| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:SuDS & London's Old Combined Sewage & Rainwater Drains | |
| Posted by: | Philippa Bond | |
| Date/Time: | 17/04/25 14:46:00 |
| Drainage for our older London homes tends to still be combined sewage and rainwater. Newer homes may be different with Building Regulations requiring soakaways and attenuation tanks for rainwater. SuDs are being used to slow the flow of surface water to existing drains. Rivers that had previously been straightened to increase the speed of transport on them and to increase and enable easier farming of the land are now being re-wiggled. Many of our homes were built before bathrooms with hot water on tap and washing machines and dishwashers. It is not that there are so many houses now divided into flats but we also use a lot more water nowadays just because it is so much easier to do so. The UK has one of the highest per capita water uses in Europe. For many years Thames Water offered reduced price water butts, and other water reduction gadgets like new taps and shower heads which aerated the water discharged so it felt just as much but was not discharged in such volume but water was plentiful so many did not take advantage. Newer toilets use far less water when they are working properly. Many of us have paved over our gardens to make patios and parking spaces which creates even greater rainwater runoff, greater heat and greater evaporation. Hard dry ground does not soak up rainwater in the way that gardens with compost combined with their earth do. Water will likely just bounce off and along running to lower ground to create flooding. Since there are so many built over underground rivers, streams, brooks, ditches etc that already take the waste from our homes adding to the volume put down them by adding run off from parks and streets is just likely to just increase the problem. Sewage backing up into people's homes is what the water companies are trying to avoid. With deregulation and privatisation of Building Control so as to make it easier to allow more building some of the knowledge that a more centralised system provided gave was lost. It seems that the greater volume of water runoff that goes down the drains the greater the volume of mixed untreated sewage gets discharged into the river since many drains are created from and include water from culverted brooks and streams - as well as those misconnections that are made accidentally or indeed deliberately to avoid paying fees. |