Maintaining and Improving Sustainable Drainage

These two terms go hand in hand – monitoring sustainable drainage IS the way to improve sustainable drainage.

It’s crucial you monitor your systems not just for effectiveness at reducing sitting water and waterlogging, but also so the system performs at its utmost capacity, and avoids any breaks and leakages along the way that might end up more costly to repair than prevent.

Monitoring your SuDS system for signs of damage doesn’t have to be a lengthy task, checks can be carried out as infrequently as once a month, but it’s important they are done regularly to assess any risk of damage and therefore decide the best way to fix it.

Here are some of the best ways to monitor and maintain your sustainable drainage system:

Regular Maintenance

Regular maintenance should include activities such as litter picking and grass cutting, as well as inspection of your inlets and outlets. This helps to prevent any waste from entering the system and cut grass will also give you a better indication of how waterlogged your space is, which can be a good indicator of a broken on ineffective system.

Occasional Maintenance

This type of maintenance may include actually getting inside your system to check how it’s working. In this circumstance, you would be checking for silt build up around your silt traps and catchpit chambers and looking to clear this, and also managing any vegetation around any of the components.

Whilst regular maintenance will help you notice any external issues, this form of maintenance is more focused on the internal properties of the system.

Repairs and Remedial Maintenance

You’ll want to hope you never run into having to perform this type of maintenance. Remedial maintenance is only required once you’ve identified a problem with your sustainable drainage system and need to fix it. Whether it be a burst pipe, erosion issue, or too much silt build up, it can cause serious harm in your system.

This is the reason why more frequent maintenance is so useful – you can identify small issues before they become huge, costly problems to fix.