GETTING THE DRAINAGE DONE
While the work itself wasn’t challenging, this area of the Build It Education House project proved a little more difficult to nail down than I’d anticipated. It seems to be another of those classic areas where nobody’s quite certain who should take responsibility. Given your architect draws up the initial plan, complete with soakaway locations etc, I’d assumed they’d see this through – but it turns out they’d normally pass it over to someone else (often the structural engineer or a specialist drainage designer).
If you’re connecting into an existing mains system, and you can obviously achieve the falls etc demanded by Building Regulations, then this isn’t exactly rocket science. In the end, ICF Contractors were happy to figure out details such as manhole cover sizes for us. The pipework has now all been laid, bedded in pea shingle for protection, and backfilled.
Interestingly, Catalin from ICF Contractors recently mentioned they’d normally do more of the drainage works at the end of the project, when the landscaping is being done. The reason for this is pretty simple: you don’t want the drainage system to get accidentally damaged or blocked along the way. If you buy a serviced self build plot at Graven Hill, however, all the drainage has to be completed as part of the golden brick phase.
Little nuggets of information like this, from experienced contractors, can make a big difference when you’re running a self build project, and we’ll be keeping an eye out to make sure our follow-on trades take the appropriate care to avoid any issues.