About Me

Plumbing Emergency: What To Do During a Flood

Welcome! My name is Sally. This is my blog about plumbing. I decided to start writing about plumbing after a very scary experience. I arrived home from work one day only to discover that a pipe burst in my home. When I opened the front door, I saw a torrent of water pouring down the stairs. I panicked and ran next door to my neighbour. Luckily, he used to work as a construction contractor, so he has a lot of experience in dealing with household problems. He helped me to turn off the mains water and helped me to mop up the mess. After this event, I decided I wanted to learn more about the plumbing in my house, so I went to a night school class.

Latest Posts

Search

Plumbing Emergency: What To Do During a Flood

How to Reduce the Stormwater Load on Your Drainage System

by Melvin Owens

It can be very expensive to install a stormwater drainage system on a residential property where no measures have been taken to limit the volume of stormwater originating from that property. You can take some simple steps to minimise the volume of stormwater that your stormwater drainage system will have to carry. Those measures may reduce how much you will spend on stormwater drainage installation. This article discusses some of those measures.

Harvest Roof Water 

Roof water contributes a large fraction of the stormwater that is generated from a residential property. That large volume of roof water can compel you to install a costly stormwater drainage system with a large capacity. You can avoid that added stormwater load by setting up roof water harvesting systems, such as underground tanks, to capture that water from the roof. The water that you harvest using this method can be used for several purposes, such as watering the lawn and flushing the toilets in your home. The savings that you make on your water bill may eventually pay for the cost of setting up that water harvesting system.

Make Use of Vegetation

Deep-rooted trees can help to lower the water table on your property by sucking up the water in the soil. This allows more water to sink into the ground before the excess runs off the surface of the soil. Lawns are also very good at soaking up large volumes of water. Thus, the use of vegetation will reduce the amount of stormwater that the stormwater drainage system will have to deal with. This can reduce the total cost of setting up the stormwater drainage system for your home.

Minimise Impervious Surfaces

Stormwater increases in volume each time the surfaces onto which it rains cannot allow the water to seep through, such as concrete driveways. You can limit the volume of stormwater on your property by trying as much as possible to use permeable materials on your property, such as having walkways made using pebbles. In this way, most of the rainwater will sink into the ground. The stormwater drainage system that you install may be more affordable because it will not be designed to carry a very large volume of stormwater. The designer of that system will base on the minimal impervious surfaces to recommend a system with a smaller capacity.

The cost of building a new home can skyrocket if you do not take deliberate steps to cut costs on each aspect of the project. The suggestions above offer some measures that will be helpful to you in reducing the cost of installing a stormwater drainage system. Consult a plumber for more information on additional ways to keep the stormwater problem under control on your residential property.

Share