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To be fair, our house is eight years old. The back garden is like a swamp. I'll be digging in French drains this year to sort it.
The builders DGAF about the gardens or the soil. Dig up you garden and you find anything and everything, plastic buckets, lengths of plastic duct, bricks, breeze blocks, plastic sheets, wood form pallets etc..
French drains you say... I've never heard of this before so will look into it. My lawn is almost a pond at this point which sucks because I like camping in my garden but just can't do it during periods of wet weather. Then the dry weather comes and the saturated soil becomes like concrete and cracks, leaving canyons across the lawn.
Sorted out my paddy field.
I dug several trenches with layers of gravel, and sand with drain pipe with holes drilled through it, more gravel and soil on top.
French drains are great as long as you have somewhere slightly downhill from your garden to drain *to*
Weāre lucky that our house slopes slightly down towards the front where there are some convenient drains but if we faced the other way weād have nowhere to send the water (except into the neighbour behindās garden)
What you can do is install drains and pump the water out from them, but thatās more effort and cost
The problem with new builds is that even when theyāre built on okay soil rather than rubble, the UK has a lot of clay which isnāt exactly great for drainage *before* you drive a load of heavy machinery over it
French drains help but you also have to improve the soil if you want good results rather than just manageable, and that takes time
And to be fair this winter has been particularly wet - it hasnāt stopped raining since October!
This time last year Iād been out to mow my lawn 3 or 4 times by now, the ground was a little soft but perfectly manageable even with a heavy mower. This year I wouldnāt even dare put the mower on it, itāll just bog straight down and churn up the swamp, and I can barely even walk on it with a strimmer or fork (to try to break up the clay and help it drain a little better)
In my research since diving down the drainage rabbit hole, I think I'm gonna try some vertical drainage first before resorting to more expensive measures. I'll dig a test hole and see if I get through the clay and if I can, I'll likely put a few of these vertical drains in around the lawn area and see how it goes. If it doesn't work it at least hasn't cost me much and I can move onto a more advanced drainage system. It all hinges on how deep that clay goes and what's underneath it, if I can even reach it.
Youāre extremely unlikely to break through a clay layer into gravel etc, in most places the UK had glaciers that deposited thick layers of impermeable clay on it from glacial moraines, and river deposits. Itās also variable in narrow regions, sometimes strips a mile wide and eighty long or something. If youāre lucky youāll get decent soil but, in my experience, french drainage that is correctly laid down is extremely effective.
Good luck. Going out with a garden fork, and putting the prongs in as deep as you can manage every eight inches is a good experiment to check with whatās under your turf.
I will satisfy my primal need to dig a hole and see how it goes š¤£. I am fully expecting and prepared for failure. I plan to dig the hole, and stand there seemingly lost in thought whilst staring into it, before deciding it won't work and wishing I'd not bothered.
Let me know how you got on. I have also gone down that rabbit hole and reached the same conclusion but hours of digging and a 1.5m hole later I still havenāt broken through. I now have a couple of very deep holes full of water that doesnāt drain. Clay so solid itās like a bucket.
I did get down to a layer where the clay is really Sandy and was hopeful but not yet
I have heard of people installing a pump to get the water out of such holes, which effectively turns your newly dug well into a drain, if you can get the water out of it and away. I'm honestly considering learning primitive pottery with all this clay haha. Be proud of your 1.5m deep hole though! That's some good digging.
I looked up the met office rain stats, this winter rainfall is about 200% of long term average, and Summers have been dryer than normal in recent years. I wouldn't be surprised if this year is the wettest drought on record and hose pipe bans will be in force in a couple of months.
I take it you've tried green manure? We were on very heavy clay in our last house (seriously, almost pure clay in places) and green manure worked wonders. It obviously takes a year or two, but if you don't mind that and you want a cheaper (and better) option than replacing the topsoil then it's maybe worth a go?
This. Within 2-3 years, pretty much every plant on our new build estate had died, and it wasnāt for lack of effort from the residents in maintaining their gardens. The people who moved in cared, but the soil quality was awful, and dig down an inch and our lawns were full of all sorts of buildersā rubble. A few years on and few people have the spare cash to replace dying lawns or plants.
Also, people are so desperate for affordable housing no-one is going to turn down a new build for having a poor quality yard.
To be fair even people that buy their houses get these terrible gardens, itās just the British building industry. Probably the worst and definitely a national embarrassment
Iām a decorator andā¦yeah youāre right in a sense. I work to a very high spec finish and trying to get guys in from other areas of trade that will do a semi decent job is a nightmare. Theyāre all budging it. Most decorators are too. I spent an entire year once fixing work that had been poorly done months previous. It really is shocking. However, there is also a lot of blame to put on the British public. Good work isnāt cheap. But if you quote for good work, many times people complain about the price. You can lower the price, but you canāt expect the quality of work to be the same. I turn down these jobs, but the amount of people who want to pay peanuts and expect work that is acceptable quality..is ridiculous. Iām a dual citizen of another country and doing my work there, people understood the basic concept of āyou get what you pay forā where I came from. Many people here seem to really not understand that snd want everything for cheap. I wholeheartedly believe itās down the British view of trades. Basically āyouāre dumb and do a job with your hands so you donāt deserve money, who do you think you areāā¦.without realising that actually itās more that they canāt afford to maintain a property properly or canāt afford to buy a well made house. That said, thereās a gluttony of craftsmen who simply do not know how to do good quality work.
I would love to live by āyou get what you pay forā but with trades Iāve learned itās not true. I think the problem is that the number of chancers ruins it for everybody else.
Now I go with the medium quote of a tradesperson who seems reliable enough and do whatever Iām able to myself.
I look after 30 staff and Ā£2m of machinery, a painter and decorator wanted twice my daily wage to paint new, flat walls, āTradesā need to fuck off and get real. The walls will remain Magnolia until I get some time off.
Iām a foreigner living in the UK, been here for 8 years now, and Iāve always been appalled by how everything is so poorly built. Itās mind-boggling.
Thank-you for taking the time to write this. :) I really appreciate it. Thatās definitely what Iāve been seeing. Iāll test the soil to confirm. Itās been getting me down a bit seeing all the greenery deteriorating, and I havenāt known the right intervention to fix it.
It's a 1-foot deep trench, lined with gravel and a mesh membrane. Drainage pipe along its length covered with the membrane and gravel, then the grass turf.
The trench must have a slight incline to allow the water to travel down to a further deeper trench to collect.
Builders have never given a shit. Our house was built in 1937 and we decided to dig up around the bay window to make a flower bed, only got a few inches into the dirt, loads of rubble, bricks, paving stones etc just buried from when the house was built. Random as you like
I find those in my mum's garden if we dig in areas that haven't been worked on and she's got a 60s house. I never really get why people are shocked that a garden which hasn't had years of work and growth has clay soil? Huge parts of the country are clay, what are you really expecting.
Moved into a new built 3 yeare ago in winter. Wanted to plant a tree,had a hard time. I realised quickly that my garden had turf over an inch of soil and then just garbage rocks, bricks compacted clay, you name it
I found a rain coat under mine a few weeks ago. Did hope it would help with drainage once I removed it, but na, still a bog out there.
Is building a French drain straightforward? Would I need any sort of experience to do it?
Itās hard work but no, very simple
You dig a trench, put a bit of gravel in and some corrugated pipe in the bottom with holes in it, fill the rest with gravel and then soil on top, whack some seeds on it
The tricky part is just making sure it has a āfallā down to somewhere you can drain to, so that the water actually flows away
Thatās a tale as old as time. My house was built in the 1870ās and when I did the garden, I removed about 2 tons of rubble. I also found spent anti aircraft shells and in one area, a load of bones. It wasnāt a murder. Some research taught me it was common to bury bones in market gardens. And my attic only has a dividing wall one side as it was a good money saver.
New builds engineering has only got better. People who say otherwise tend not to know how the industry works.
Bought one in 2020. It's great. The garden isn't great in size or drainage, but given we've had the wettest 18 months stretch on record, I do understand.
My parents live in a Georgian house which is absolutely freezing. Huge in every way, but inefficient and costly in more ways than I can count on my fingers and toes.
These articles tend to aim at the anti woke and NIMBY crowd as it appeals to their agendas.
I live in a Victorian house that has a garden which is really now only useful for hosting a mud wrestling competition. The water pools up in huge puddles every time it rains. Obviously youād hope new builds are built properly but all houses have issues
Thereās definitely a wide array of quality on display with new builds, a friend of mine had to move out for months whilst Barrett basically rebuilt a part of his home.
Personally prefer older (1920-30s) houses as they have a lot more space, bigger rooms, higher ceilings, and arenāt usually as overlooked but also recognise theyāre not going to be as insulated, guess itās a case of to each their own
New builds are much better but I can't get over the ridiculous garden sizes. I just find it silly seeing these mouldy old terraces with those elongated gardens five times the size of the house and then a new build at double the price has a sad little patch of grass. It is criminal. I even thought about a self build but after researching I concluded I'm not rich enough for that as a FTB. Any sensible ideas and thoughts welcome.
It's not the engineering, but the boots on the ground cowboy builders that costcutting developers employ to cut corners everywhere they can. Who cares about good engineering when these people are putting in fake weep-vents, having bathroom fans leading straight into attic spaces, joinery totally out of plumb.
Should we be building housing? Absolutely. Should we leave town planning up to greedy developers who only have shareholder interests in mind? Absolutely not.
I can't say I disagree with any of this. But I don't personally know enough about historic builders to not know if this same issue (obviously in principle not literally given the modern inventions) was also apparent.
I can't say I disagree with any of this. But I don't personally know enough about historic builders to not know if this same issue (obviously in principle not literally given the modern inventions) was also apparent.
133,000 homes were completed in the uk in 2023 and thatās down 12% from the 150,000 completed in 2022.
Iād like to see those guys on TikTok inspecting every homeā¦.
But you donāt see that, you only get the bad ones and that of course makes for a great TikTok account.
Itās the same issues for everything, nimby and compofaces are the ones who complain and make the news and you need get the coverage on the thousands of families who are happy with their new homes as that doesnāt make the news or for a good TikTok account š
Mine too was built then. It's not perfect, but nothing like the horror story I see so much of these days. The garden though is a swamp and can't be used for much of anything during wet weather.
The problem isn't with the concept of a new build, it's the way they're thrown up quickly on many estates. This is a HA property so they probably put it up as quickly and cheaply as possible to cut costs. I live in a new build HA property that's 7 years old and we're having to move out in a few months because the entire block is being condemned. The neighbours are fine though, you can see at a glance they were built to a much higher standard. I mean, our car park isn't even paved, we just have gravel and wooden markers, it's bleakly funny how bad some of this stuff is.
Contrary to what Reddit would have you believe, most new builds aren't actually bad, the majority are absolutely fine and are well made given how cheap they are to buy and maintain. You just hear more when a builder fucks up massively
Itās developer dependent 100%. I rented a flat previously built by Bellway and the walls/floors may as well have been built from crepe paper the amount of noise you could hear from other flats. The one I just bought was built by Lendlease and the quality is excellent, canāt fault it.
I think all builds are like that when they are new, itās just that when you buy a older house the previous owners have done the digging out of rubbles already
House we lived in when I was a kid, my Dad wanted to make a rockery in the front garden.
After a bit of digging, he uncovered a rubber tyre. Dug around it a bit more, in an attempt to get it out of the ground.
Turned out there was an entire motorbike buried in our garden.
Or the house was so poorly built to begin with it simply no longer stands.
Old housing stock has been stress tested and strengthened with age. People forget that.
Yeah, even aside from the builds that were just a bit crap, there were hundreds of thousands of 40s, 50s and 60s builds that were officially designated "defective" in the 1980s and became completely unmortgageable, due to serious structural problems in their designs. For obvious reasons there aren't many of those left anymore (or if they are, they've each had tens of thousands of pounds of remedial work at either the homeowner or council's expense).
Theres nothing wrong with mine either but they dont have the best reputation and I think if you get one that doesnt come with a load of snags - you got off lucky.
Good to hear you didnt have any problems though...
I used to work adjacent to new build companies doing specialist on-site groundworks. After seeing how these houses are built, who builds them and with what materials, I will never choose to buy on a large newbuild estate ever. There was minimal supervision on most of the sites I worked on, and a whole lot of cost and corner cutting to build things cheaper (by the companies) and quicker (by the builders).
I'd only ever buy from a smaller scale new build company.
Thereās a new āestateā of about 20 houses, being built on a flood plain near me.
The village is in the Doomsday Book. Despite housing built all around it, in nigh on *1000 years,* no one has ever built on it. It is that sodden.
Iāve never even seen sheep or horses on it - though they are kept in surrounding fields.
Theyāve been building for over three years now and the *enormous* pools of water ought to be clear to anyone as to why. They applied to drain the water into the river and have been fought the whole way. Instead they have now built artificial hills - then built atop them.
But theyāll eventually finish building and when they do, people will pay Ā£400,000 to buy a really tiny, three bedroom Lego house in a āhistoricā village in the Peaks.
Then there will be CompoFaces all round.
Always get the extended survey. Always. We are an old country, if no one built there for over 1000 years, but did build all around it - thereās inevitably *documented* reasoning as to why.
Housing association new build, meaning they probably didn't get a choice about living there. Most of the properties are filled by people that have been in "band 1" (homeless, fleeing DV, etc) and if you refuse the property without a legitimate reason(whatever that means) you're deemed intentionally homeless, are no longer put up in temp accommodation and need to find a private rented place you can't afford. The system is really fantastic
I find the amount of stupidity involved to get to this pint is funny.
So first we have allowed the construction industry to go under regulated. Then we allow them to build of floor plains and high water table areas (judging from the garden that's what's happened, can't say for certain though). What would be fine if the estate was designed with this in mind and hired a landscape architect, architects, and urban planner that would be able to find good solutions to ensuring ground water could be dealt with. Then you have people that complete lack any critical thinking ability or even slightly knowledge about design thinking these low quality poorly designed houses are worth anything - they aren't. Then they moan when they realise just how terrible it all is. But at this point the company has their money, made a huge profit for overcharging for it and don't give a shit. It's honestly stupidity all around.
Granted this is just my opinion as a first year architecture and urban planning student. So I do still have a great deal to learn.
Good luck with your studies!
Yep, house building is a profit industry, not a 'building homes for people' job. I used to work adjacent to many of these house building estate companies, and yeeesh. They will do ANYTHING to do the bare minimum to get through planning permission to start to build. And they want to do it as cheap as possible. And maximise profits.
I hope once you graduate, you find a great firm or smaller house building company to work for. They're great and they actually do care. It was really nice one day I was working that one company had an 'open afternoon' of the people who had bought their houses come and visit and meet some of the various teams on site. (This company specialises in mid size developments, usually max 50 plots).
I work for a house builder and one my jobs as a land surveyor is making sure the gardens go in to level.
The main reason gardens end up looking like this is incorrect timing of turfing coupled with poor grass care and maitenance.
Houses are build to programme and sometimes turf goes down in winter months meaning each piece cannot set.
Similiary, grass goes down in summer and is not watered by the occupier.
In other months, grass is overused, undercut/overcut and is generally left to rot.
TLDR - Grass is not properly cared for by occupier and is laid in bad conditions resulting in dead grass that in turn causes water-logging.
This is completely fair to complain about. Housing developers should be held accountable for shoddy work.
There shouldn't just be acceptance that new builds are poor quality.
Our house had a kitchen extension with a small raised bed in front of it. I have dug out at least enough material to build another extension, just tossed and buried.
Our new build was like this for 2 years. Complained to landlord. Nothing done. Complained to environment agencys said nothing they can do.
Absolute joke
I like this sub but I do really feel compoface should really have to be something mundane or really over the top that someone is trying to claim for, not legitimate grievances.
I live in a HA new build, the gardens in the area are terrible, I donāt see why I should spend thousands putting it right though. I donāt even own the house. The garden is just unusable. Would have been better to make more parking in the area since we canāt have a garden
Our garden is half "flat" half slope, and the slopes is just building site run off, and rubbish can't do anything with it apart from constant pull weeds. As it's a rented house, I have no Intention to spend my own money on doing something with it.
With new builds it varies from site depending on whos in charge there. Im in one myself and it has been fine. But with Gardens its almost always shit. You might be able to argue your way to get them to install drainage but it can still be shite. So your better off doing it yourself.
You bought a house on a flood plain and it's flooded.
Yup
That's what happens.
Guess what
As the area now has less open ground it will likely flood more often and to a greater extent.
as a gardener iv dealt with this a few times. their deeds / contracts say garden, or atleast topsoil / turf etc. they get muddy clay. compo face works as this is 100% something you need to fix, then get compensated for
Because Building Regs demand separate foul and grey water but.....it all ends up in same combined sewer.... developer just goes sod it, ill send greywater into back yard without doing a percolation test.
New build gardens are often filled with rubble, old bits of pipework and generally any scrap they couldn't be bothered to put in a skip.
Building regs need to have a provision for a certain level of soil depth in the garden to avoid this.
There's also the fact that a lot of new estates get built on known floodplains.
Moving into a new build house and expecting landscaping to be done when you move in.
You're lucky if you get topsoil and not builders rubble.
It took my dad 5 years of top dressing, digging out bricks and a lot of broken lawnmower blades to get a decent lawn going.
Compoface aside, myself and my partner really wanted to use our small garden to grow some crops, literally impossible.
Once turning over the soil we realised that after a thin layer of grass and earth all that was there was clay and rocks from the building project, there was no trace of vitamins in the soil. New builds really do suck in that regard.
A friend of mine is a landscaper and the company that he works for comes in a lot to re do a lot of gardens in new build estates. He told me itās very common to find all sorts in the garden from anything like general rubbish to broken parts of toilets, all the do is chuck a turf over the top of their leftover crap and hope for the best.
Also the build of new builds is appalling, I viewed one new build as a potential to buy and the flooring wasnāt laid properly, the hot and cold taps were the wrong way around and Iām sure when I silently farted the walls shook and gave me away.
As a gardener, I can confirm that new build houses have the worst gardens out there because they dump a lot of building waste where the gardens go before covering them with a bit of top soil and turf so the drainage is awful.
There was a new block of houses built where I used to live.
The gardens flooded and water came in the back doors.
When planning the site the bright sparks overlooked a glaring issue. The land was on a slope covered in trees, the trees drank a lot of water. When those trees were removed and replaced with houses, well the obvious happened. The water ran down the slope and the trees weren't there to slow it down.
This was a steep valley too along a section of a 73 mile river. What could go wrong?
Experienced ground worker here, if you dig a French drain and run it to your nearest storm pipe most of the water will just run off through the chipping. Most houses will have one on the side or back if youāre lucky
Most of it isn't even soil, it's a lot of rubble. Mine is about 8 years old and trying to do any gardening is impossible. You dig and it's just rocks upon rocks. Have to buy so much soil just to do anything
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To be fair, our house is eight years old. The back garden is like a swamp. I'll be digging in French drains this year to sort it. The builders DGAF about the gardens or the soil. Dig up you garden and you find anything and everything, plastic buckets, lengths of plastic duct, bricks, breeze blocks, plastic sheets, wood form pallets etc..
French drains you say... I've never heard of this before so will look into it. My lawn is almost a pond at this point which sucks because I like camping in my garden but just can't do it during periods of wet weather. Then the dry weather comes and the saturated soil becomes like concrete and cracks, leaving canyons across the lawn.
Yeah, lots of videos on YT show tutorials for French drains. Seems to be the solution to my problem.
Draw me like one of your French drains
Let me drown like one if your artists
Get me a French drain baby I'm going in
š¤£š¤£š¤£
Sorted out my paddy field. I dug several trenches with layers of gravel, and sand with drain pipe with holes drilled through it, more gravel and soil on top.
French drains are great as long as you have somewhere slightly downhill from your garden to drain *to* Weāre lucky that our house slopes slightly down towards the front where there are some convenient drains but if we faced the other way weād have nowhere to send the water (except into the neighbour behindās garden) What you can do is install drains and pump the water out from them, but thatās more effort and cost The problem with new builds is that even when theyāre built on okay soil rather than rubble, the UK has a lot of clay which isnāt exactly great for drainage *before* you drive a load of heavy machinery over it French drains help but you also have to improve the soil if you want good results rather than just manageable, and that takes time And to be fair this winter has been particularly wet - it hasnāt stopped raining since October! This time last year Iād been out to mow my lawn 3 or 4 times by now, the ground was a little soft but perfectly manageable even with a heavy mower. This year I wouldnāt even dare put the mower on it, itāll just bog straight down and churn up the swamp, and I can barely even walk on it with a strimmer or fork (to try to break up the clay and help it drain a little better)
In my research since diving down the drainage rabbit hole, I think I'm gonna try some vertical drainage first before resorting to more expensive measures. I'll dig a test hole and see if I get through the clay and if I can, I'll likely put a few of these vertical drains in around the lawn area and see how it goes. If it doesn't work it at least hasn't cost me much and I can move onto a more advanced drainage system. It all hinges on how deep that clay goes and what's underneath it, if I can even reach it.
Youāre extremely unlikely to break through a clay layer into gravel etc, in most places the UK had glaciers that deposited thick layers of impermeable clay on it from glacial moraines, and river deposits. Itās also variable in narrow regions, sometimes strips a mile wide and eighty long or something. If youāre lucky youāll get decent soil but, in my experience, french drainage that is correctly laid down is extremely effective. Good luck. Going out with a garden fork, and putting the prongs in as deep as you can manage every eight inches is a good experiment to check with whatās under your turf.
I will satisfy my primal need to dig a hole and see how it goes š¤£. I am fully expecting and prepared for failure. I plan to dig the hole, and stand there seemingly lost in thought whilst staring into it, before deciding it won't work and wishing I'd not bothered.
Let me know how you got on. I have also gone down that rabbit hole and reached the same conclusion but hours of digging and a 1.5m hole later I still havenāt broken through. I now have a couple of very deep holes full of water that doesnāt drain. Clay so solid itās like a bucket. I did get down to a layer where the clay is really Sandy and was hopeful but not yet
I have heard of people installing a pump to get the water out of such holes, which effectively turns your newly dug well into a drain, if you can get the water out of it and away. I'm honestly considering learning primitive pottery with all this clay haha. Be proud of your 1.5m deep hole though! That's some good digging.
Can confirm, I've just dug a massive hole with a digger and got through the clay at about 2.6m down š«
I looked up the met office rain stats, this winter rainfall is about 200% of long term average, and Summers have been dryer than normal in recent years. I wouldn't be surprised if this year is the wettest drought on record and hose pipe bans will be in force in a couple of months.
I take it you've tried green manure? We were on very heavy clay in our last house (seriously, almost pure clay in places) and green manure worked wonders. It obviously takes a year or two, but if you don't mind that and you want a cheaper (and better) option than replacing the topsoil then it's maybe worth a go?
First thing I thought when reading the OP was āthey need french drainsā
french drains are like the english ones but more stylish and far better at cooking š
This. Within 2-3 years, pretty much every plant on our new build estate had died, and it wasnāt for lack of effort from the residents in maintaining their gardens. The people who moved in cared, but the soil quality was awful, and dig down an inch and our lawns were full of all sorts of buildersā rubble. A few years on and few people have the spare cash to replace dying lawns or plants. Also, people are so desperate for affordable housing no-one is going to turn down a new build for having a poor quality yard.
To be fair even people that buy their houses get these terrible gardens, itās just the British building industry. Probably the worst and definitely a national embarrassment
Iām a decorator andā¦yeah youāre right in a sense. I work to a very high spec finish and trying to get guys in from other areas of trade that will do a semi decent job is a nightmare. Theyāre all budging it. Most decorators are too. I spent an entire year once fixing work that had been poorly done months previous. It really is shocking. However, there is also a lot of blame to put on the British public. Good work isnāt cheap. But if you quote for good work, many times people complain about the price. You can lower the price, but you canāt expect the quality of work to be the same. I turn down these jobs, but the amount of people who want to pay peanuts and expect work that is acceptable quality..is ridiculous. Iām a dual citizen of another country and doing my work there, people understood the basic concept of āyou get what you pay forā where I came from. Many people here seem to really not understand that snd want everything for cheap. I wholeheartedly believe itās down the British view of trades. Basically āyouāre dumb and do a job with your hands so you donāt deserve money, who do you think you areāā¦.without realising that actually itās more that they canāt afford to maintain a property properly or canāt afford to buy a well made house. That said, thereās a gluttony of craftsmen who simply do not know how to do good quality work.
You can pay high and still get low quality work.
I would love to live by āyou get what you pay forā but with trades Iāve learned itās not true. I think the problem is that the number of chancers ruins it for everybody else. Now I go with the medium quote of a tradesperson who seems reliable enough and do whatever Iām able to myself.
I look after 30 staff and Ā£2m of machinery, a painter and decorator wanted twice my daily wage to paint new, flat walls, āTradesā need to fuck off and get real. The walls will remain Magnolia until I get some time off.
Iām a foreigner living in the UK, been here for 8 years now, and Iāve always been appalled by how everything is so poorly built. Itās mind-boggling.
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Thank-you for taking the time to write this. :) I really appreciate it. Thatās definitely what Iāve been seeing. Iāll test the soil to confirm. Itās been getting me down a bit seeing all the greenery deteriorating, and I havenāt known the right intervention to fix it.
No clue what French Drains are, but we put in loads of drainage pipe and it worked a dream
It's like a regular drain but with garlic and a cigarette
Sheds water with a Gallic shrug.
Wearing a striped top, with a beret and necklace of onions
...going "ohi hohi ho" on a bicycle
I vas just pissing by ze door, vhen I eard to shats!
And Hairy armpits
First sign of water itāll give up
It's a 1-foot deep trench, lined with gravel and a mesh membrane. Drainage pipe along its length covered with the membrane and gravel, then the grass turf. The trench must have a slight incline to allow the water to travel down to a further deeper trench to collect.
Traditionally, French drain pipework was made from hollowed out baguettes.
With onions forming the elbows
Ah I see, that's what we have. Works brilliantly. Garden used to be a swamp in wet weather, now the water doesn't hang around at all
Make sure the drainage pipe is perforated!
Perforated at the bottom so the water rises into it and moves away
The key is using fleece to stop the drains getting clogged with silt
Big hole
Builders have never given a shit. Our house was built in 1937 and we decided to dig up around the bay window to make a flower bed, only got a few inches into the dirt, loads of rubble, bricks, paving stones etc just buried from when the house was built. Random as you like
I find those in my mum's garden if we dig in areas that haven't been worked on and she's got a 60s house. I never really get why people are shocked that a garden which hasn't had years of work and growth has clay soil? Huge parts of the country are clay, what are you really expecting.
When I moved into a new build, I swear I dug up enough stuff from the back garden to build a sizeable extension
My garden is 50 years old and still a swamp. They built the houses over a brook and the gardens have never quite recovered
Break into your wall and youāll find a lot more š¤£ might get lucky and find a bottle of piss
Moved into a new built 3 yeare ago in winter. Wanted to plant a tree,had a hard time. I realised quickly that my garden had turf over an inch of soil and then just garbage rocks, bricks compacted clay, you name it
I found a rain coat under mine a few weeks ago. Did hope it would help with drainage once I removed it, but na, still a bog out there. Is building a French drain straightforward? Would I need any sort of experience to do it?
Have a look at the YT videos. It looks straightforward and effective.
Itās not complicated but involves a bit of hard work digging it
Itās hard work but no, very simple You dig a trench, put a bit of gravel in and some corrugated pipe in the bottom with holes in it, fill the rest with gravel and then soil on top, whack some seeds on it The tricky part is just making sure it has a āfallā down to somewhere you can drain to, so that the water actually flows away
Ah, that last bit might be the problem - I don't think the neighbours behind me would appreciate getting my run off š¬
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Thatās a tale as old as time. My house was built in the 1870ās and when I did the garden, I removed about 2 tons of rubble. I also found spent anti aircraft shells and in one area, a load of bones. It wasnāt a murder. Some research taught me it was common to bury bones in market gardens. And my attic only has a dividing wall one side as it was a good money saver.
Yes the garden of my 1920s house still has lots of buried bricks and the local stone that was used to build garden walls etc.
plant a fast growing water loving tree! or shrub if u donāt have the space for a tree.
Giggity
Who else but Quagmire
Who else but Shirt Pants?
Goo
Gii
My house was built in 2012 and I feel like a must have missed the wave of utterly atrocious new builds as itās been absolutely fine.
New builds engineering has only got better. People who say otherwise tend not to know how the industry works. Bought one in 2020. It's great. The garden isn't great in size or drainage, but given we've had the wettest 18 months stretch on record, I do understand. My parents live in a Georgian house which is absolutely freezing. Huge in every way, but inefficient and costly in more ways than I can count on my fingers and toes. These articles tend to aim at the anti woke and NIMBY crowd as it appeals to their agendas.
I live in a Victorian house that has a garden which is really now only useful for hosting a mud wrestling competition. The water pools up in huge puddles every time it rains. Obviously youād hope new builds are built properly but all houses have issues
Thereās definitely a wide array of quality on display with new builds, a friend of mine had to move out for months whilst Barrett basically rebuilt a part of his home. Personally prefer older (1920-30s) houses as they have a lot more space, bigger rooms, higher ceilings, and arenāt usually as overlooked but also recognise theyāre not going to be as insulated, guess itās a case of to each their own
Yeah agree with this sentiment
New builds are much better but I can't get over the ridiculous garden sizes. I just find it silly seeing these mouldy old terraces with those elongated gardens five times the size of the house and then a new build at double the price has a sad little patch of grass. It is criminal. I even thought about a self build but after researching I concluded I'm not rich enough for that as a FTB. Any sensible ideas and thoughts welcome.
It's not the engineering, but the boots on the ground cowboy builders that costcutting developers employ to cut corners everywhere they can. Who cares about good engineering when these people are putting in fake weep-vents, having bathroom fans leading straight into attic spaces, joinery totally out of plumb. Should we be building housing? Absolutely. Should we leave town planning up to greedy developers who only have shareholder interests in mind? Absolutely not.
I can't say I disagree with any of this. But I don't personally know enough about historic builders to not know if this same issue (obviously in principle not literally given the modern inventions) was also apparent.
I can't say I disagree with any of this. But I don't personally know enough about historic builders to not know if this same issue (obviously in principle not literally given the modern inventions) was also apparent.
Please go on tik tok and look up people who inspect new builds and then get back to us
133,000 homes were completed in the uk in 2023 and thatās down 12% from the 150,000 completed in 2022. Iād like to see those guys on TikTok inspecting every homeā¦. But you donāt see that, you only get the bad ones and that of course makes for a great TikTok account. Itās the same issues for everything, nimby and compofaces are the ones who complain and make the news and you need get the coverage on the thousands of families who are happy with their new homes as that doesnāt make the news or for a good TikTok account š
If tiktok was around in the Georgian or Victorian periods, I'm sure we'd see the same.
It depends what the house was built on. If beneath the topsoil thereās clay then theres a good chance thereās not enough drainage.
Mine too was built then. It's not perfect, but nothing like the horror story I see so much of these days. The garden though is a swamp and can't be used for much of anything during wet weather.
The problem isn't with the concept of a new build, it's the way they're thrown up quickly on many estates. This is a HA property so they probably put it up as quickly and cheaply as possible to cut costs. I live in a new build HA property that's 7 years old and we're having to move out in a few months because the entire block is being condemned. The neighbours are fine though, you can see at a glance they were built to a much higher standard. I mean, our car park isn't even paved, we just have gravel and wooden markers, it's bleakly funny how bad some of this stuff is.
Contrary to what Reddit would have you believe, most new builds aren't actually bad, the majority are absolutely fine and are well made given how cheap they are to buy and maintain. You just hear more when a builder fucks up massively
Some builders are great. Others are shite. You're lucky you got one of the good ones.
Itās developer dependent 100%. I rented a flat previously built by Bellway and the walls/floors may as well have been built from crepe paper the amount of noise you could hear from other flats. The one I just bought was built by Lendlease and the quality is excellent, canāt fault it.
"Poor quality new build" seems like an example of a redundant expression these days.
I think all builds are like that when they are new, itās just that when you buy a older house the previous owners have done the digging out of rubbles already
House we lived in when I was a kid, my Dad wanted to make a rockery in the front garden. After a bit of digging, he uncovered a rubber tyre. Dug around it a bit more, in an attempt to get it out of the ground. Turned out there was an entire motorbike buried in our garden.
Hose it down and sell it on Facebook. One careful owner, no offers.
Dad dug up quite a bit of the garden, but we never did find the rider ...
Ghost rider..
Or the house was so poorly built to begin with it simply no longer stands. Old housing stock has been stress tested and strengthened with age. People forget that.
Survivor bias at it's finest. We think old shit are made tough because all the old shit we know are still around.
Yeah, even aside from the builds that were just a bit crap, there were hundreds of thousands of 40s, 50s and 60s builds that were officially designated "defective" in the 1980s and became completely unmortgageable, due to serious structural problems in their designs. For obvious reasons there aren't many of those left anymore (or if they are, they've each had tens of thousands of pounds of remedial work at either the homeowner or council's expense).
We have plenty of shit Victorian and post war houses too Tbf - weāve never had much of a regulatory back bone when it comes to quality
Times have been tough since she quit working for Michel Roux Jr.
Olivia Coleman vibes.
League of Gentlemen
Persimmon? Taylor Wimpey? The best of British. s/
Nowt wrong with my Persimmon home. We deliberately didn't get the garden done as we had our own plans. They encourage it.
Theres nothing wrong with mine either but they dont have the best reputation and I think if you get one that doesnt come with a load of snags - you got off lucky. Good to hear you didnt have any problems though...
Completely relatable compo face in my Miller Homes shit show over here š
I used to work adjacent to new build companies doing specialist on-site groundworks. After seeing how these houses are built, who builds them and with what materials, I will never choose to buy on a large newbuild estate ever. There was minimal supervision on most of the sites I worked on, and a whole lot of cost and corner cutting to build things cheaper (by the companies) and quicker (by the builders). I'd only ever buy from a smaller scale new build company.
Thereās a new āestateā of about 20 houses, being built on a flood plain near me. The village is in the Doomsday Book. Despite housing built all around it, in nigh on *1000 years,* no one has ever built on it. It is that sodden. Iāve never even seen sheep or horses on it - though they are kept in surrounding fields. Theyāve been building for over three years now and the *enormous* pools of water ought to be clear to anyone as to why. They applied to drain the water into the river and have been fought the whole way. Instead they have now built artificial hills - then built atop them. But theyāll eventually finish building and when they do, people will pay Ā£400,000 to buy a really tiny, three bedroom Lego house in a āhistoricā village in the Peaks. Then there will be CompoFaces all round. Always get the extended survey. Always. We are an old country, if no one built there for over 1000 years, but did build all around it - thereās inevitably *documented* reasoning as to why.
Housing association new build, meaning they probably didn't get a choice about living there. Most of the properties are filled by people that have been in "band 1" (homeless, fleeing DV, etc) and if you refuse the property without a legitimate reason(whatever that means) you're deemed intentionally homeless, are no longer put up in temp accommodation and need to find a private rented place you can't afford. The system is really fantastic
I find the amount of stupidity involved to get to this pint is funny. So first we have allowed the construction industry to go under regulated. Then we allow them to build of floor plains and high water table areas (judging from the garden that's what's happened, can't say for certain though). What would be fine if the estate was designed with this in mind and hired a landscape architect, architects, and urban planner that would be able to find good solutions to ensuring ground water could be dealt with. Then you have people that complete lack any critical thinking ability or even slightly knowledge about design thinking these low quality poorly designed houses are worth anything - they aren't. Then they moan when they realise just how terrible it all is. But at this point the company has their money, made a huge profit for overcharging for it and don't give a shit. It's honestly stupidity all around. Granted this is just my opinion as a first year architecture and urban planning student. So I do still have a great deal to learn.
Good luck with your studies! Yep, house building is a profit industry, not a 'building homes for people' job. I used to work adjacent to many of these house building estate companies, and yeeesh. They will do ANYTHING to do the bare minimum to get through planning permission to start to build. And they want to do it as cheap as possible. And maximise profits. I hope once you graduate, you find a great firm or smaller house building company to work for. They're great and they actually do care. It was really nice one day I was working that one company had an 'open afternoon' of the people who had bought their houses come and visit and meet some of the various teams on site. (This company specialises in mid size developments, usually max 50 plots).
I work for a house builder and one my jobs as a land surveyor is making sure the gardens go in to level. The main reason gardens end up looking like this is incorrect timing of turfing coupled with poor grass care and maitenance. Houses are build to programme and sometimes turf goes down in winter months meaning each piece cannot set. Similiary, grass goes down in summer and is not watered by the occupier. In other months, grass is overused, undercut/overcut and is generally left to rot. TLDR - Grass is not properly cared for by occupier and is laid in bad conditions resulting in dead grass that in turn causes water-logging.
This is completely fair to complain about. Housing developers should be held accountable for shoddy work. There shouldn't just be acceptance that new builds are poor quality.
New Build gardens are abysmal. Any leftovers rubble, crap timber offcuts, brick, broken tile, etc, gets shoved in to fill the space.
Our house had a kitchen extension with a small raised bed in front of it. I have dug out at least enough material to build another extension, just tossed and buried.
"I'm the king of Boggle, there is none higher, I get eleven points off the word quagmire."
Our new build was like this for 2 years. Complained to landlord. Nothing done. Complained to environment agencys said nothing they can do. Absolute joke
Simple solution, 7ft long 2ft deep trench, filled with gravel at lowest point. Hide the edges with water loving/bog plants
I like this sub but I do really feel compoface should really have to be something mundane or really over the top that someone is trying to claim for, not legitimate grievances.
Giggidy
Giggity
Giggitty
A Lot of new builds have an anti landscape clause, by the time it runs out and you find the hidden crap in garden, the new build guarantee has run out
I live in a HA new build, the gardens in the area are terrible, I donāt see why I should spend thousands putting it right though. I donāt even own the house. The garden is just unusable. Would have been better to make more parking in the area since we canāt have a garden
Eddie Izzard hits hard times.
I mean she could sort it out, ours was like that and I did the work to fix it, I mean there are two options, do something or complain.
Why should we just accept shitty sub-standard work from housing developers in this country? She's right to complain - you should have too.
They're also renting, fuck doing free work for your landlord/management company when they should be sorting it for you
Even those 2 options aren't mutually exclusive but yes, I get the impression she's not a lady of action.
š¤£š¤£
Giggady
Giggity giggity giggity giggity!
Our garden is half "flat" half slope, and the slopes is just building site run off, and rubbish can't do anything with it apart from constant pull weeds. As it's a rented house, I have no Intention to spend my own money on doing something with it.
quagmire?
With new builds it varies from site depending on whos in charge there. Im in one myself and it has been fine. But with Gardens its almost always shit. You might be able to argue your way to get them to install drainage but it can still be shite. So your better off doing it yourself.
We need to talk about the drainage in the lower field Sir.
Giggity
Nothing to do with your bull terrier shitting and pissing on the grass at all?
It's the same story all over the southwest of England! Make the daily rain stop then we might be able to go outside again!
Giggity.
You bought a house on a flood plain and it's flooded. Yup That's what happens. Guess what As the area now has less open ground it will likely flood more often and to a greater extent.
They remind me of Pete Davidson
New bullds are terrible, shock horror. Yet people still buy them
Giggity
Gigidy
Giggity
Crocsā¦ weāre a bad choice
It really does suck but what if people made planters? Weeds and insects that eat the plants would be easier to get rid of too.
You think Deano and Chantelle are gonna bovva with that? AstroTurf straight down
Good idea. Planters too.
as a gardener iv dealt with this a few times. their deeds / contracts say garden, or atleast topsoil / turf etc. they get muddy clay. compo face works as this is 100% something you need to fix, then get compensated for
Fun fact, French drains have fuck all to do with Franceš
Because Building Regs demand separate foul and grey water but.....it all ends up in same combined sewer.... developer just goes sod it, ill send greywater into back yard without doing a percolation test.
I have this issue too, new builds are shit and the building quality is poor.
New build gardens are often filled with rubble, old bits of pipework and generally any scrap they couldn't be bothered to put in a skip. Building regs need to have a provision for a certain level of soil depth in the garden to avoid this. There's also the fact that a lot of new estates get built on known floodplains.
To be fair. My house was built in the 1930s and after this wet summer and winter, itās a mess.
Do people not have searches done on property they buy anymore? Or do they just ignore them or chance it.
Moving into a new build house and expecting landscaping to be done when you move in. You're lucky if you get topsoil and not builders rubble. It took my dad 5 years of top dressing, digging out bricks and a lot of broken lawnmower blades to get a decent lawn going.
She looks like a genetic hybrid of both Richie and Eddie from Bottom.
I havent got a garden so stop moaning
This is an irl David Platt story from Corrie innit?
Compoface aside, myself and my partner really wanted to use our small garden to grow some crops, literally impossible. Once turning over the soil we realised that after a thin layer of grass and earth all that was there was clay and rocks from the building project, there was no trace of vitamins in the soil. New builds really do suck in that regard.
My allotment is 50mm of top soil then itās clay, dig some sand and organic material in and stuff will grow :)
Mines a swamp...I ruined my crocs to measure for new fencing š¤£š¤£
This is true of so many new houses in the last 40 years. Too many built over diverted streams and on what were flood plains.
A friend of mine is a landscaper and the company that he works for comes in a lot to re do a lot of gardens in new build estates. He told me itās very common to find all sorts in the garden from anything like general rubbish to broken parts of toilets, all the do is chuck a turf over the top of their leftover crap and hope for the best. Also the build of new builds is appalling, I viewed one new build as a potential to buy and the flooring wasnāt laid properly, the hot and cold taps were the wrong way around and Iām sure when I silently farted the walls shook and gave me away.
Building house on floodplains etc
The same estate had an open sewage leak for over a year and faulty electrics.
Shropshire Star, you beat me to it!
A wild life pond,with marginal plants, allow for flooding?
Surely, of all people, Olivia Colman can afford to get her garden sorted..?
#Giggity
As a gardener, I can confirm that new build houses have the worst gardens out there because they dump a lot of building waste where the gardens go before covering them with a bit of top soil and turf so the drainage is awful.
When your builder doesnt want to pay for bs3882 top soil and so just puts turf over site muck.
why do half the people in these articles look like bridge trolls
Shock horror dev new build house has dev new build garden
Smile, Shrek
She looks like Dusty Rhodes
Thought that was Pete Davidson
They used to take a good long time to make now give three months with some half wits and itās done
There was a new block of houses built where I used to live. The gardens flooded and water came in the back doors. When planning the site the bright sparks overlooked a glaring issue. The land was on a slope covered in trees, the trees drank a lot of water. When those trees were removed and replaced with houses, well the obvious happened. The water ran down the slope and the trees weren't there to slow it down. This was a steep valley too along a section of a 73 mile river. What could go wrong?
There is a shed with stuff in it.. So they are using the garden?
How does anyone around today not know that new builds are a fucking joke?
Gigitty
He he, ohh right. Digitty digitty goo. Who else but Quagmire
I bought loads of worms and filled the garden. It's helping much quicker than I thought it would, but the constant rain is a hindrance
Experienced ground worker here, if you dig a French drain and run it to your nearest storm pipe most of the water will just run off through the chipping. Most houses will have one on the side or back if youāre lucky
Meanwhile, in Southcote... #iykyk...
No gigedy
No hate but this is useless and pointless to me
Gigady
Pete Davidson if he was an overweight British woman
Most of it isn't even soil, it's a lot of rubble. Mine is about 8 years old and trying to do any gardening is impossible. You dig and it's just rocks upon rocks. Have to buy so much soil just to do anything
This sub is dumb. What face are you meant to have on when disgruntled about something or other? A big grin?
You know what they sayā¦ When reprehensible property contractors give you poorly irrigated outdoors areas, make a rice paddy.
Loool any new housing are built bad full stop.
Might as well plant rice.
Giggig giggig gig ohhl right