Bit of background, we have a steep front to the driveway, roughly two cars long, then it runs flat past the side of the house, another two cars length maybe longer. The driveway is 4 inches below the kitchen door. In the storm this afternoon the rain came in through the kitchen door. 🙄

(Other houses in the village were being pumped out by the Fire Brigade, so we got away quite lightly. The water in the garage only reached the kids bikes, not mine)

Anyway, half way along the flat part of driveway is a drainage channel which is covered by some metal “ACO” branded grilles. Looks like the drain under the grills needs clearing out, but I can’t figure out how to lift the grilles? They wiggle a bit but appear to be fixed down somehow. Anyone know how, before I resort to brute force and ignorance and wreck them beyond any further use?

resort to brute force and ignorance

You have answered your own question, but you didn’t realise it

OK, where’s best to buy the replacement grills cheap? 😆

Got plastic ones of these and they just pop out when leave red with a screwdriver.

theres usually a small circular nut to remove somehwere along the middle,local metal thieves seem to have no problem nicking parts of them .

you could also jet wash the crap in the grills work towards the main drain

Thanks project, will have another look in the morning

Top tip put planks of wood over grid next to where youre jet washing stops all the crap shooting out and covering you, then move them down a foot and start again, finally empty main drain out,

Have ACO drain channels on my drive and all i do is lift the grilles and they pop out the concrete channel, clean channel out and pop grilles back into channel

The grilles should pop out. Try using a screwdriver to prise them out. Might be stubborn first time around but should be fine after that.

Do they feed into a soakaway or the sewer ?
Soakaway may be all silted up.

Have adopted the jetwashing approach, which has cleared a lot of gunk out. Sadly I did not spot projects top tip about the plank of wood first!

When it has all dried again I will apply the screwdriver with force to see if they lever out – spotted the brackets inside the drain once I’d blasted out the rubbish

Thanks again to the hive mind!

Varying release mechs on aco. Yours will probably be the lower load ones so as above will just pop out. When replacing make sure the edges and lug holes are nice and clean.