Digging Deep for Elegant Installations
Our installer Lee recently emailed this photo while digging soak-away holes during a Veranda installation, noting “The first law of holes; if you are in one – stop digging!”.
A simple brick and stone soak-away can be a good way to deal with rainwater from your glass verandas drainage system, especially where connection to a house drain is not practicable. Buried out of sight it can be fed using an underground pipe, the pipe connected below patio to your glass verandas leg post. Rainwater is then conveyed down from the veranda, through pipes hidden inside the leg posts, disappearing below ground with everything kept out of sight, and no surface water puddles.
Of course a rainwater collection butt is also an option, and an environmentally sound one too, although many customers already use a collection butt elsewhere on the house and prefer not to install such an obstacle forefront of their terrace. Rain currently falling on the patio is already running to ground, off into the lawn or borders, so installing a glass veranda with a soak-away you won’t be changing the status quo.
Also known as a French Drain, a soak-away hole can simply be filled with gravel or brick pieces allowing rain water to dissipate. The soak-away for a typical patio roof does not need to be big – but it should be dug away from the leg post avoiding saturating the ground supporting your leg foundation. It does not need to be dug particularly deep either, unless reaching down below clay level, and we understand that Lee was crouching for this photograph!
Lee has been an expert installer on our team since 2012.
