Resin drive query

[3weeksuntilwine]

Boring topic but hoping for advice please!

We need a new drive and have a company provisionally coming to do resin in a few weeks. Our drive slopes down from the road with the house at the bottom. It’s currently tarmac. Fairly large (probably could fit 8 cars on). Our house is old. We are prone to water run off from the road and debris washing down into drains near the house which we then clear monthly to stop them overflowing.
We have a good company lined up - well known locally and a personal recommendation. The guy is going to take up the old tarmac and it will have a border.
Obviously resin is permeable, the drive will come right up to the house boundary at points.
We’re just wondering if, with the resin being permeable, is the absorbed ground water likely to increase the risk of damp in the house? Effectively we’re changing the way rain water is drained from an over ground system of using a ‘drain away’ to the ground absorbing all the rain and worrying this will, over time, find its way into the house? We’re clueless really but if anyone has any advice, we’d be grateful, thanks!

Do you have clay soil? Do you have a French drain around the house? The drive people should have given you proper advice about the drainage- if they haven't I would ask them before they start work

We asked and he said because the resin itself is permeable, the water will soak away underground and we don’t need more drains adding.
We dont have a French drain nor clay soil..
We keep coming back to (when my husband and I are discussing this), if more water is absorbed into the ground, won’t that make its way to the house and increase damp risk or is our damp proof course likely to cope? We just don’t know enough to make a decision!

If you don't have clay soil that's good because it tends to get water logged. If your soil is sandy it will likely drain away easily. Generally speaking I thought drives that absorb water are better than hard standing like tarmac that can cause problems with water having no where to go. Have you checked the gov.co.uk site to check whether you are at risk of surface water flooding? Because if you aren't again that would be good. Also if you are really worried about damp check if you have a damp proof course on the house. Could you get a quote from another driveway company or individual contractor (often give better advice cos not trying to sell you a product) and see what they say about drainage? Or get a drainage person out to check the drainage you currently have and ask their advice about the potential impact of any changes.

Our drive has a small lip at the top which deflects the rainwater from running down off the pavement. Works perfectly 👌

Our neighbours does not, and gets a total flood rushing down, they use sandbags at their garage

The resin is stick with Plastic glue

Honestly I don't think the resin will soak the water away fast enough in a deluge. Ask for accos.

Insist on the french drains or aco drains around the house. How many bricks is the damp proof course at the moment?

It’s one brick at the mo and coping well (no damp in house as far as I can tell)

You will still have the same issue. Resin drives do not allow large volumes of water to drain through. Its only slightly more permeable than tarmac. You definitely still need a drain away if the drive slopes toward the house during heavy downpours. Our opposite neighbour had a similar issue and did what your proposing. It turned into a bit of a disaster causing damp at the front of the house. It has been resolved now by re-adding the drain away along the front of the house and a new underground soakaway that that feeds into it. Basically they had to have it modified at great expense when adding the correct drainage system at the time of first install is what should have been done. The relatively large area of resin in the middle that was dug up for the soakaway and the channel for the soakaway pipe are quite obvious too as those bits are older than the origional laid resin - so it looks untidy but does now work.

so do you know exactly where the current drainage ends up?

if water is flowing down the existing drive and into drains leading to a soakaway then the water table around the house is not going to be greatly impacted by water draining through a permeable drive and into the water table across the area of the drive, rather than the localised saturation around the soakaway before levelling out across the water table

Thanks @Wot23 you sound very knowledgeable which is what we need..! The current situation is that the drains are connected to the main sewage system and therefore rainwater gets taken away.. just wondering if you think a resin drive (where the water would remain underground) would have an impact on the house in terms of damp?! 😬

if the damp proof course is in ok condition then it will do what it is designed to do, stop water rising up through the fabric of the walls.
Does the house have solid concrete ground floors or is it a suspended wood floor?

in principle a resin driveway can (!) absorb up to 850 litres of water per minute per square meter, that means 850 mm of rain per meter.
For parts of the UK that is more than its entire annual rainfall, so almost impossible for water to run across the resin and pond at the house in the absence of the existing drain, it will instead soak into the ground, ie enter the water table.

With the drain removed, the unknown is could the water table rise up and appear as actual puddles of water on the surface? If the house is sitting in a dip in the ground where water would naturally form a pond then that may be a problem as the damp proofing may be unable to cope and the house floor could get wet.
Without seeing the local topography it is pointless guessing, but realistically I'd think it a rather remote possibility.