How to Build a Simple Dry Well | Ask This Old House

[Music] Chris great backyard thank you so right now we have a French drain going around the perimeter of the foundation okay and also sump pump in the basement so what's usually happening is when we get a lot of this heavy rain the sump pumps just pumping out of this pipe that was left by the previous owner it's all collecting by this bottom of steps right okay the first thing I there it goes right there wow that's a lot of water right there okay so we're gonna have to control that the grade is all wrong the pipe is short so you can see that it's not taking the water far enough away I can see at the bottom of the stairs where you have the wood it's probably where ice will build up in the wintertime spring summer and fall you're probably tracking mud into the house which obviously is not desirable exactly and it always seems like the pumps running forever yeah when the water is ejected from the house it kind of circulates its way back to the bottom of that foundation and then gets spit back out and that cycle continues that's probably why you see the pump on as much as you do yeah it always sounds like that thing's running that's right so what we want to do is take all of this away from the house so I think we need to trench over here and bring everything this way and then hopefully gravity will take care of the rest that sounds great all right let's get going perfect all right so we're gonna make a few changes the first one is we're going to increase the size of the pipe from three inches to four inches that's just because of the volume of water we have coming out of the house okay secondly we're going to make sure we bury this pipe we don't want to trip over it we don't want to bump it with the lawnmower so we do want to bury it thirdly you're not too far from the house which is our original problem you're only ten feet so we're gonna take this 10 foot we're going to extend it another 10 feet which will give us 20 feet of solid pipe okay so that way we know we're not going to have any backlash of the water going back into the pump sure now what's these perforations for so this is going to be the third ten foot extension and these preparations are going to handle any overflow that we have coming off the house and then eventually make its way down here which is going to be a dry well okay what's a dry well dry well is basically just a big hole to accept all the water that we're pulling out of the house it's going to be above four by four so if it does end up percolating and overflowing a little gravity is going to take it away from the house so that's what we're going to do but what we're gonna use to fill the dry well is this three-quarter-inch stone and that's gonna will allow the water to disperse easily throughout the dry well perfect all right so why don't we get some digging cool tools and get going let's do it all right all right the first thing I need you to do is just cut this turf I'm gonna start here go down that way you stick to that side and we're just gonna cut it all the way down this is soft dirt now how far down are we going we'll end up going about 8 or 12 inches down all right as we get closer to the perforated pipe we're gonna want to go a little deeper and a little wider that's gonna will allow us to use more gravel which will help us with the flow we want to carefully scrape off the grass and set it aside so we can replant it later so what I want to do now is just take the dirt put it there when we're done with all this what we're gonna do is level out all the spots that have been damaged by the water overflow great so Chris just remember as we get closer to the dry well we're gonna want to keep a pitch on the pipe so you're going to end up going a little bit deeper perfect all right we're getting down to the business end of this trench let me break it up a little with this pick all right I think the depth is good enough now the next thing we're going to do is fill this hole with a 3/4 inch stone but before I do that I want to add this landscape fabric this is just going to keep the topsoil from infiltrating the 3/4 inch stone and clogging up the drywall so it's a very important piece now this only has to go as far as the perforated pipe I want to build up the 3/4 stone a few inches out of time contacting each layer with a hand tamper throw it right in okay I'll take another one right away sounds good all right Chris we want to put a bed of that stone down before we put the pipe so give me a little here all right good move her down just pass me that pipe Chris sure all right you see that quarter bubble right there yep that indicates to me that we're gonna get a quarter inch pitch every foot okay so that ought to be plenty to get us down to the dry well great now that we have the pipe all glued together let's get the three quarter inch stone back up Chris all right move down great we'll take one more all right grab that end you're gonna hold it I'm gonna walk it down we're gonna put it onto the stone and then we'll fold the other fabric on top of it all right all right that's it all right if you can just hold that like that I'm gonna add a little stone just to hold that down and then we'll get some soil on top of that good that's good just make sure you keep it low enough so we can put the grass back door that looks good though one of the most important things we did today was we put this cap on to the 4-inch pipe to adapt it to that discharge pipe of two inches okay that's going to keep the leaves the debris everything out of there so we're clog-free in the pipe the other thing we did that was important is we took the extra dirt from the trench and we kind of spread it out all over the grade we knocked down some peaks we picked up some valleys and basically leveled out what we could okay so all you're gonna have to do with these areas is just sprinkle some seed get the hose out keep it wet and then in a week or so you'll never know we were here it looks great thank you so much all right Chris take care Thanks nice try basement for Chris he's gonna write happy right yes so in the past when we've installed dry wells with Roger he's put in something like this because you know there's nothing in here it's just a big void you surround it with gravel why not this versus what you used you know what I just didn't need it this was a big lot I had a lot of space to put the water I would use this for probably a tighter lot where I didn't have the space to run the water yeah so that's basically why so more capacity but like you said you didn't need it didn't need it good information thank you thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like we can see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos writing your feet

Channel: This Old House

Views: 509,889

Rating: 4.9033146 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, mark mccullough, drainage, 7-10 minutes, yard, dry well, ask this old house, how to build dry wall, building dry wall, build dry wall ask this old house, ask this old house how to, ask this old house how to video, how to video, how to videos, building dry wall how to, how to build dry wall this old house, this old house pbs

Id: AcIZtWarDuk

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 06 2019