CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Commuting
"Severe weather warning"
(7379 posts)-
Posted 3 years ago #
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Half the month’s rain fell in an hour. Tricky even if the stands were clear
I had two blocked gutters on getting home from the soft shandy drinking south,
Straight up on garage roof to unblock. In the thunder.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Not much addition to the rain v drain ‘debate’ here -
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No doubt city authorities and others will be reviewing the floods and looking at potential mitigation measures. Hopefully everyone who suffered material damage to their homes and businesses will be supported quickly by their insurers.
Angus Robertson is the SNP MSP for Edinburgh Central and Constitution, External Affairs and Culture Secretary
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This one is more ‘blame THE COUNCIL, as usual, but I know it’s not really to blame’…
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All over the city, sewers and drains are malfunctioning, and turning a square of lawn into off-street parking makes little difference to how a city deals with half a month’s rain in an hour.
…
John McLellan is a Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston
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Posted 3 years ago # -
Have the underground paraffin reserves maintained by CORSON been contaminated by the Stockbridge floods?
We need to know.
Posted 3 years ago # -
The good Councillor is right - turning one garden into a driveway has no impact at a city level. However:
Edinburgh is losing the equivalent of around 15 football pitches of green land each year, much of which is due to private garden areas being paved over or built on, according to a new report.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Bromley in south east London has no houses with front gardens they are all given over to parking of multiple vehicles.
See also use of astroturf instead of Grass. Joe Namath will be birlin. Tho some attribute the quote to the baseball slugger Tug McGraw
Posted 3 years ago # -
“use of astroturf instead of Grass“
It’s plastic, but it’s permeable.
Posted 3 years ago # -
In our opinion pages today: Councillor with mono blocked garden attempts to divert any criticism of people like himself by denying any link between mono blocked gardens and flooding.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@chdot - we have astroturf in our side-passage and it soaks water like a sponge. It also grows moss. It's better than tarmac.
Posted 3 years ago # -
I have an absolute hate for front gardens turned into parking spaces, and back gardens filled with paving and decking. What's wrong with growing things in earth, you ingrates? Growing ground is precious.
Posted 3 years ago # -
For a while now my backlog of house jobs has a super speculative installation of soakaway crates under the lawn. Not sure I'll ever get to it but...
Also thought about burying a gigantic water butt and having a cute old school hand pump tap. Again....
Posted 3 years ago # -
"a super speculative installation of soakaway crates under the lawn"
oooh that's a thing!
https://www.easymerchant.co.uk/soakaway-crates
Of course one potential problem is what to do with the 'earth' displaced.
Rockery?
Posted 3 years ago # -
Just put the soil into a pair of trousers with really large pockets, and casually sprinkle the contents over the road. Repeat as required, and no-one will ever catch on!
Posted 3 years ago # -
& rather than exiting the garden via the gate, casually place a vaulting horse by the fence & then use it to leap over whilst nobody is looking.
Posted 3 years ago # -
My wife is keen to convert our front garden for her car before 1: the rules about doing so change and 2: our street is either a: used as parking from people whose previous parking-streets have been parking-zoned or b: gets parking-zoned. I am pushing for leaving as much grass/earth as possible for soaking/transpiration, leaving a bit of wall to buttress next door's gatepost etc. and doing a dropped kerb properly rather than bumping up and down it seeing as cars are so expensive.to repair.
Posted 3 years ago # -
We just had our back garden landscaped and parts of it paved recently and the architect/structural engineer took a fair bit of care making sure it was permeable and didn't require hooking up to the drains. We used permeable pavers laid on a 50mm sand bedding course on geo-textile on top of a 100mm Type 3 aggregate sub-base. Round the perimeter of the paving is a pebble drain.
So most of the water goes down to the 15cm of sand/stone/aggregate which can absorb a decent amount of water. That then just soaks down to the ground. Any runoff hits the pebble drains which again can hold a good amount of water. The rain last week gave it a good test and it seemed to be fine.
Posted 3 years ago # -
When I moved into my flat, the small garden was mostly concrete slabs, with 2 sheds. I got rid of a shed and quite a bit of the paving to make beds. I plan to remodel the garden and get rid of as much concrete as possible though I need some hard surface for wheeling out bins/bicycle, also a seating area. Are there any green garden landscapers around? The neighbours had their tiny space made over, and it's mostly paving and pebbles, with about 3 plants.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Wingpig: Per Pringlis description, a lot of block paving is in fact permeable, both through the gaps between the blocks and, albeit at a slower rate, through the blocks themselves. But it does need to be laid on a base which is also permeable, which can then be subject to minor movement/subsidence over time. Our (permeable) mono block drive has some depressions where the car usually stands on it which are detectable by eye, with careful scrutiny, but not when the car or other vehicles are driven or ridden over it. That's been in place 17 years now.
In very heavy rain it would pool a bit in front of the garage (the driveway slopes down to the garage so there's no runoff to the street drains) but that would drain away naturally in a few hours. Recently we've had a new planter built in the front garden and the builder pointed out that, strictly speaking, the should have been an aqua channel* installed between the end of the drive and the start of the garage's concrate raft floor. Though it had never ben a problem in the past, we agreed to have it put in, with soakaways to a planting border at one side and an enhanced area of permeable base below the mono block on the other. We were away last weekend so missed the downpour, but on our return I found the aqua channel still had an amount of standing water in it - I think our local water table was still quite high for a few days after the deluge, but it's soaked away now.
So not all hard paving is necessarily bad news in terms of rain runoff. The worst types in that respect are probably poured concrete, solid concrete slabs and tarmac - all of which are aesthetically poor as well.
By the way: if you want a dropped kerb, you have to ask the council. (Though you probably already knew that). An all too common alternative is to leave a pair of rubber ramps in the gutter of the carriageway - yet more private property littering the public space thanks to car culture (and note that the property in that shot already has a dropped kerb).
* Stuff like this:
Posted 3 years ago # -
P St G Saturday
Is it really still flooded??
Posted 3 years ago # -
I see CEC failed to clear the drains in London -
Posted 3 years ago # -
“
Instead of sunbathers soaking up the rays in some of the warmest weather of the year, West Princes Street Gardens was closed to locals on Wednesday for a major clean-up operation after sewage and rain water flooded the park during a storm more than a week ago.
“
Posted 3 years ago # -
That’s a lot of LAs that haven’t bothered to clean the drains properly…
Posted 3 years ago # -
Pictures coming out of Germany and Belgium very distressing
Flooded quarry turned sinkhole threatening to devour the town of Blessem on the Erft
Ironically it's a few km from the biggest lignite mine in Europe
Posted 3 years ago # -
Just to follow up on my mini-diatribe about faux dropped kerbs: it appears that at least one council takes direct action when property owners build vehicle access to their properties across pavements without permission: Merton Council is taking enforcement action against residents who illegally park their vehicles on their properties without a dropped kerb.
I counted at least three sets of rubber ramps in the gutter when I passed along Greenbank Road (the location of the StreetView image in my ealrier post) the other day.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@ejstubbs Oh to be a fly on the wall when a bollard is installed with an offending vehicle on the drive...
Posted 3 years ago # -
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An application for a dropped kerb must meet the criteria set out on the council’s website and may also require planning permission. Applications in controlled parking zones will also be subject to a traffic management order. There must be a certain amount of space to park the vehicle directly in front of the property so that it does not hang over the pavement and can be manoeuvred in and out of the parking space in a single movement. Consideration must also be given to any lamppost or telegraph pole on the pavement, which can usually be relocated for a fee, although permission will be refused to move a tree, unless it is young enough to survive being replanted.
Only the council can put in dropped kerbs and these are constructed to withstand domestic vehicles, usually in tarmac but also using heavy duty paving slabs where required. Standard paving is unsuitable for vehicles to drive over. Residents cover all costs, however, a dropped kerb can add five per cent to the value of a property.
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I can think of a number of properties I've seen, here in Edinburgh and in the suburban areas of London, that would fail to meet these criteria but have vehicles parked up in their front "gardens". Especially those where the vehicles overhang, obstructing the footway...
Posted 3 years ago # -
Can’t see how most of the ones on Leamington Tce got permission
Posted 3 years ago #
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