Soggy plot

[alldigging]

Bloke next to me has a very soggy half a plot.
He's got water on the surface of one bit but that's where the muck heap has been for a year so I suspect that's mostly due to having people stood compressing the muck into the soil for 12 months whilst it was barrowed away.

Only a bit of mine is damp and it's no where near as wet as his.
My plot slopes slightly away and the lower end isn't wet at all.

The bit he's digging at the moment is black soil, but it's quite pliable but a spade depth down it's just saturated.

The site was just a field. It was always a bit boggy in places and in the past there'd been several big bonfires on it.

He has dug various pits previously and found a thick layer of clay underneath.

He wants to drain it - he's got some ideas on this but I'm not sure any of them are going to solve the problem just move it.

Would he be better off trying a sump pit to see if he can drain the water from his plot before trying to divert the water away?

I'm assuming if it doesn't all drain into a lower bit anyway then he'd have to do something underneath all of it to drain the whole area.

[Nicos]

Just a thought...I wonder if it already has clay drains deep down which are blocked?
Might be worth asking whoever owns it.
The past 2 sites I was on both had drainage inspection pits and although some of the pipes had collapsed , some were just blocked and when cleared made a heck of a difference to the whole site.
( one was council owned and the other was privately owned. )
Certainly worth enquiring about before considering other options!

[alldigging]

You might be on to something ...
There's nothing drainy showing on the plans at all - from when the PP was done.

You might be right about there being a drain though...
I was told by an old bloke who's a neighbour to the site that a land drain was put in from the far corner across to some concrete thing that then goes into what we assume is the end of the mains drain.
This was supposed to take water from some terraces that flooded when it rained.

However someone else told me it went down the edge of the field towards the canal...

Can't work out what's under the concrete thing but assume it's the end of some land drain thing .. the proper manholed drain is dry though.

I'm a bit concerned having read about drainage charges - and indeed blocking up this manhole drain if we used that - although maybe if thats what it was for then it'd explain why one bit of his plot is soggy.

I'm just going to dig out the overhead photos of the site and draw a line on them..

It's not a straight line from the corner where the drain is supposed to start to the concrete thing ...

Has he been unlucky when digging pits on his plot to not find evidence of it?
How deep would a land drain be?

[Nicos]

Not sure.
4ft seems to ring a bell.

[alldigging]

He says he dug several pits all over although I only saw one.
Will have to ask him how deep he went.