Soakaways

In the course of posting a letter, I thought a visit to the new, prefabricated house, last noticed at reference 1, was in order.

Which revealed that not much fabrication was in evidence, although it did look as if the cellar was complete, at least from a structural point of view, and that ground works were continuing. Another six months to go before the new house is ready to live in?

But I did notice a couple of the sort of concrete rings previously noticed at reference 2, at a site which probably gets a lot more rain than this one. On the other hand, probably not clay, like this one.

These pipes - or perhaps I should say rings - were being filled with what looked like some sort of crushed stone mix, possibly what I once knew as type 1 sub-base. From which, given that this part of Epsom is known for drainage problems, I deduced that the pipes were soakaways. The ground worker present said not, but that may have been that his English did not run to this particular word. Unlike Bing, which turns up the very thing.

So it now seems quite likely that the rather larger number of pipes noticed at reference 2 are also part of a soakaway, perhaps part of an attempt to stop the drains of the adjacent care home backing up when it rains a lot. Backing up which, given all the circumstances, would be distinctly unfortunate.

PS: when I was young, small scale soakaways of this sort were built of bricks rather than concrete, bricks arranged with plenty of gaps between them, a lot more gaps than there are holes in the snap above. But I dare say these days that pre-cast concrete rings work out a lot cheaper - provided you have got something to lift them with.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/people-who-are-loaded.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/honeys-bakery.html.