Greetings,

To cut a long story short; I dug a soak away in my garden in about May 2011. I couldn't go as deep as I wanted as I hit clay and couldn't dig through the water. So I ended up about 2m wide by 1.2 long by 1.0m-ish deep.

Filled it with rocks, plastic sheet on the top then about 200mm/8" of soil and turf.

Soak away worked fine in the rain of the winter but still a couple of problems.

Firstly, the turf on top is in a right state, it's really short compared to the rest of the lawn and pretty bare/patchy.

Secondly, the soak away area is proud of the rest of the lawn by about 1-2". The reason for this is I deliberately left it proud assuming the soil would sink/compress and if I'd built it flush then it would have left a massive depression! Obviously it hasn't sunk as much as I expected!

So, that leads to a couple of questions. Is the turf so rubbish because there's not enough soil beneath it to keep it damp? Is 8" or so not enough? Or, is it so bad because it's a raised area so the water runs off it instead of soaking in?

Is the solution to remove some of the 8" of soil beneath the turf so it's flush with the rest of the lawn, then it will retain enough water. (it will then be on about 6" of soil). Or, do I need to dig it out, remove some of the rocks so that the turf is lower but on the same or more soil?
Is 6" of soil okay for the turf?

The end result I want is the raised area to be flush with the rest of the lawn - and be decent grass like the rest.


Questions for the collective! Advice needed please!

Thanks!
James

[Edited on 26/3/12 by James]

Didnt think soakaways were suitable for clay. Should be a surface water drainage system if you not in the sticks?

quote:

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Originally posted by loggyboy
Didnt think soakaways were suitable for clay. Should be a surface water drainage system if you not in the sticks?

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When u say rocks how big do u mean. ?

I thing u should grade the size of the matter that goes back into the soak away from large to small
Ending up with pee gravel on the top.

Id say all the voids in the soak away are taking up the water and thats leaving your 8" of top soil dry !

Just my thoughts. I may be wrong Alan

Grass takes a long time to establish in clay soil, it only needs sown in a couple of inches of a mixture of sand, gravel, grow bag compost soil and some lawn fertiliser

I wood skim the bump down a bit and level off with the above mixture.


The real key to decent lawn is not to cut it too short