How to Build a French Drain to Stop Sheet Water

on this job the guys had to do a lot of hand digging we are in a real tight spot where we have a fence we have cemented in fence posts we can't just dig with our escavator and disturb that but I'm going to show you how to get water out of your sidey yard I'm going to show you why water gets trapped in a sidey yard you can see that we're really deep on this fren strain we had hand dig right here by the fence because we got cement footings on the fence the guys did a really good job pitching this you can see how deep they were right there now we have some slope now the guys sloped this and then they went ahead and I love what the guys did they sloped it and then right before they got to this uh right before they get to the storm drain catch Basin they drop it I love when the guys do this this trench will hold water but at the very end if you drop it at your discharge end pulling the plug in a bathtub it's going to drain the entire French drain trench right at your area your discharge you need to drop off if you can have some drop at the end of your discharge your French drain will not hold any water beautiful example of French drain system stop we have an existing French drain that we did not install it was a sock French drain so you can see a perforated pipe with a sock around it there's no fabric encapsulating the stone so the stone is migrating into the subsoil the subsoil is migrating in the stone rendering this French rain useless but we're doing the customer the very best service that we can by connecting to it and whatever little bit of water is still moving through it we're going to be able to tie that directly into our system and that was ran to a dryw well which anytime you can run and core and tap a storm drain you're much better off I can't emphasize this part of the install enough anytime you get to the end of your French drain and you're able to drop it now the guys just dropped this trench on a hard slope I mean this is beautiful this is textbook look at that nice core what a really really clean job so we're about 3T down this French drain it won't have a drop of water in it because of the way the guy went sharp went down deep and sharp right at the storm drain beautiful job the quickest strongest external coupler right there heavy duty [Music] we got three 4-in perforated pipes this French drain is going to it's going to work incredible on the ends of all the pipes we just snaap spin this this is a virgin material just like the pipe so it's rated the last 200 to 500 years so long after we're here giving the homeowner the very best materials that we [Music] can [Music] [Music] [Music] we have an inch and a half Cobble Rock in this French drain it's going to drain like a Civ that stone has really large voids [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] there's a that roll of tiers in my car so it should be [Laughter] [Laughter] need we cement in a piece of PVC Schedule 40 then we put one of our hdp couplers on the PVC that snaps right onto the corrugated pipe [Music] [Music] so you only have to connect the bottom pipe here we have two other perforated eight slot all the water is going to fall right through these into this bottom pipe not going to be a problem you only have to connect one one pipe to the storm drain tap you don't have to try to Wi these pipes together water's just going to fall through them right in the bottom [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] pipe [Music] [Applause] a oh so we have some really big stone for this French drain you can see the big voids that it creates you move more water and you move more air we had to go byy a lot of landscape you can see that there's a lot of trees and bushes in the landscape so we want to move as much air we actually have four of these 4 in perforated pipes that have holes on the bottom on the sides on the top and then we have three there was a really really Deep Run of this 130 ft system right where it's all humped up and it was damning all the water we had to dig through that high part right over here by the fence so we got four pipes in over [Music] here but any chance you can run more pipe you're creating more void more air you can see we have all this landscape of course it's winter so you can't see just how much there is there's a lot of deciduous you see the Evergreen but we got a lot of shrubs and we got a lot of shade trees and ornamental trees we know roots are going to be a problem so we got four of the E slot running right through here and then as we got out in the backyard we had some fall the trench wasn't as deep we ended up with three pipes in the trench as we worked our way to the storm drain but you're going to create way more air you're going to have bigger larger pockets of air it's going to be more effective when you're dealing with the trees and shrubs the trees and shrubs can't live in a big pocket air but they can live in like a damp pocket of stone so by using this larger stone with bigger voids and by using a lot of pipe now a lot of cases we'll put a bunch of 4-in pipe on the bottom and then we'll put some 3-in pipe on top again it has more void than this large Stone then we'll lock all that tubing together with a stone that's a little smaller people always ask us what is your preferred way of doing a French Trin well it depends on where we're building it if we got to travel really far then we're not going to be able to run and get stone so I'm going to definitely put more pipe in the trench do I think that you have a better French drain with more pipe in the trench I really do now if you're going to be driving on it with cars and trucks you're going to want a smaller Stone because when you drive over this big Stone I'm going to show you what I'm talking about so this big Stone it'll be pressing on the pipe when you drive over it with a vehicle it could damage the pipe so I want a smaller Stone and I want it to be angular if I'm going to be driving on it cuz I want it to be tight and packed and now you have the weight of the vehicle it's spread across a larger area and it's not just coming in contact with just just points on your corrugated pipe this corrugated pipe is really really strong and you can drive on it as long as you use the right aggregate so there's many different ways that we build our systems and it just all depends on Logistics cuz some people ask us to drive really far away to put a system in for them it's you know impossible to carry all that stone so it just take more pipe and again the bigger the air pockets you're going to air prune any roots that get in there they try to grow they're just going to dry up and become dust in a wind tree roots can't live in a big pocket of [Music] [Applause] [Music] air so we're going to grab up all the water in this area and before I couldn't make it out of here this was too humped up too built up with landscape had to dig really deep through here cuz it was basically a mound you're digging through a mound guys ended up extremely deep they did a great job beautiful job a talented crew very talented crew and and they get it right anytime you put extra pipe in on the top just go ahead and put one of these plugs in that we sell it's a virgin plug so it's made out of HTP just like the pipe and it doesn't split it doesn't crack and it lasts because it's not made out of recycled materials now I get a lot of comments in the comment section about not being you know Pro recycled products we are pro recycled products we are and we do use them when and where it makes the most sense they're now coming up with better additives things are things are improving when it comes to using recycled materials and drain systems so I'm optimistic that we're going to get [Music] there so I'm going to get a lot of comments in the comment section so I'm going to tell you right now this is ice and snow obviously it's got some some dirt in it that's the the stone itself is Dusty and it's winter so the pile is got snow on it so when whenever you see that whenever you see that in this video in the buckets on the fabric that's all it is ice and snow one of the hazards of working in the North so always leave your stone a little low and cut your side really thick so you get a lot of root and dirt with your side the guys are going to fold this nonwoven geotextile Filter Fabric that's been double punched they're going to fold it over and they're going to pin it so that the French drain is fully encapsulated they're going to take this side that they cut off it's really thick they're going to lay that back on the non-woven geotextile Filter Fabric The Roots will then grow through that and in a year it'll even take in surface water really really well cuz the water will follow the roots right down into the [Music] stone [Music] all this pipe is perforated it has the largest Inlet of any pipe and the most [Applause] Inlet [Music] beautiful system I think it's 130 ft in total length oh we weren't going to go that way because we have all these underground utilities we could have brought the vacuum excavator but the vacuum excavator you got to tack on a couple Grand if you're going to take that thing out to the job site especially in the winter time everything's going to be freezing and you got to try to clean it out so going under the walk it didn't get us down low enough the best option was the the route that Aaron our designer had chose for this homeowner he did a really good job everything was wet down the side anyway so there was several good reasons to go this way with a French train lot of run a lot of runoff during a hard rain from this driveway a lot of sheet water a lot of sheet water coming off this driveway super long driveway double WI with some pavers all that is non permeable as this water's running here and there's additional water being added by the time it gets to the end of this driveway it's sheet water the water comes off of this driveway and sheets our system will keep up with it we built a system that's going to move thousands of gallons of water no [Music] problem [Music] if you're a homeowner and you're not going to DIY it make sure you get quotes to have two pipes put in the bottom of that trench that French drain is so wide and big because we put two pipes at the bottom of the trench if you can put two pipes in the bottom of your trench and you build it to those specs you will have a much better French drain system it makes a difference between a French grain that's marginal and a French Trin that's a little Overkill quite frankly when it comes to water problems we like Overkill that's Round Rock we're not going to be driving on this so we don't need an angular Stone that's going to lock up it's 100% compacted as soon as you drop it in the trench that's what's nice about rock we don't put any of the dirt back in we haul all the dirt out then we fully encapsulate the entire system it'll never need maintenance we don't need to build a clean out on this there's no need for it it's never going to get full of sediment it's never going to have a problem it's fully encapsulated the guys that are not using a good nonwoven geotextile Filter Fabric that's been double punched they're short changing their customers they're building a French drain that's going to expire they're it has an expiration date at the time I install basically so we have this duy two axle goose neck that we pull with a Ford 450 so this F450 can handle this big goose neck dump as you can see it's full we take all the dirt away we don't put any of the dirt back in you go ahead and you excavate you go through all that work and you're going to put dirt back in unfortunately that's what guys do they don't have the means to carry it away it's expensive to haul dirt off people think oh you're going to sell that dirt are you kidding me do you really think I'm going to make money on this dirt you got a 25 to $30,000 trailer and you're always beating it up cuz you're hauling heavy the tires on it are crazy money this whole operation is crazy money to pull this thing with a big diesel truck is costly there's no money being made and Hauling off the homeowner dirt so I laugh if the homeowner wants the dirt and they have a place for it we don't have to charge them for the haul off but that's rare because usually if you try to pile up dirt somewhere in your yard you're going to create another drainage problem always trim your fabric so you don't have a heavy overlap you just want a few inch overlap we're going to be able to grab up all the surface water and all the subsurface water kale went ahead he cut a bunch of fabric don't wi up your Fabric and put s on top of it it's not going to take in water it's not designed to work that way you pull it tight it has little holes punched in it it has a really impressive flow rate if you install it properly the reason why certain guys don't have any luck with fabric is how they install it you can set up fabric to fail you can set up fabric to succeed it all depends on the installer beautiful drain beautiful job that's how you handle sheet water off of a non-permeable surface I don't care if it's a tennis court a parking lot you build a system like this it'll grab up all the water for you another professional job done by a team of professionals so over here we're going to do an open French drain we're not growing grass on it you can see how the men fully encapsulated the system we don't want just grass blades that dry up dry leaves dirt dust over time to be a problem we want our French drain to be fully encapsulated you go ahead and you put some decorative rock or drainage rock over top of it this is an open French drain it's not covered there's no sod being grown over it nothing drains faster than an open French drain if you found any of this information helpful give us a thumbs up it supports the channel if you have any questions regarding open French drains covered French drains any questions regarding French drains leave them in the comment section if I don't have a video to refer you to I will make you a video I'm your host Robert Sherwood and until the next video

Channel: FRENCH DRAIN MAN

Views: 32,447

Keywords: Yard Drainage, Yard Drainage Contractor, perforated drainage pipe, how to build a french drain, french drains, french drain pipe, what is a french drain, french drain cost, yard drainage, french drain system, french drain diy, french drain design, french drain installation, curtain drain, perforated drain tile, french drain depth, drainage trench, french drain cover, yard drain, french drain basement, yard drains, yard water solutions, Baughman Tile Company

Id: N7TWKBglBfE

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 24 2023