nightjar wrote in message ...
A soakaway has to be at least 5m from any building or structure.

I was intending to put the soakaway at the bottom of the garden which
is about 18m from the house and as the lowest part of the garden is
the wettest.

manage that, a lot will depend on where the water table is. The idea is that
the soakway is a large hole that will take a lot of water quickly and allow
it to soak into the ground over time. If the water table is so high that the
hole starts off nearly full of water, it will not do a lot of good. The
easist way to check the water table height is to dig a deep hole and then to
see if it fills up, even without rain. If it does, the water level it
settles to will show you where the water table is. If a 1m deep hole stays
dry, then a sokaway ought to work well.

Sounds like a good idea. I can dig a 1m hole and just expand it out if
the hole stays dry.

Bricks work better than concrete, because bricks are porous and a full-sized
brick can hold a pint of water. However, concrete will work.

Thats what I thought. How big should the bricks be. Can I put a whole
brick in or should I break it up? If I do not break the bricks up then
there would be bigger gaps between the bricks - would that be a good
or bad thing?

Thanks for your help.
Andy