positioned correctly from the start.
Collapsed, silted or undersized soakaways diagnosed and either rebuilt or replaced with a modern crate system, depending on what's actually gone wrong.
Where a soakaway is structurally sound but has silted up, jetting and clearing can restore it — worth ruling out before assuming a full rebuild is needed.
Downpipes, gullies and land drains tied into the soakaway properly, so water actually reaches it rather than pooling before it gets there.
Camera survey of the feed pipework to rule out a blockage or collapse between the property and the soakaway before condemning the soakaway itself.
Where the water's coming from, where it's pooling, and what's already in the ground.
A percolation test tells us how the soil actually behaves — the only reliable basis for sizing.
A price for the specific job the test and survey point to, agreed before anything starts.
Work carried out and the system tested with water before we call it done.
Usually a soakaway that's failed or was never sized correctly for the area draining into it, or a feed pipe that's blocked or collapsed before the water even reaches it. A survey tells you which.
If it's structurally sound and the problem is silt, jetting can restore it. If the structure itself has collapsed, jetting won't fix that and it needs rebuilding or replacing — worth checking before assuming the worst.
Often, yes — sending new hard-standing runoff straight into the combined sewer is generally what building control and planning conditions are trying to avoid. We can advise on what your specific project needs.
From a percolation test on the actual site, combined with the area of roof, driveway or paving draining into it. Sizing from a rule of thumb without testing the ground is how soakaways end up failing within a few years.
It depends on the size needed, ground conditions and access — which is exactly why we test and survey before quoting rather than giving a figure over the phone. The price is confirmed on site before any work starts.
No. You pay for the work, not the visit. We confirm a fixed price on site before starting any work.
Call any hour and you'll speak to someone who can book an engineer — no call-out fee, fixed price agreed before we start.
