Will post photo in a mo, but here's the problem:
Our house used to be owned by dog breeders. The whole "back garden" was dog pens, with thick concrete plinths with drains in the middle. The fences around the pens have been removed but the 8 inch thick concrete remains.
Our obvious "patio" area is a raised concrete plinth about 5m x 5m, with a utilitarian drain in the middle. It looks horrible, but its saving grace is that it is level. Nearer to the house is a strip of concrete for drainage (it rains a lot here) sloping away from the house reaching to about 10 cm below the air bricks. There is a step up to the plinth from this area.
Now the plot thickens: we had to have a trench dug through it to sink a pipe last week. The guys who did the trench had to cut through the 8 inches of concrete. They did a lot of bashing with the mini digger spade. They have ended up cracking a lot of the concrete sloping away from the house- it now has large fissures in it. There is a trench not yet made good across the entire area.
The whole place looks like the Somme. I think we should remove the rest of the concrete and have the whole area redone entirely. Not so D H (we had an argument about this just now) thinks we should work with what we have. I'm not sure how the heck that's even possible.
Please help- we need ideas. We are stressed enough as it is.