DIY Flat Yard Drainage Project _ Yards With No Slope

Hey , what's up ?

You guys ?

It's Scott with everyday home repairs .

And I want to walk you through a drainage project that I'm finishing up where I have a pretty much a level yard and not a lot of slope to carry the water away from the homes foundation .

So we needed to do some trenching , install a dry well to really pull that water away from the foundation because the main issue is , I mean , it's been about four days since the last rain and the sun pump is still running at a fairly regular rate .

And with the configuration as it is right now that's making the sidewalk wet .

It's just not an ideal scenario .

So we might need to also install a dry well right next to that sidewalk to give it a little bit more capacity and make sure we're not soaking the sidewalk year round .

But first , I want to redirect the water when it rains away from the house .

And then that should lighten the load on the French drains along the base of the foundation which then goes to the sump pit .

So right now when it rains , a lot of the water from the roof line , goes right to the foundation , goes around to the sump pit and then it just keeps draining down over days and days and sometimes even weeks , I'll walk you through how I approach this project .

And hopefully you can apply that to your situation .

Now , before we jump into the install we're doing right now , let me show you why it's good to have this knowledge even if you're not going to do the project yourself .

So this was done years back and we got an adapter going to four inch corrugated and then going to this accordion pipe going into the ground that is not ideal .

These pipes do not hold up well over time and they'll break loose and the most likely actually broke loose in the ground .

Now , why you don't want that is , this is right by a tree .

So if there's any holes in that pipe , that's a water source .

And then this tree is basically gonna find that and put its roots within the pipe and then you'll just have a root ball blocking everything and then that's not doing its job of getting the water away from your house .

Additionally , the outlet for that pipe is actually just right here , can't really see it .

They just had a great over that , which is only about 10 ft away from the home .

And the problem being this is pretty much a level lawn .

So when the , when the water would come out from this point over here , it'd be just as likely to flow back towards your foundation and then causing that issue where water is going along the drainage along the foundation , going to your sump pump and then causing your sump pump to run more frequently than you'd want .

So you'd want to get that further away and then heading down a slope away from your home .

So that is an example of another non ideal install that I'll need to address coming up here soon .

All right .

So the downs spot we're extending now just to give you an idea on the roof line , we had these two pitches here coming to this down spout that would then kick over and then this roof pitch would also go to this small gutter and then down this down spout .

The issue is that is a heck of a lot of roof line and all I had in place was this down spot extension which really didn't even go past this bush here .

So then the water would kick out and I put that trench shovel there showing where the lawn actually does finally start to have some grade going down towards the street .

But that is more than 16 ft away .

And actually this spot is 2.5 inches lower than where that shovels at .

So I have a negative grade coming here and that's where the water was discharging .

So what that meant is water would just flow right back basically to the foundation there .

And again , go to the sump pump , not ideal .

So that is why we extended it out .

So what I'm using here is four inch corrugated .

Some people really prefer a four inch PV C .

So I like the four inch corrugated because my trench deepest point is about 15 inches .

So that's well above the frost line for me .

So the ground can kind of heave through the freeze thaw cycles .

And the corrugator gives me a little bit more flexibility with what without causing any possible failures of the pipe .

I also use that y here and now I can take this cap off in the future and put a garden hose down and flush out that line .

So we got the four inch corrugated and you can see obviously , I'm already starting to backfill , putting my side back into place and then I run 32 ft at a 1.5% slope .

Now , I have a video that goes much deeper into how to understand the slope of your lawn and also calculate the slope of the trench .

Now put the link right at the right hand top corner .

So you guys can go to that video after this if you need a full guide on how to lay out your drainage and dig the trench .

But then here is the flow well , dry , well that we installed , you can see there's holes all around the outside and this comes in a three pick piece kit and it actually comes in the small box here .

So it's easy to get in your car or your S U V .

And then you have a two ft diameter pit with a total height of about 28 a quarter inches .

Now , you're gonna have to dig a pretty deep hole .

So I dug 5 to 6 inches wider and then I dug a total depth of 32 inches deep to make sure I could sink the pit and also have some gravel at the bottom .

I also made sure I had landscape fabric between the soil and the white rock that then would be up against the flow well , dry well and then I'll fill this in with dirt .

Now , this will give me a little capacity .

Now , this honestly might not be enough .

And if it's not enough capacity , what I'm gonna do is knock out this hole here , which will give me another outlet for a four inch corrugated pipe .

And I can either increase my capacity .

You can see on the box , they show you an example where you can put additional dry wells to increase your capacity , or I'll just dig a trench with a perforated pipe , white rock around the perforated pipe and then fabric between the soil and then that will give me additional capacity to distribute the water further out in my lawn .

So that's the plan and then this guy has this cap right here .

And then on top of that cap , once I put the dirt and side back on , I'll just put this N Ds pop up emitter on top .

So then I'm gonna test out for when it rains .

I'll see how much water is coming out the top and then make my plan from there .

But this is gonna be much better and the water emitting from here is at a much better downward slope and 32 ft away from my house opposed to really just four or five ft with my doubts about the extension that I had before .

So that's my set up .

Now , I only have to backfill the rest of this trench fill over the drywall itself and then this project will be done .

Now , don't forget when you replace your side , you're going to need to water that daily for many weeks just to make sure the grass greens up , everything settles back down .

And when I replace my , so I do leave it about an inch higher .

Just knowing that the ground underneath that I placed over the corrugated pipe will settle in will compact and then that sod will be flushed to the rest of the lawn .

Now , let me know what questions you guys have and remember it's good to have this knowledge even if you're not going to do it yourself .

Just so whoever you're contracting out , you can go over the plan of attack with them and you can walk through understanding if their plan is actually going to solve your issues or at least have the best chance of solving your issues .

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If you haven't already , we have multiple videos coming out per week to help you with your repairs and improvements around the house and we'll catch you on the next one .

Take care .