How do I stop water running off my drive onto the road or next door?

A drive is a large impermeable area, often falling towards the road because that is where the ground falls. As long as the volume is small it is nobody's problem. When it becomes a stream across a pavement, an icy patch at a junction or a pool in a neighbour's garden, it becomes yours, and the fix is always about giving the water somewhere else to go before it reaches the boundary.

Safety

What you'll need

• Bucket of water and a long level
• Channel drain and gratings of the correct load class (optional)
• Underground drainage pipe and fittings (optional)
• Spade and a wheelbarrow
• Permeable paving or gravel and a stabilising grid (optional)

Step by step

1. Watch where the water actually goes.Pour several buckets of water at the high end of the drive, or watch it in heavy rain. Mark the flow path and the point where it leaves your land. Everything else follows from knowing exactly where the problem is.
2. Measure the falls.A long straightedge with a level on it, taken across the drive in several places. You are establishing whether the surface falls towards the boundary everywhere, or whether there is a route to somewhere on your own land that could take the water.
3. Find out what drainage you already have.A surface water drain, a gully, a soakaway. If there is a lawful destination on the property, the job becomes intercepting the water and getting it there, which is much simpler than creating a new outfall.
4. Intercept with a channel drain at the low edge.A channel across the drive just inside the boundary, set below the surface, connected to a surface water drain or a soakaway. This is the standard answer where the falls are otherwise fine and the water simply has nowhere to go. It must not connect to a foul drain.
5. Break up the impermeable area.A permeable strip along the low edge — gravel over a free-draining sub-base, a planted border, a permeable paving band — gives the water somewhere to soak in before it reaches the boundary. It is often the cheapest effective intervention and it is also the approach the planning rules on front gardens are built around.
6. Consider re-laying the falls.If the drive falls towards the road across its whole width, and there is somewhere on your land that could take the water, re-laying is the thorough answer. It is a large job, and it is the reason interception is usually tried first.
7. Deal with the roof water separately.A downpipe discharging onto the drive adds a substantial volume in a storm. Getting roof water into a butt, a gully or a soakaway before it reaches the drive often removes most of the problem on its own.
8. Check the boundary and highway position.Anything you build at the boundary with a highway, and any alteration to how water crosses it, involves the highway authority. Where the water is going onto a neighbour's land, talk to them before building — a channel drain that solves your problem by moving the water into their garden solves nothing legally.
9. Check the planning position if you are resurfacing.Hard surfacing at the front of a house has planning rules that turn on permeability and on where run-off is directed. If you are changing the surface anyway, this is the moment to make it compliant. Your local authority holds the current requirements.

Tips

• A bucket of water in daylight tells you more in a minute than watching in the rain at night. Do the diagnosis in dry weather.
• Roof water is usually the biggest single contributor and the easiest to divert. Deal with the downpipes before rebuilding the drive.
• Photograph the flow in a heavy storm. If the problem ever becomes a dispute, contemporaneous evidence of what is actually happening is invaluable.
• A gravel or planted strip 300 to 500mm wide along a boundary absorbs a surprising amount and costs a fraction of a drainage system.
• If you are engaging a contractor, get the drainage design written into the quote. Resurfacing quotes routinely cover the surface and say nothing about where the water goes.

Common mistakes

• Connecting a drive's drainage into a foul drain — It overloads the sewer, causes pollution and flooding downstream, and is an offence. Surface water goes to a surface water drain, a soakaway or a lawful outfall only.
• Solving it by pushing the water next door — Directing water onto a neighbour's land is not a solution, it is a liability. The water has to go into the ground on your land or into a drainage system.
• Building a kerb to hold the water in — It ponds on the drive instead, which is worse — standing water damages the surface, freezes and finds the lowest point anyway, often a building.
• Assuming a permeable surface fixes it on clay — Permeable paving only works if the ground beneath can accept water. On heavy clay it fills and then behaves like an impermeable surface, and it needs a drained sub-base or an outfall.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask