French Drain to remove excess backyard water?

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DTockeII
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French Drain to remove excess backyard water?

Post by DTockeII » May 1st, 2017, 4:51 pm

Details of my yard are rather simple, I have a walkout basement and thus, all the water from the top of my lawn, winds up in the first third of my back yard. Combine that with my neighbor's gutter flowing towards my house (natural slope of his lawn goes towards mine), and I get a swamp each spring with the rains.

Thinking of running a french drain in the middle of this 1/3 lawn, lengthwise, to run any excess water into my sump pump line that already runs the length of my backyard and into the pond.

Anyone with experience installing a french drain have a good story to tell about your successes? I'm hoping to get away with one long line running parallel to the back of my house, about 10' from the foundation. It would run a good 80 feet or so through the middle of my 15x80 wet area, into the sump line that exits my house.

Looking for options other than re-grading the land :)

edenl01
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Re: French Drain to remove excess backyard water?

Post by edenl01 » May 1st, 2017, 9:43 pm

I have a good sized farm field behind my house that drains right through the middle of the yard over to a storm water drain. Prior to installing the French drain it would remain soggy all spring. Now, I rarely have soggy soil back there. The one I made was small at 12"x12"x55'. With 4" sewer pipe in it. About as basic as it gets. I'm really glad I did it. Doesn't solve the cause of the problem but it makes it suck quite a bit less.

Our city storm water engineers said that the farm field has no liability for the runoff since it was there before the subdivision. The French drain was their recommendation.

DTockeII
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Re: French Drain to remove excess backyard water?

Post by DTockeII » May 2nd, 2017, 1:29 am

edenl01 wrote:
May 1st, 2017, 9:43 pm
I have a good sized farm field behind my house that drains right through the middle of the yard over to a storm water drain. Prior to installing the French drain it would remain soggy all spring. Now, I rarely have soggy soil back there. The one I made was small at 12"x12"x55'. With 4" sewer pipe in it. About as basic as it gets. I'm really glad I did it. Doesn't solve the cause of the problem but it makes it suck quite a bit less.

Our city storm water engineers said that the farm field has no liability for the runoff since it was there before the subdivision. The French drain was their recommendation.
Thanks!! How big of a wet area is that drain managing just for reference?

edenl01
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Re: French Drain to remove excess backyard water?

Post by edenl01 » May 2nd, 2017, 1:04 pm

About 8' wide by 55' long. I only made my trench about a foot wide by a foot deep. I think that if I'd have made it bigger it would've been even more effective but it does the trick. You'll make a mess of the yard building it but I'm really glad I did.

DTockeII
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Re: French Drain to remove excess backyard water?

Post by DTockeII » May 2nd, 2017, 1:47 pm

Thanks!


aug0211
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Re: French Drain to remove excess backyard water?

Post by aug0211 » August 10th, 2017, 12:30 pm

I have an 80' stretch at the back of my property where my yard meets a common HOA space. The HOA space and my yard slope downward together, creating a nightmare for sustained, heavy rain.

I installed a french drain this year (wow - it was a lot of work, I did not use a trencher). So far, so good - but I also have not had insane amounts of water since I put the drain in.

So... yes, I've put one in.... but no, I can't tell you yet how much it is working :-)

Here's the pipe I used, for reference:
http://www.acehardware.com/product/inde ... 9f0d5cb75b

I got it at Home Depot. It's not cheap, but it eliminates the need for any sort of stones, which simplified the process and saved me a ton of work.

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