Surface Water Observation Record Checklist

Put a date on every observation and note what the weather had been doing beforehand, because ground behaviour depends entirely on what preceded the moment you looked.

The same corner reads as free draining after a dry spell and as a swamp after a wet one, so undated notes are close to worthless.

Choose a handful of fixed positions to photograph from and use the same ones every time, so images can be compared rather than merely collected.

Photographs taken from wandering positions cannot be laid alongside each other, which removes most of their value to anybody reading the record later.

Draw a rough plan of the plot with the house, boundaries, paving and any covers marked on it, then use copies of that plan for each observation.

A repeated base plan lets you overlay one wet spell on another and see whether the pattern is stable or shifting.

Describe the rainfall in plain terms such as steady, heavy or brief rather than reaching for figures you have no way of measuring.

Honest description is usable evidence; invented precision misleads whoever reads the record and is easily spotted by anybody who works with sites.

Note who made each observation and whether it was morning, afternoon or after dark, since two people describe the same puddle quite differently.

Attribution lets a professional weigh the notes and put a follow-up question to the right person.

Record the dry spells as well as the wet ones, including which areas dry out first and which stay damp when everything else has firmed up.

The contrast between wet and dry conditions is where the pattern shows, and dry observations are the ones nobody thinks to write down.

Mark on your plan every place a puddle appears on paving, and note whether it returns to exactly the same spot after each spell of rain.

A puddle that comes back to the same joint is reporting something about that surface, while one that wanders is usually about where water arrives from.

Pay particular attention to water standing against a house wall or across a threshold, and photograph it rather than only remembering that it happened.

This is the observation professionals most want to see and the one owners most often mention in passing with no evidence attached.

Water standing against a building involves the structure and its surroundings; ask a qualified professional to look before anything is altered.

Note where water sits at the edge of steps, at a change in level, or where two different surfaces meet each other.

Junctions between surfaces are where standing water most often appears, and they are easy to walk past without ever registering them.

Record whether water sheets across a surface and away or sits where it lands, and mark the boundary between those two behaviours on your plan.

Where the behaviour changes across one continuous surface is usually more informative than either behaviour on its own.

Note the patches that stay damp, green or slippery long after the rest of the surface has dried out completely.

Persistent damp shows where water sits or seeps even when nobody happens to be outside watching it happen.

A slippery surface is a hazard to raise with a qualified professional rather than to treat as a cosmetic problem.

Look for splash marks, staining or a tide line on walls and low structures, and photograph each one with something familiar beside it for scale.

Marks on a wall record how far water has previously reached, which is information no amount of later description can recover.

Walk the plot after rain and note where the ground gives underfoot, marking those areas even where no water at all is visible on the surface.

Ground that squelches without showing water is holding a great deal of it, and that is exactly the area a professional will want pointed out.

Note where wheels, a mower or a barrow leave ruts, and where the ground still carries those marks long after the wet spell has passed.

Rutting records both how soft the ground became and how slowly it recovered, without anybody having to be there at the time.

Record where moss dominates, or where coarse grasses and rushes have taken over, and mark those areas on the plan.

Certain plants persist where ground stays wet, so a change in what grows amounts to a long-running record nobody had to keep.

What such planting indicates about water in the ground is for a qualified professional to interpret rather than for you to conclude.

Note where grass has thinned, worn out or gone bare, and whether those patches sit where water is also seen to gather.

Bare ground and standing water often coincide, and the overlap is much clearer on a plan than it is in memory.

Note whether water stands in planted borders as well as on open lawn, and whether it sits at the surface or disappears out of sight.

Beds and lawn frequently behave quite differently on the same plot, which is a distinction worth handing over rather than averaging away.

Mark any dip or settled line where water collects, particularly where it follows a straight run across otherwise even ground.

A straight settlement line often follows something buried, which is a lead worth handing over rather than investigating yourself.

Do not open ground to discover what a settlement line follows; buried services must be established by a qualified professional first.

Look for fans of silt, soil or grit spread across paving and note which direction the material appears to have come from.

A deposit fan points back towards its source, which is often somewhere nobody had thought to look.

Record the lines of leaves, bark, gravel or mulch left stranded on the ground, since they mark how far water reached and which way it was moving.

Debris lines survive for a while after the water has gone, so they can be photographed at leisure rather than in the rain.

Note where mulch, gravel or soil has been washed out of a bed or path, and write down where that material ended up.

Material that moves shows the strength and direction of flow better than any description of the puddle it eventually formed.

Mark any channel worn into grass, gravel or a soft path, and note whether it appears to deepen with each successive wet spell.

A channel that deepens is telling you the flow is repeating and concentrating, which changes the nature of the conversation.

Record whether water appears to arrive from beyond your boundary, from a neighbouring plot, a track, a field or the road.

Water that arrives is a different problem from water that will not leave, and the two are constantly confused with each other.

Where water crosses a boundary, responsibility is a matter for the relevant authority and the parties involved, not for this record to settle.

Note what sits above each wet area, including a slope, a drive, a roof or a paved area that appears to shed water towards it.

Naming what lies uphill of a wet patch usually explains more than any amount of description of the patch itself.

Go out briefly during heavy rain, keeping to safe ground, and watch where water is actually moving rather than where it later comes to rest.

Movement is the part of the picture that disappears completely once the rain stops, and no later observation recovers it.

Stay away from moving water, open covers and anything unstable; where conditions are unsafe, observe from indoors and leave the rest to a professional.

Take a short video rather than a photograph, since movement shows direction and speed in a way that a still image never can.

A few seconds of video answers questions a professional would otherwise have to ask you to guess at.

Note which area fills first and which fills last, because the order in which places flood tells a professional something the final picture cannot.

Sequence separates water arriving from water failing to leave, which is often the whole question.

Listen for water running where you cannot see it, such as behind a wall, beneath paving or under a cover.

Sound is frequently the only evidence available for anything below the surface, and it takes only a moment to note.

Running water heard but not seen should be reported to a qualified drainage professional rather than chased by lifting or opening anything.

Note the point at which any low area overtops and where the water goes next once it has.

The overtopping point often matters more than the low area itself, because it determines what happens next in worse conditions.

Look again once the rain has stopped and record how far the water has receded, noting the time of your return rather than estimating a period.

Recorded return times let somebody else calculate the persistence, which is far more reliable than an owner estimate.

Return to each wet area at intervals and write down what you found and when, letting somebody else work the pattern out from your dated notes.

Raw dated observations survive scrutiny in a way that a summarised conclusion about drainage never does.

Compare how long water lingers in one area against another after the same rainfall, since the comparison is more reliable than any single measurement.

Relative persistence across a plot is exactly what a professional wants from an owner, and it needs no equipment at all.

Note any smell, discolouration, oily film or foam on standing water and report what you saw rather than interpreting it.

These observations change who needs to be involved, so they should be passed on promptly and described plainly.

Discoloured or foul smelling standing water may need the drainage undertaker or the relevant authority to investigate it.

Record the silt and fine material left in hollows once the water has gone, and photograph it before anybody sweeps or rakes it away.

Deposits are cleared instinctively, and with them goes the clearest surviving evidence of where water stood and how it got there.

Record where grass yellows, thins or dies back after water has stood, since the aftermath maps the extent better than memory does.

The dead patch is often larger and more precisely edged than what anybody remembered seeing under water.

Note where algae, slime or a green film develops in the period after water has stood, and mark those places on the plan too.

Growth of this kind marks ground that stays wet between events rather than simply flooding during them.

Walk the plot and mark every grating, gully, channel and cover you can find on your plan, including any half hidden by planting, gravel or a container.

The map of what exists is one of the first things a professional will ask for, and it takes one careful walk to produce.

Leave covers exactly where they are rather than lifting them, and photograph each one in place with enough of its surroundings to locate it later.

A photograph in context is far more useful than a close-up of a lid, and it involves none of the risk of opening anything.

Lifting covers exposes open drainage and gases; leave that to a qualified drainage professional with the right equipment.

Note whether water is visible standing at a grating when there has been no recent rain, and photograph it without disturbing anything.

Standing water at a grating in dry conditions is a specific observation rather than a general complaint, and it travels well.

Water standing high in a gully or chamber may indicate a blockage and should be reported to a qualified drainage professional.

Record what has accumulated on and around each grating, including leaves, silt, moss and material washed down from elsewhere on the plot.

What collects at a grating names the source of the material, and the source is usually the more interesting half of the problem.

Note whether the ground around any cover has sunk, cracked or stayed permanently damp, and photograph it alongside the cover itself.

Changes in the ground around a cover are visible to anybody and are frequently the first outward sign of something below it.

List the covers whose purpose nobody on the property can account for, and hand that list over rather than guessing what each one serves.

Unaccounted covers are exactly what a drainage professional wants named before anything else is discussed.

Bring everything together onto one marked plan rather than a folder of separate notes, so the pattern can be read at a glance.

A single annotated plan prompts better questions than a stack of individually reasonable observations ever will.

Keep the observations that disagree with each other instead of tidying them into a single tidy story about the plot.

Contradictions usually mean conditions genuinely differ across a site, and smoothing them away removes the most useful finding.

Keep what you saw separate from what you think caused it, and label your theories plainly as theories rather than as findings.

Owner explanations are often wrong in ways that quietly send everybody looking in the wrong part of the garden.

List the things you could not see, such as where a pipe runs or what a cover serves, so the gaps stand out rather than being assumed away.

A visible list of unknowns directs a professional as effectively as the findings do, and it is quicker to produce.

Ask a qualified drainage professional what they need from you before the site can be properly discussed, and record the answer against your notes.

Finding the gap early avoids losing another wet spell to something nobody thought to mention at the outset.

Keep the record running after any work is carried out, so how the site behaves later can be compared with how it behaved earlier.

Without a continuing record there is no way to tell whether anything changed, which leaves everybody arguing from memory.