Garden drainage

Curious Geroge

I'm hoping someone might be able to help me better understand the problem with drainage in the garden. Not having a big lawn, I wanted to have decent drainage.

Last week (1st pic), I started off by digging a hole about a ft deep before it started raining. The pic was taken the next day. As it shows, the water did not drain at all. It stayed like this for the week (although we had showers daily).

After a clear day yesterday i emptied the hole and went deeper and wider and attached a pic of what sort of ground I have. I was hoping someone may know more here if its the soil that is causing the bad drainage or how I can go about fixing this.

Thanks.

Sonnenblumen

Hi George

heavy rain will fill any freshly dug hole, so I wouldn't be too concerned about that aspect.

Hard to tell from the photos, but the soil looks reasonably good.

Why do you think you have a drainage problem?

If water lodges on the surface after showers, any number of reasons might be the cause including

compacted soil, poor draining soil, low lying ground (water ingress from surrounding area/neighbouring gardens) etc etc.

Is the garden part of a recently (< 3 years) built property?

Before speculating on what symptoms to look for and likely cures, you'll need to post more pics of garden and neighbouring sites.

rje66

Get the bischon a life jacket 😄😄😄

Curious Geroge

Sonnenblumen wrote: »

Why do you think you have a drainage problem?

If water lodges on the surface after showers, any number of reasons might be the cause including

compacted soil, poor draining soil, low lying ground (water ingress from surrounding area/neighbouring gardens) etc etc.

Is the garden part of a recently (< 3 years) built property?

New build; Garden is in since last summer; The ground during the build never seemed to hold water so I did'nt consider a soak pit when the topsoil for the garden went in. Recently with the summer rain we're having the water would almost rest on the area I dug up, it did'nt seem to soak at all which concerned me thus the reason for the dig. When I say it rested, it would be there for a day or 2 after the rain but only in one patch. Neighbours seem to be ok.

Sonnenblumen

when soil becomes very dry it tends to harden and become less impervious than normal, so that might explain why the ground was not draining after the recent heavy rains which were preceded by a very hot dry spell.

I would also be encouraged by the fact that your neighbouring gardens are not flooding.

Sounds like a combination of residual compaction (new garden), dry surface and hence slower percolation. Should recover in time.

Spiking the area will alleviate problem, allow oxygen and moisture in and also be beneficial for grass.

Marhay70

If it's only in one patch it's possible that's where the builders stored their materials and did all their mixing. Builders are notorious for digging a hole and burying all their rubble, in my own case, mine was the place they stored all the materials for a street of houses, then they just covered it with topsoil.

LurkerNo1

To me its pretty obvious from the photos whats going on.
Firstly you have heavy clay soil in your garden, the upper brown layer. that you have dug. I can see from the sides of the hole that you have dug that from where you used the spade the sides are smooth and sticky looking. That soil itself is slow to drain and it looks compacted too, the grass in your garden is yellowing from lack of drainage.
Below that you have a hard compacted pan most likely from the builders, i know this as i have it in my own garden.
The combination of the two together and you are going to have drainage issues.

Curious Geroge

LurkerNo1 wrote: »

To me its pretty obvious from the photos whats going on.
Firstly you have heavy clay soil in your garden, the upper brown layer. that you have dug. I can see from the sides of the hole that you have dug that from where you used the spade the sides are smooth and sticky looking. That soil itself is slow to drain and it looks compacted too, the grass in your garden is yellowing from lack of drainage.
Below that you have a hard compacted pan most likely from the builders, i know this as i have it in my own garden.
The combination of the two together and you are going to have drainage issues.

Hi, is the topsoil (heavy clay soil) the problem ? I wanted to have them back to kill the grass and sort this out as its still with the builders. Any thoughts on how to sort it out ?