Question 1

Why does my driveway flood?

Accepted Answer

One of four things: the levels are wrong, the drainage is blocked, the drainage is too small for the area draining to it, or the receiving ground is saturated. Check the cheapest first — silted channels and blocked gullies account for a large share of flooded drives and cost almost nothing to clear. Start by lifting every cover and grating and looking. Silted channel drains, gullies full of leaves, a soakaway that has filled with fines because nobody fitted a silt trap — these are extremely common and they are the reason a drive that used to be fine now floods. It costs nothing to check and it saves pricing groundworks for a problem that is an afternoon's clearing. Levels are the next thing and the hardest to fix. A drive that falls towards the house or the garage will deliver water there in every serious downpour, and a channel across the threshold is mitigation rather than a cure — in a heavy storm a channel at the bottom of a steep fall can simply be overwhelmed. Where the fall is modest the surface can sometimes be regraded; where it is significant, correcting it properly means relaying. Capacity is increasingly the live cause. Drainage installed for a smaller drive twenty years ago is now serving a widened, extended, fully paved frontage plus an extension roof, and the same single gully is trying to take three times the water. Adding hard surface without upsizing the drainage is common, avoidable, and worth checking whenever a drive is extended. Then there is a local possibility worth taking seriously. Cheshire East's Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment names Macclesfield as the borough's only designated Flood Risk Area, with 47 internal flooding incidents recorded since 2011, and attributes part of that to an ageing network of unmapped, culverted watercourses buried under the town. In the affected streets, water appearing on a drive is not automatically a drive problem — if it comes up rather than runs across, appears when it has not rained hard, or affects several properties together, that gets ruled out before anybody prices groundworks. One thing worth knowing before you pay anybody. Since 1 October 2011, shared drains and sewers serving more than one property transferred to the water company. A gully or a run in a shared yard or entry is very often United Utilities' to clear, free — and people regularly pay privately for work they were entitled to have done.

Question 2

Standing water on my drive

Accepted Answer

One of four things: the levels are wrong, the drainage is blocked, the drainage is too small for the area draining to it, or the receiving ground is saturated. Check the cheapest first — silted channels and blocked gullies account for a large share of flooded drives and cost almost nothing to clear. Start by lifting every cover and grating and looking. Silted channel drains, gullies full of leaves, a soakaway that has filled with fines because nobody fitted a silt trap — these are extremely common and they are the reason a drive that used to be fine now floods. It costs nothing to check and it saves pricing groundworks for a problem that is an afternoon's clearing. Levels are the next thing and the hardest to fix. A drive that falls towards the house or the garage will deliver water there in every serious downpour, and a channel across the threshold is mitigation rather than a cure — in a heavy storm a channel at the bottom of a steep fall can simply be overwhelmed. Where the fall is modest the surface can sometimes be regraded; where it is significant, correcting it properly means relaying. Capacity is increasingly the live cause. Drainage installed for a smaller drive twenty years ago is now serving a widened, extended, fully paved frontage plus an extension roof, and the same single gully is trying to take three times the water. Adding hard surface without upsizing the drainage is common, avoidable, and worth checking whenever a drive is extended. Then there is a local possibility worth taking seriously. Cheshire East's Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment names Macclesfield as the borough's only designated Flood Risk Area, with 47 internal flooding incidents recorded since 2011, and attributes part of that to an ageing network of unmapped, culverted watercourses buried under the town. In the affected streets, water appearing on a drive is not automatically a drive problem — if it comes up rather than runs across, appears when it has not rained hard, or affects several properties together, that gets ruled out before anybody prices groundworks. One thing worth knowing before you pay anybody. Since 1 October 2011, shared drains and sewers serving more than one property transferred to the water company. A gully or a run in a shared yard or entry is very often United Utilities' to clear, free — and people regularly pay privately for work they were entitled to have done.

Question 3

Water coming into my garage from the drive

Accepted Answer

One of four things: the levels are wrong, the drainage is blocked, the drainage is too small for the area draining to it, or the receiving ground is saturated. Check the cheapest first — silted channels and blocked gullies account for a large share of flooded drives and cost almost nothing to clear. Start by lifting every cover and grating and looking. Silted channel drains, gullies full of leaves, a soakaway that has filled with fines because nobody fitted a silt trap — these are extremely common and they are the reason a drive that used to be fine now floods. It costs nothing to check and it saves pricing groundworks for a problem that is an afternoon's clearing. Levels are the next thing and the hardest to fix. A drive that falls towards the house or the garage will deliver water there in every serious downpour, and a channel across the threshold is mitigation rather than a cure — in a heavy storm a channel at the bottom of a steep fall can simply be overwhelmed. Where the fall is modest the surface can sometimes be regraded; where it is significant, correcting it properly means relaying. Capacity is increasingly the live cause. Drainage installed for a smaller drive twenty years ago is now serving a widened, extended, fully paved frontage plus an extension roof, and the same single gully is trying to take three times the water. Adding hard surface without upsizing the drainage is common, avoidable, and worth checking whenever a drive is extended. Then there is a local possibility worth taking seriously. Cheshire East's Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment names Macclesfield as the borough's only designated Flood Risk Area, with 47 internal flooding incidents recorded since 2011, and attributes part of that to an ageing network of unmapped, culverted watercourses buried under the town. In the affected streets, water appearing on a drive is not automatically a drive problem — if it comes up rather than runs across, appears when it has not rained hard, or affects several properties together, that gets ruled out before anybody prices groundworks. One thing worth knowing before you pay anybody. Since 1 October 2011, shared drains and sewers serving more than one property transferred to the water company. A gully or a run in a shared yard or entry is very often United Utilities' to clear, free — and people regularly pay privately for work they were entitled to have done.

Why does my driveway flood?

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