MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
We have a carport that runs the length of the house and are looking at replacing it.
The quotes we're getting use an extruded aluminium framework that allows the rainwater to run down inside of the support poles instead of having separate guttering. The water then flows into a floor-level channel which is in turn connected to the house drain. The channel needs to be dug out and made good etc
Although this sounds ok-ish I'm not entirely convinced how it will work in practice
Anyone got such a carport?
Ta
I haven't got one, however: What diameter 'downpipe' will the supports provide? If it's smaller than you've currently got, assuming the roof area is the same, you may have backing up issues. Also, when they block (at some point they will) how do you get access to clear?
What type of channel are you talking about? Effectively an open 'stream' across to another drain? I wouldn't like that. Most rainwater is routed to soakaways somewhere in your garden. This is normally via underground pipes, so I'd be looking to this. No reason that you can't connect to an existing system as long as the capacity is there. If not, you're going to get a soggy patch!
Yeah those were the kind of things I was concerned about.
The carport we have at the moment collects a huge amount of rain water and uses house-diameter guttering it works well enough. Not entirely sure how well a smaller diameter system would cope and not mad keen on the idea of a covered channel to the main drain
What exactly is a soakaway
Soakaway is a large hole filled with rubble/gravel to which rain water is piped to allow it to soak away. I had trouble a few years back with heavy rain flowing down the drive and through the garage so I dug out a trench (about 3' deep) between the two strips of concrete running down the drive and filled with rubble, topped with a couple of old slabs and weed stop, replaced the gravel and not had a problem since.
Oh-kay
So a hole in the garden and pipes from the carport to the soakaway
Hmmm