Flood Defences

I've blogged before (Springtime!) about the groundwater levels around the house, since the major storm on 23rd December we've again been suffering from water seeping out of the ground and coming across the driveway. One of the tasks we've had on our "to-do" list for a while is to get an interceptor drain dug to pick up this water, at the same time we wanted to put a concrete floor in our outbuilding known as "The Grange". We had asked Kevin from Furniss Terrassements back (in 2011 he had laid the flooring in the barn and dug the drainage that has progressively dried out the stone walls).

The weather has been foul of course and the time that Kevin was with us distinguished itself with rain, hail and - bizarrely - two sunny lunchtimes when we could sit outside.

The before picture - as Kevin gets to work the groundwater covers the drive

The new Grange floor installed

As the ground at the back of the Grange slopes up the drainage ditch was deep

The water level in the ground is evident in this picture taken before the drainage pipes were connected

18 tonnes of gravel turned up for the trenches and to re-surface our open area

A big improvement ......

As the drain is connected the water starts to flow ...

And flow and flow ....

As soon as the drain started to work the surface water disappeared all the way along the drive. Of course its hydrographics and physics and somewhere along the way I've probably done the equations to describe what happened, how fast the water flowed and what volume comes out every hour. But still - like machines that harvest peas and how planes fly - knowing the "how" doesn't take away the "wow".

And, after all the rain recently, the drain is still flowing and the drive is still dry.