Downpipe ideas?

[malcolm]

I've found some wet inside (not damp). The gutter downpipes at the front of the house both drained directly on the pavement. I fixed one with a soakaway but have been ignoring the other one.

I think the pavement slopes away from the house and there is also a grass verge nearby with nearby drainage I could connect to. I don't think the council would want me to make a hole in the tarmac but doubt they would mind me making a hole in the verge for a gully. Watering the verge might well be enough as the floor levels in the white extension are 6 inches higher.

Does anyone know the name of the downpipe system? It's thin fluted aluminium rectangular with handy bendy sections. Also any thoughts on how to manage a gulley in grass? I guess surround it with some concrete with gravel on top to discourage the grass.

 

[Cubist]

Hi Malcolm,
A quick search using this term (aluminium rectangular waste water pipe) gets a number of hits that look like viable candidates.
Cheers,
Cubist

 

[Mrs McG]

I had three down pipes at the rear of my cottage. The main one leading to a soakaway was totally blocked so that was easy to solve, as was the one where the down pipe had come away from the gutter itself. What bowled me over somewhat was the third one which just dumped water at the base of the wall with no attempt to even throw it away from the house. I fixed a water butt to it as a temporary measure and every morning after it had rained overnight I’d empty it. Each morning there was 80-100L of water to empty … it just beggars belief what some people think is okay for gutters.

 

[Cubist]

I had three down pipes at the rear of my cottage. The main one leading to a soakaway was totally blocked so that was easy to solve, as was the one where the down pipe had come away from the gutter itself. What bowled me over somewhat was the third one which just dumped water at the base of the wall with no attempt to even throw it away from the house. I fixed a water butt to it as a temporary measure and every morning after it had rained overnight I’d empty it. Each morning there was 80-100L of water to empty … it just beggars belief what some people think is okay for gutters.

A thatched house with gutters is quite unusual. Yours must have some large 'stand-off' brackets.

No one bothered with them here, but then the house sits on a hillside and mostly the fairly rocky and free draining ground slopes away toward culverts and ditches.

 

[Mrs McG]

The gutters are on a rear extension with a tiled roof. The thatch throws water onto this tiled roof so there’s a fair amount hitting the gutters.

 

[malcolm]

I'm thinking the natty bends in my downpipe were formed on site with a fancy machine. That probably explains why I can't find matching fluted pipe. I'll look at the plain pipes and see if I can find something that looks close enough. Probably it'll look OK if I replace the pipe just on the flat roof extension.

It's a good point there will be a lot of water to deal with so a proper drain is probably a good idea.

 

[Cubist]

I'm surprised fluted aluminium piping is so rare. The fluting would be pressed into the thin sheet material to stiffen it and would probably be done at the same time as the folded returns to support formation of the joints. Current products must either be using a heavier gauge of metal or relying on other means such as extrusion to provide the rigidity needed for assembly and use.

What's really surprising though, given that aluminium can be difficult to weld, is how the seams in any box section may have been fixed together and how joints with gutter fittings, 45-90 degree returns etc. and the like would have been fitted on site. Presumably self-tappers or adhesives, any clues externally?

 

[Stevers]

There's a downpipe out the front of the house that would have drained via a 2" cast iron pipe just under the surface of the pavement and through the kerb. At the base of the downpipe were some rusted and broken cast iron fittings were linked via an aluminium pipe to the remains of the cast iron pipe at the boundary wall. Needless to say the cast iron fittings were cracked and rusted and it was leaking like a seive, with damp visible in the basement below. I could have put a gully in, but instead I concocted the attached plastic monstrosity and hooked it up to the aluminium pipe using some plastic pipe and a bit of epoxy. Once I'd cleaned out the pipe under the pavement, I poured some water in the access cap and it duly came out in the street.



Now that should have been the end of it, but no, last year fibre internet arrived in the street and the fibre wallys put their trench straight through the rusty old pipe under the pavement. Now I really had a problem - nowhere to put a soakaway, and no pipe under the pavement. I phoned the contractors and the fibre company, neither of whom seemed very interested, and the contractors even stopped answering the phone. Later that day however there was a knock at the door and the contractor's chief honcho said they would replace the pipe the following morning, and that's what they did with some heavy duty 2" green fibre ducting - phew! Lots of houses on this road had these iron pipes under the pavement, but some of them now just dump rain water on the pavement.

It would be very interesting to know how a homeowner would go about putting a new pipe like that across a public pavement. Mine was done on the back of the fibre trenching project, but only after the pedestrian barriers had been taken down. Only a very narrow and shallow trench would be required plus a hole drilled in the kerb, and on the face of it not a lot of work to put such a pipe in.

 

[a twig]

It would be very interesting to know how a homeowner would go about putting a new pipe like that across a public pavement. Mine was done on the back of the fibre trenching project, but only after the pedestrian barriers had been taken down. Only a very narrow and shallow trench would be required plus a hole drilled in the kerb, and on the face of it not a lot of work to put such a pipe in

For most councils it’s a similar process to getting a dropped kerb put in for a driveway, you contact the council pavements team, provide a load of info and eventually they give you permission and you get something like 6 months to get it done and have to use one of their approved contractors to do it

 

[a twig]

Or if you live in a quiet enough area, procure some barriers yourself, stick a high viz on and crack on yourself

 

[LadyArowana]

Do you have friends in South Africa? All the ones I see are there https://leroymerlin.co.za/gutter-offset-crimped-100x75x900-galv

 

[malcolm]

That's a good find. It gives me more words to search with