Dublin Flooding - Blocked gully drainage

DieselPowered

After the heavy rain Wednesday night in Dublin, its no surprise that some places got flooded again. What are peoples thoughts on blocked drainage around the city?

They never seem to get cleaned and before someone says they are cleaned regularly or the rain was so heavy that the drains can't cope with the deluge, I'm referring to gully drains that have never been cleaned in the last 6 years at least, despite the major flooding in Dublin:

- October 2011
- October 2012
- November 2012
- March 2013
- July 2013

Sample of blocked gully drains attached.

Maldesu

Cleaning wouldn't resolve the issue. The drains weren't designed to cope with the pressure that city development has added to the system. Apartment blocks, housing and retail developments just diverted their water runoff to those gullies and no one cared what it would lead to. Add in the high rainfall and you get flooding.

January

There was a big flood in August 2008 also.

Paulzx

The flooding over the last few days has very little to do with blocked gullies. The pure volume of water that fell in a short space of time is the issue. The same amount of water falling over a longer period of time will cause no problems with the drainage system.

In certain countries that are prone to to large flash storms, massive storm drains are built and left dry for most of the time. When a flash storm occurs they have the capacity to absorb the water.

The diameter of the piping in our drainage system is just not capable of directing away the volume of rain we experienced recently and cleaning of gullies won't change this.

To be fair, where i live i see gullies being cleaned all of the time both by council staff and private contractors hired in by the council

Baneblade

Paulzx wrote: »

The flooding over the last few days has very little to do with blocked gullies. The pure volume of water that fell in a short space of time is the issue. The same amount of water falling over a longer period of time will cause no problems with the drainage system.

the pictures are off blocked drains and standing water when its not raining so even a light rainfall over an hour or two will cause a puddle to form.

I agree that even if they were not blocked that it would not have made much of a difference wednesday. We probably got a months rain in less then 30mins. But it might have helped lessen the impact.
But i also agree with the OP even on a moderatly wet day its not that unusual to see some roads half covered with water. Its not just because of blocked drains, some is also uneven road construction so the water pools instead of running to a drain.

expectationlost

DieselPowered wrote: »

After the heavy rain Wednesday night in Dublin, its no surprise that some places got flooded again. What are peoples thoughts on blocked drainage around the city?

They never seem to get cleaned and before someone says they are cleaned regularly or the rain was so heavy that the drains can't cope with the deluge, I'm referring to gully drains that have never been cleaned in the last 6 years at least, despite the major flooding in Dublin:

- October 2011
- October 2012
- November 2012
- March 2013
- July 2013

Sample of blocked gully drains attached.

ring the council and ask for them to be cleaned or pinpoint them on http://www.fixyourstreet.ie

see if they are listed here http://dublinked.ie/datastore/datasets/dataset-166.php or here http://dublinked.ie/datastore/datasets/dataset-126.php

Hootanany

Cabra East flooded again after extensive work last year its a joke now.:mad: