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.

Soakaway design around Ludlow is a study in south Shropshire’s geology. Along the Teme and Corve valleys, deeper soils give a drainage field a fair chance; in the vales the ground heavies; and on the Clees the question is not how fast water percolates but whether there is enough soil above the rock for a field to treat anything at all. Mound systems and other engineered answers enter the conversation on the hills, and the percolation test — dug on the actual plot — decides which conversation it is.

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.

How soakaway installation and repair works, in full →

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

Around Ludlow

As well as Ludlow itself, the surrounding villages and farms are covered, including Bromfield, Caynham, Ashford Carbonel, Clee Hill, Richard’s Castle, Stanton Lacy, Culmington, Burford. If you are somewhere smaller or somewhere between, get in touch anyway.