Craven Arms · SY7

Soakaway Installation & Repair in Craven Arms

Percolation testing, drainage field design, and installation or repair of soakaways for septic tanks and treatment plants. Serving Craven Arms and the surrounding villages, including Wistanstow, Aston on Clun, Hopesay, Clun.

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Photo: amandabhslater · CC BY-SA 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.

In SY7 country, off-mains is close to universal outside the town. Hill farms, roadside cottages and village properties all depend on their own tanks, and distances mean many systems see a professional rarely. A good number of older installations here still discharge in ways the 2020 rules no longer permit.

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 Craven Arms

The south-west hills are built on old Silurian shales and mudstones, giving heavy, slow-draining soils in the valleys and thin cover over rock on the tops. Percolation results are frequently marginal, and drainage field design has to work with slope, rock and water in combination.

Watercourses and the rules around Craven Arms

The Onny, the Clun and their feeder streams drain these hills, and the Clun catchment in particular is environmentally significant, home to some of the last freshwater pearl mussels in England. The Environment Agency watches water quality here closely, and failing septic systems in the catchment are a recognised concern.

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 Craven Arms

As well as Craven Arms itself, we cover the surrounding villages and farms, including Wistanstow, Aston on Clun, Hopesay, Clun, Clunbury, Lydbury North, Onibury. 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 Craven Arms?

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