Ludlow · SY8

Soakaway Installation & Repair in Ludlow

Percolation testing, drainage field design, and installation or repair of soakaways for septic tanks and treatment plants. Serving Ludlow and the surrounding villages, including Bromfield, Caynham, Ashford Carbonel, Clee Hill.

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Photo: Tips For Travellers · CC BY 2.0

The soakaway, properly called a drainage field when it serves a septic tank or treatment plant, is where your system finally hands the water back to the ground. It is also the component that fails most expensively, because a clogged or collapsed drainage field usually means excavation and fresh land.

Outside Ludlow itself, off-mains is simply how south Shropshire works. The Corvedale, the Clee slopes and the Teme valley are dotted with properties on private systems, many of them older installations that predate modern standards, and a good number still arranged in ways the 2020 rules no longer allow.

Soakaway performance is decided by the soil. Free-draining sandy or loamy ground takes water readily; heavy clay barely takes it at all. Large parts of Shropshire, particularly across the north of the county, sit on glacial clays where percolation is poor, and that has to be respected in the design. A drainage field built without a proper percolation test is a drainage field built on hope.

Ground conditions around Ludlow

South Shropshire’s geology is old and varied. Around Ludlow you move between river valley soils along the Teme and Corve, heavier ground in the vales, and thin stony soils on the Clee Hills, where depth to rock can be the limiting factor for a drainage field rather than percolation alone.

Watercourses and the rules around Ludlow

The Teme, the Corve and the Ledwyche Brook drain the district, all watercourses the Environment Agency cares about. Plenty of older tanks in these valleys were piped to a brook or ditch in a previous era, precisely the arrangement that now has to be upgraded to a treatment plant or drainage field.

What the service includes

Percolation tests to BS 6297 with written results
Drainage field design sized to occupancy and measured soil performance
Full installation with distribution pipework and correct aggregate
Investigation of failed soakaways, including whether the fault is the field or the tank upstream
Repairs, extensions and full replacements
Advice on alternatives where the ground genuinely will not percolate

Where we go around Ludlow

As well as Ludlow itself, we cover the surrounding villages and farms, including Bromfield, Caynham, Ashford Carbonel, Clee Hill, Richard’s Castle, Stanton Lacy, Culmington, Burford. If you are somewhere smaller or somewhere between, call anyway: if the lane goes there, so do we.

Soakaway Installation & Repair: common questions

How do I know my soakaway is failing?

Typical signs are waterlogged or unusually lush ground over the field, effluent surfacing, odours, and a septic tank that refills or backs up quickly after emptying. Any of these is worth investigating promptly, before winter rain makes it worse.

What is a percolation test?

A measured test of how quickly water drains from trial holes in the proposed drainage field area, carried out to BS 6297. The result determines whether a drainage field is permitted and how large it must be.

Can a soakaway be repaired rather than replaced?

Sometimes. If the problem is a crushed pipe, root ingress, or a distribution box fault, repair is realistic. If the soil itself has sealed with sludge, replacement on fresh ground is usually the only durable fix, and we will tell you which case you are in.

Need soakaway installation and repair in Ludlow?

Call for straight answers and a fair price, or send the form and we will come back to you promptly.

01743 562954 Request a quote