Broseley · TF12

Soakaway Installation & Repair in Broseley

Percolation testing, drainage field design, and installation or repair of soakaways for septic tanks and treatment plants. Serving Broseley and the surrounding villages, including Jackfield, Benthall, Willey, Linley.

Call 01743 562954 Get a price

Photo: ell brown · 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.

Off-mains properties cluster on the gorge slopes and across the farmland south of town, from cottages below Benthall Edge to farms towards Willey. Many gorge-side systems are as old as the houses they serve, squeezed into plots that were never designed with a tanker in mind.

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 Broseley

Broseley sits on the clays and coal measures that made its industries, and that clay is exactly what soakaways dislike: slow percolation and seasonal waterlogging. Add the gorge’s well-documented slope instability around Jackfield, and drainage design here needs local knowledge as much as a test kit.

Watercourses and the rules around Broseley

Everything here drains to the Severn, fast, down the gorge sides via brooks like the Linley and Dean. A failing system on these slopes reaches the river quickly, and in a landscape with World Heritage status either side of the water, pollution attracts attention.

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 Broseley

As well as Broseley itself, we cover the surrounding villages and farms, including Jackfield, Benthall, Willey, Linley, Posenhall, Nordley. 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 Broseley?

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