"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Amber Ormerod" contains these words:


Is it a soak away,try rodding with drain rods.


It is. I drove a stike 2 foot into it. Its really hard going with the
mallet.

Drain rods are for clearing a blocked pipe, so that water can run away
to a sewer or wherever the pipe leads.

A soakaway is a hole in the ground filled with stones or large
gravel, that leads nowhere. It works by collecting water then letting
it slowly percolate out into the surrounding soil. Rodding a soakaway
with drain rods is pointless.

If a soakaway stops working, it usually means that there's more water
than usual running into the soakaway, or that the surrounding soil is
less able to absorb it. Causes could be, months of heavier-than-normal
rainfall saturating the ground, a change in the water table (from nearby
construction works) or a very old soakaway having filled up with fine
silt.

This has been an exceptionally wet winter in many areas.

Janet.

Hi,

this is the first 'use' since last season and it was only a watering can
full. The ground here is very dry. We have hovered out some of the stones
and its almost like mud and stones. Its less than a year old. It got too
dark to try and futher down so going to try again tomorrow but nothing at
all is draining. Its very weird cos it worked fine in November - when it was
last used in any way.