Expert Patio Drainage Advice and Solutions

Imagine this: you have just finished work on the patio which completes the look of your garden. You wish to sit out on it and enjoy the calm, quiet space, but before you get the chance, a storm comes and overwhelms it with rainwater. You have not added a patio drainage system, so the water sits there for days, only entering your sewer system, which is then also filled to maximum capacity and threatening to overflow. The rainwater still sits there, potentially causing damage which will take a lot of time and money to repair. Sounds worrying, doesn’t it?

Fortunately, there are a number of simple solutions to avoid the stress of a constantly flooded patio. At Coastal Drains, we have years of experience in tackling a variety of drainage problems head-on, and we are more than happy to help our customers by providing advice on all matters relating to drainage systems, including ones for your patio. 

Whether you need questions answered by a specialist before you pick your new drains, or would like a team of fully qualified and highly trained engineers to unblock or repair and maintain drains you currently have, we will be there to help, so please contact us when you need us most.

Keeping Your Patio Flood-Free

In order to help your patio and its drainage system, you may wish to ensure that your space is built on a very slight slope, at just enough of an angle to ensure that water runoff travels away from it. If this is not possible, either because the ground is completely flat or the patio is already complete, then you must see to it that your drains are placed in the areas which receive most excess water.

Common Problems with Poorly Drained Patios

Many homeowners will all come across the same problems that can be found with patios that have either broken or no drainage solutions:

Damage to Patios: If standing water is allowed to pool on a patio for a long time, this may cause lasting damage to the material. This is especially true in colder months, as water which has seeped into cracks and gaps will become ice and expand, forcing the cracks to get wider and breaking the patio apart.

Damage to Homes: If water is allowed to stand next to the walls of a house for some time, it may drain into the walls and form rising damp and mould. This is a fairly common problem in houses which have cellars.

Mould and Moss on Patio: If there are cracks in your patio, or even if you have a patio made up of bricks, paver or block paving, there is a chance that moss, moulds and other unwanted plant life could start to grow in between the gaps when given a supply of trapped water.

Black Ice May Form: If water does not drain correctly in the winter months, it has a high chance of becoming ice. If this ice is nearly invisible (black ice), it will be extremely easy to miss and could potentially be slipped on. 

Sewer Systems May Take the Hit: If a surge of excess water has nowhere else to go, it may accidentally enter sewer systems, causing them to fill up and potentially overflow.

All of these problems can be easily avoided, if you have the correct drainage solution for your property. Luckily, there are plenty of options for you to choose from.

Top-Rated Ideas for Patio Drainage

Below, we have listed some of the most popular options for patio drainage that you may also wish to consider when designing your ideal look for an outdoor space. We have also noted some information about where they will work best, and if there are any particular patio designs they are most suited for.

French Drains: For patio drainage, French drains may be thought of as the perfect option because the aggregate-filled trench design allows for aesthetically pleasing edging for any garden feature. This also means they can be matched with any patio type, whether you have block paving, brick, paver or concrete. 

The large pieces of aggregate on the surface gradually become finer the further into the trench they get, allowing surface water from rain to flow through and filtering out any debris that may be in the system. 

Often, there will also be a perforated pipe at the bottom to help carry away larger amounts of water when it enters the system in a surge (such as during a storm). This helps to prevent your patio from flooding, especially if it is a sunken patio, or often has trouble with surface water drainage when it rains hard.

Channel Drains: This type of drain is also known as a “linear drain” or “trench drain” because, like French drains, they also have a trench design and use this feature to carry water away from patio areas. Unlike French drains, however, they aren’t filled with aggregate and instead use gravity to take the water away. 

There are two types of channel drains, one which has a built-in slope and one which relies on the natural slope of your garden to take away storm water. Both options look identical otherwise, with a halfpipe drain covered by a (usually metal) grate. 

Because of their easy installation and efficiency as drainage channels, linear drainage systems are very popular and can commonly be seen acting as edging for block paving, concrete and brick patios.

Gully Drains: Gully drains for patios may take on more than one shape, but work the same way. They may either resemble channel drains with the only difference being that gully drains only drain water at one point, or they may look like small, square or rectangular drains with a metal or plastic cover. They can often be found underneath guttering, or close to pipes coming from your kitchen, and can easily be hidden if there is an aesthetic you are trying to achieve with the patio space you already have.

It must be noted that, owing to their shape and size, it is easy for channel and gully drains to become blocked. To prevent this from happening, they will need regular cleaning, which you can either carry out yourself or call a leading professional drainage firm to carry out for you.

Soakaways: Whether your patio is block paving, brick, paver or concrete, once you have chosen the drainage option which suits your space best, it will be time to think about where you want the excess surface water to drain to. In most cases, we would recommend that you install a soakaway crate, in order to let the water seep away naturally into the ground. 

A soakaway crate will be buried underground and is attached to the pipe that will lead straight from your chosen drainage system. The crate itself is filled with stones and aggregate (much like French drains), which allows water to flow through and discharge into the ground below. This creates an environmentally friendly way of making sure your patio and garden don’t become waterlogged!

There is a chance that the pipe between your soakaway crate and the drain may become blocked or clogged, however. When this happens, we firmly believe that you should get in touch with a drainage expert to take care of it. This will save you time and money that may be lost attempting to unblock it yourself, as well as potential damage to either part of your system. Fortunately, this is a service we will be happy to offer if you need it.

Our Services for Your Patio Drainage Problems

We have an extensive knowledge in all matters relating to drainage, which we are always willing and able to show to our customers whenever they ask. This includes helping out whenever their patio drains are having problems, as this allows us to open up a wider range of services for our customers. This keeps them happy, and helps to keep us happy knowing that we can give homeowners everything they need.

Whether you have been looking for a way to prevent yourself from ending up ankle-deep in water whenever you step out onto your patio after it has rained heavily, 

Below, we have listed all of the services we will be happy to undertake, in order to get your patio drains back to full working order:

• Drain unblocking
• Drain cleaning and clearance
• Drain repair and maintenance
• Drain installations
• Drain replacement

Is Your Property Suffering from Poor Patio Drainage?

If your patio’s drainage system is all blocked up after years of use, has become cracked and needs urgent repair (or replacing entirely), or even if you don’t yet have a system in place to completely clear your outdoor space of excess surface water, then Coastal Drains are here to help. We pride ourselves on professionalism and dedicate our time to providing the best drainage services on the market, so we will do everything we can to make sure your drains are flowing exactly as they should be.

Whether your perfect patio design presents problems for water draining off correctly, or you need a barrier between the results of the elements and your home, the options we have here make for the best solutions. Everything we do will also be carried out to the highest standards, which we expect as a given from all our engineers. This is to make sure our customers get exactly the service they deserve and nothing less.

We provide our services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions or queries about what we can do. We are always happy to demonstrate, or provide free quotes on all our services. Contact our team via phone or email today and we can discuss what you need for your patio drainage, before sending some of our staff out as soon as possible to help get the job done, no matter what you have asked for.