OT: French Drain

[Wizard.sixpack]

I have a drainage problem next to my house. The roof overhang is too long for a gutter. Would a French drain be appropriate for the drip line to keep water from pooling right next to my house? If so what route would be the best? I have seen something called EZ drain where no gravel is required or is gravel and preforated pipe with sleeve the best route?

 

[karlchilders.sixpack]

Call 811, before you dig!

 

[GTAT]

French drain would do the trick most likely. If you are just looking to get rid of surface water, dig you about an 8" square trench, line the edge with fabric, fill in about an inch with gravel, put in the 6" PVC perforated pipe holes down, then fill up to the top with gravel. Then daylight it out with a regular PVC or HDPE pipe.

If you have an easy place to daylight the trench, you can probably just use gravel all the way. Water will run through it just as well. Just dig a well defined trench before you put in the gravel.

French drains are great because you can use them for just about anything, just slightly modify how you build it.

 

[Dawg_4_lifes]

Depending on the existing site. You could do a creekbed with a drain if you have enough fall. You could also possibly place a drain box and divert the water to another area. All this depends on slope and what is existing.

 

[bulldogcountry1]

Also consider a trench drain. It's an economical solution that would require the least amount of manual labor and digging.

 

[Jeffreauxdawg]

French drains will eventually clog and become useless. May take a year, or it may take 10.. Clay soils will clog it. Surface drains are the way to go for surface water. Spee-d drains are easy. Just put them every 10' feet or so and clean out the basin once a year as it has a sump. Or use the channel drain or a Swale.

French drains are for subsurface water.

View attachment 12372

 

[DesotoCountyDawg]

This ^. I’m going to do the same thing in my yard. You can get everything you need at Lowe’s or Home Depot.

 

[woozman]

Then daylight it out with a regular PVC or HDPE pipe.

This part is important if you’re going to go with a French drain. I had one installed because the topography of my back yard caused the soil in an area adjacent to my patio to stay saturated pretty much year round.

The guy ran the FD around the corner of my house about 3/4 of the length of my house. He just ended it sub-surface with the sock over the end instead of taking it 50 more feet to daylight in the roadside swale. I told him he needed to take it to the swale and daylight, but he assured me it would work fine and I didn’t press him and honestly didn’t want to pay the extra money beyond his original quote.

It works really well in draining my original problem area, but just moved that water to my side yard and created a problem there instead.

 

[Dawgbite]

I did a combination of the catch basin and the French Drain. When we put in our pool it blocked the natural flow of water across the yard and since the pool deck was 4 inches higher than the patio it just funneled all the water onto the patio. I put a catch basin at the funnel point between the pool deck and the patio and a second basin at the lowpoint of the yard. I did perforated sock pipe in a french drain between the two basins and solid pipe out to ground level. Best of both worlds.

 

[aTotal360]

Plant a cedar.

 

[Big Sheep81]

Cypress**