Frontage Land Drain – What am I missing?

[johntren]

I’m coming under pressure to do something I don’t understand and would welcome advice, particularly from anyone with a building/engineering background.

We own a plot on which we plan to build a house. It abuts the main road, with rice fields on both sides and behind, and has been raised (by us) several feet above the surrounding land. There is a new wall on three sides, with small-bore drainage pipes at regular intervals.

When the man came to measure up for the cha noht he tut-tutted and said we should have laid a fairly large-bore concrete drain along the frontage, parallel with the road, and then covered it with the din which fills the rest of the plot. When asked why, he muttered something about how if a road-improvement scheme went ahead we’d have to do it anyway, so better to do it now. Since we live in a district which can’t or won’t keep even its main roads in semi-repair, I dismissed that as pie in the sky.

However, I’ve noticed that about 80 percent of houses in this village have these strange drains across the frontage. Some are open, some closed; all of them are level, without any fall. They contain water which has nowhere to go and nothing to do except harbour mosquitoes, snakes and other vermin. When it rains, this water floods the adjacent road just as it always did before; when the sun comes out the water evaporates, leaving a bad smell and a collection of sweet-wrappers, milk cartons, ciggie butts, etc..

Sometimes Neighbour A makes a half-hearted attempt to link his pipe to Neighbour B’s, but there’s no system and leaks are the norm.

The (shrinking) handful of non-conformists rely on an earth ditch between their land and the concrete road; ‘once dug, never touched again’, or so it seems. Since most of these border on the new-fangled concrete pipes, they often lie under water until they simply wear away and disappear.

Recently, even the local OBD jumped on the bandwagon. They hired men to dig a trench, lay a pipe across their frontage, and cover it with concrete. This drain, like all the others I’ve seen, goes nowhere and apparently serves no purpose except to pollute the neighbourhood.

The main reason seems to be ‘oh, everybody else is doing it,’ which is why I’m coming under pressure. Does this arrangement achieve anything worthwhile, apart from flooding the neighbours’ land on either side? I’m happy to be mocked for my ignorance, but I’d still love to know what glaringly obvious point I’m missing.

[cornishcarlos]

You are not alone in your bewilderment...

We have done it twice now, on 2 separate plots.

1m diameter concrete pipes !! I even suggested we go with a smaller diameter just to waste a bit less money, nope 'cannot" OBD requires 1m by 'law'...

The only reason I can see is to stop your own property access getting washed out in a flood.

1 of our plots has never come close to flooding, in fact I had never seen any sitting water in the ditch ?

Another case of nothing will change, as like you say 'everybody does it'

Good luck in your quest for info ???

[johntren]

Many thanks ... especially since I'm Cornish !

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[cornishcarlos]

There are a few of us who managed to escape or get kicked out, not sure which I was

[johntren]

With me it was problems overseas. Devon to be precise

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