Section drainage and stormwater

Deal with water before the landscaping

Drainage is the least visible money you will spend on a section and usually the best spent. A wet section means a lawn that will not establish, garden beds that drown, paths that stay green and slippery, and in the worst cases water finding its way under the house.

The time to do it is while there is still machine access and the ground is already open. Retrofitting drainage through a finished lawn, established planting and a new driveway costs several times what it costs to put in beforehand.

Stormwater from the roof

A house roof sheds a serious volume of water in a Waikato downpour, and all of it has to go somewhere controlled. Downpipes discharging at the base of the wall is how you get damp foundations and a permanently boggy strip around the house.

We trench and lay stormwater lines from the downpipes to wherever the discharge point is: a council connection, a soak hole, or an approved outfall. Lines are laid to a consistent fall with the right pipe and proper bedding, with junctions and inspection points where they belong.

Subsoil drainage and soak holes

Where the problem is groundwater rather than roof water, subsoil drainage is the answer: perforated pipe in a gravel backfilled trench, laid to fall, intercepting water before it reaches the parts of the section you care about. Cut off drains across a slope are very effective at stopping water arriving from uphill.

Soak holes work where the ground below has the capacity to take the water. That varies enormously across the Waikato, so it is worth knowing what your ground actually does before designing around one.

What we install

• Stormwater lines and downpipe connections
• Council stormwater connections and approved outfalls
• Soak holes and soakage pits
• Subsoil and perimeter drainage around the house
• Cut off drains across sloping sections
• Sumps, grated channels and driveway drainage
• Service trenching for water, power and wastewater
• Backfill, compaction and reinstatement