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 home's foundation so we needed to do some trenching install a drywell 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 sump 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 drywell right next to that sidewalk to give it a little bit more capacity and make sure we're not soaking the sidewalk around 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 pin 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 then 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 gonna do the project yourself so this was done years back and we got 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 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 going to 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 grate over that which is only about 10 foot 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 downspout we're extending now just to give you an idea on the roof line we had these two pitches here coming to this downspout that would then kick over and then this roof pitch would also go to the small gutter and then down this downspout the issue is that is a heck of a lot of roof line and all i had in place was this downspout 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 foot away and actually this spot is two and a half inches lower than where that shovel's 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 pvc 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 core gate 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 sod back into place and then i run 32 foot at a 1.5 slope now i have a video that goes much deeper in 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 pic piece kit and actually comes in this small box here so it's easy to get in your car your suv and then you have a two foot diameter pit with a total height of about 28 and a quarter inches now you're going to have to dig a pretty deep hole so i dug five to six 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 going to 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 inside back on i'll just put this nds pop-up emitter on top so then i'm going to test it 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 going to be much better and the water emitting from here is at a much better downward slope and 32 foot away from my house opposed to really just four or five foot with my downspout extension that i had before so that's my setup 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 sod 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 sod i do leave it about an inch higher just knowing that the ground underneath that are replaced over the corrugated pipe will settle in will compact and then that sod will be flush 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 now before you take off don't forget to subscribe to our channel 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

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 702,501

Keywords: nds flo well installation, nds flowell dry well drainage system, flat yard drainage solutions, downspout, downspout drainage ideas

Id: AzdcTcvd5HI

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021