Soakway Testing

hondaguy01

I am having difficulty finding someone to conduct soakway test to BRE 365 standard and storm water drain design in the Dublin south / dublin west area , this test is now compulsory part of Dublin City council current planning regulations , can anyone help with name of people who are qualified in conducting this test. The property is a regular corporation house.

Metric Tensor

Any civil engineer should be sufficiently qualified to carry out the test and associated soakaway design. The test itself is pretty easy to do and the designs arising from the test require a moderate level of mathematical ability.

The main problem is you need a large excavator and tremendous amounts of water to do a proper BRE 365 test. It involves a 2-3m deep hole being filled 3 times to the top. For that you'll probably need vacuum tankers drawing from a nearby water source. You won't be able to just fill it from your tap! Most consulting engineers who "do" the test wouldn't have that kind of machinery so you would need to take on a separate contractor to dig the hole and fill it with water, etc.

If it's a corporation house is probably has a relatively small back garden? Can you get tractors and excavators in to it?

BRE 365 is the gold standard for soakaway design but it's really designed for large scale soakaway design - housing estates, etc. Why do you need it done? If it's for a soakaway from the roof of a domestic house the local authority might accept some sort of hybrid test? (N.B. I have no idea if they will or not but hauling tanker loads of water and excavators into the back garden of a semi-d seems like overkill to me!)