How To Build a Yard Drain System with No Slope [ COMBO INSTALL! ]

[Music] welcome to the French drain man channel I'm Robert Sherwood and I'm here to show you how to design a system to deal with a flat yard with no slope if you liked this video be sure to subscribe and give us a thumbs up in the comment section I'm being asked every single day I get comments well where do I take my water if my yard is flat and there's no slope and I don't have a storm drain available and people they act like they've never seen us do anything but a storm drain corn tap so I'm going to put together what I hope to be a very detailed video on a very flat yard where water could not make its way out and with no slope at all I'm gonna show you how you drain your yard so this gentleman provided these pictures as you can see here in Michigan we do really live all four seasons a thaw and then a refreeze his yard is now an ice rink so he has a extreme problem here he has a young child that can't even use the RT as two Dobermans so you know those that's a large dog and yes they're gonna be come coming in covered in mud so when he reached out to us he had already seen a lot of our videos and he wasn't sure exactly how to go about it and he knew the amount of work that it probably entailed now he did have about 15 other guys show up and what they told him would fix the problem was just basically a few basins going to nowhere and this gentleman seen enough video of ours to know there's no way that's gonna work so what we did we went ahead and we used the dirt for our French drain and our yard drain we used it to crown the yard so that it wasn't as flat and then we created a couple of areas that were now the low points the collection areas what we refer to as a swell so this dig went on all afternoon this was a pretty big project so this was an all-day project normally as you guys know we take you through a day if you're hanging around with us for a day you're going to get to see two or three jobs but this one until a lot this one entailed a French drain inside the French drain is a yard drain so you're gonna see a combination where I'll define the to explain the two you're also gonna see some of our FDM 20 inch catch basins for all that you know surface water when you get bulk water at the surface then you need a yard drain built inside of your French drain so we're gonna show you how to do that and since everybody says my yard is flat I can't get no slope and I answer in the comments section all the time you need a lift station you need an outdoor sump pump system and I have a lot of videos on that but I guess I need to put everything together from A to Z so you guys know how to get from A to Z because when I just show certain videos I'm finding it is very difficult for most to be able to understand where we're at what we're dealing with you know to do the things that we do so we're gonna go into great detail on how we go from our collection system a slight regrade not we're not going to do too much to this yard just crown that middle that backyard is the only plan we're actually gonna have a collection system on three sides which you'll see us install and then we're gonna build a sump system in the backyard that's gonna it's going to be an active lift station with a 20 inch chamber so that's a pretty big chamber you've seen how bad the water is you seen what this homeowner has to deal with want to make sure even if his sump pump fails I have a lot of chamber and I hate you know that's gonna be a lot of reservoir in a pinch I also for the yard drainpipe you're gonna see this big yellow pipe it's six inch solid it's not the perforated and you're also going to get the CSU's the high octane with a sleeve or sock on it and I'm gonna give you an explanation for all of that as well finally when we get this water lifted we're gonna take it to a leach field out in the front yard and I'm gonna teach you all kinds of tricks and techniques on how to build those leach fields now the front yard is pretty flat too not only is it pretty flat but the city does not want us discharging the water any closer to the sidewalk than six feet so we're dealing with a lot of variables here I thought this would be a great job to take you guys along for the ride for the entire day and break it down for you and hopefully this answers many many many comments and future comments now we're already putting in a six inch solid virgin pipe that's not our 4 inch yellow that's our 6 inch yellow we call it our mini culvert pipe that will move five hundred and fifty gallons per minute now how we're gonna collect the water and get it into that six inch pipe we're gonna put in four 20 inch in diameter catch basins and they'll accept six inch or four inch so that's what's nice they're made to accept both so we're digging in the side of the house right here and we're getting deep now this is great that we're talking about we're starting to get deep flat yard we're creating our own slope we're collecting all the surface water in our yard drain our yard drain we'll take six inch pipes or four inch pipes our basin that is a 20 inch round free yard drains not a French drain I wouldn't connect my French drain pipe to a yard drain basin that's what I always preach not to do that's how you end up with a French drain with an early expiration date so we love these heavy-duty 20 inch round with both 4-inch and 6-inch capable as far as hookups go you can have a quad pack if you want and hook it up to that so there's a mini culvert pipe that virgin yellow mini culvert pipe it you've seen my hand on it it's not perforated it's solid you can see we're digging out all these pieces of concrete from an old fence that was there prior to the fence you see to the left of this video and right there in the very corner we have another one of those 20 inch round now let's see there's the six inch that's where we're gonna hook it up it's now accepts corrugated in six inch so we love them everybody's been asking for something like that we now have that available we're creating our own slope we have sloped through this entire system we're using the dirt to ground up the yard we don't want the water to roll towards the house without catching the water there so we have a swale on both sides we do have a yard drain on three sides so I'm gonna take you through the whole thing as we shape this yard so there's a lot of work going on here because we're trying to completely reap it and regrade this backyard to draw the water to these collection areas it's so flat that we're just gonna crowned it we're going to get it to run into the areas that we didn't have no dirt that's it's going to be our swelled area now we're digging down the side of this house because we have a mom stur lift station going in 20-inch chamber it's got 4 feet of height it's no joke these are the types of things that we really enjoy it's not cookie cutter it's a lot of fun and we love it so this third is getting repurposed in the very yard that we're working on we're working on creating a nice crown you can see the guys are just bringing the dirt and they're spotting it we had a meeting of all the minds and I got a couple guys that really know how to grade I told them how I want the soils to be it the dirt was already kind of built up on the fence because they were trying to keep out the neighbors water because there's some pool yards that just flood this yard and actually they got away with something that this is in Sterling Heights Michigan and the building apartment does not allow you to concrete all the way to the property line when you have swimming pool decks you know concrete deck stamped concrete deck brick paver deck it's code that the water has to shed away from the pool because for health reasons you can't have that stormwater enter your pool so this this situation he's got this homeowner scattered a pool yard on each side of them that is cemented right to the fence so he's dealing with all that but it did really help that somebody was building up along the fence with dirt because now I had a swale to work with so that's why you don't see us putting dirt near the fence line we don't want that that's our collection area you have to keep a low area as your collection area so here we are we're building up the grade and we're repurposing all the dirt from the system and remember this yard was flat the front yard was flat the back yard was flat everything about this it couldn't have been more flat so we have pitch on our entire system we have three percent slope in our French during and yard drain combination which we'll talk more about that when we get to it right now we're probably in the deepest part of the dig we were putting in the sump system which I will show you more so hooking up 6-inch pipe means you have to make sure you purchase the right hardware with these basins the basins come you know for four pipes to be hooked up that are four inch that's the hardware it comes with so if you end up wanting one of the FDM 20 inch round for a six inch hookup you do have to call the office because we have to make sure you have the right hardware going out with that so look at that big six inch culvert pipe and now we're drilling holes in the basin remember always drill holes in the basin a lot of people say hey it's clay you know it it doesn't perc it's not gonna help I I don't agree with that even clay has some percolation that's why it turns to pudding that's why when you walk in a yard that's flooded it's soft and squishy that's clay taken in water so we don't want this to be a petri dish there's two dogs and a very young child in this yard and we want for their safety we want these basins to dry up so after a storm there's gonna be a lot of evaporation we have holes drilled out you know through the bottoms of all of them okay so two guys you really need a second set of hands when you're working with this culvert pipe this mini six-inch virgin culvert pipe of Bachmann's it's no joke and it does take you know an extra couple hands that's for sure it's not like the four-inch even cutting out these big 6-inch look at that you know so that you can go ahead and put your adapters for the six inch in through that now notice how high we are so I already had the guys slope the trench and even the basin's drop in level but I want the pipe up high so that any debris any you know tree leaves bark you name it whatever you can think of during a storm that goes down into a big 20 inch round great I want that to set and settle at the bottom of these basins to keep that six-inch pipe clean now because it's Baughman tile if you want like say every 10 15 20 years to send a jetter through it because it's a yard drain not a French drain keep that in mind it's not perforated pipe it's solid and I endorse building a yard drain with basins I just don't endorse building a French drain with basins so we're gonna get to that too as well so Francisco is doing a great job here he's got these knockouts cut you know he's putting in the hardware for the 6-inch so that it now accepts that 6-inch Baughman virgin tile that yellow yellow or blue means it's virgin material no recycled materials so you're not dealing with recycled restaurant containers all that stuff that you know the animals can smell dig up chew on your system and for longevity it definitely doesn't hold up like the virgin material when you have that black pipe with all the additives in it so I put a drain right here next to that cement pad the outdoor living space now you see how deep that is see how we really have it recessed compared to the grass around it that's because I want the water to go in that basin I want it to catch everything so that's gonna be the low point at this point in the backyard it's gonna take all that surface water that you've seen in those pictures it's going to take in all that bulk water and it's going to handle it just fine because it's a solid 6-inch pipe with 420 inch round inlet basins so this is one heck of a yard drain system this is honestly commercial this is commercial level here I seen those pics and I seen just how bad things were and the neighbors have all this concrete non permeable surfaces I knew we were in trouble we had to bump it from four inch to six inch just to get it done I wanted to make sure that when we did this that we didn't have to come back for any modifications you know our slogan do it right the first time and even if that means spending a few extra bucks then you don't have to revisit it or possibly tear it out in the future so this yard drain the guys have been wrestling with this big six inch pipe and these big 20 inch basins and getting this all together the dig is done back here everything sloped we have our fabric in now why would you put fabric in with the yard drain you're absolutely right you would not need it normally but we are gonna put a French drain in with this yard drain so we're gonna do a combination and once we put our high-octane pipe in there then we can fill it full of stone then we could wrap it now we can then go ahead and just grow grass right over it so we're making some of the final connections for this big six inch system so that we can start working on building this the lift station the outdoor sump system is definitely in this case gonna be used as a lift station we're flat so we sloped our we sloped our trench all the way to the sump so there is your high octane why is it white because it has a sleeve or sock on it we have cobblestone that has broken cobble in it what happens when you have small pieces of stone in with your stone see that's inch and a half Cabo I love that stuff that's what we always get but we ended up getting a couple loads with broken cobble in it and I'm gonna tell you why because they sell you that broken cobble at the same price as the inch and a half cobble because when you buy a truck of this they go on a scale and you're buying it per tonne so it's gonna be just garbage they'd have to dig a hole and just bury the broken cobble if they didn't sneak it in loads and charge us an extra four or five ton a broken cobble on a big truck like a super train so it's kind of a bummer but you know I see it all the time my subscribers are talking about about it all the time and you seen that the sleeve in the sock that white material we call that a sock or sleeve in the industry the blue high-octane is inside that that's so those little stone chips don't plug the inlets on the high octane because we all know dirt washes right through high octane dirt has no problem washing through high octane I don't care how dirty the stone is because I know all the dirt is gonna wash right through it go through our pump our pump system our lift stations gonna take it and just pump it out into the front yard which you're gonna see here soon all right so the guys are building this lift station and it's pretty elaborate we actually got a sump area so picture this we got a 20-foot chamber and then we have a sump that we built into this because I want to make sure if that yard drainpipe brings any debris that did not get caught in those 20 inch round basins I want there to be a big sump right before the pump so the debris just collects and falls in that I don't want our pumps working hard on you know moving too much debris and possibly that causing a situation where you have a failure and now you wake up to a flooded backyard because this homeowners dealt with enough of that he's counting on us to bring our expertise to throw everything we have at this problem so that he never has to live that again now look at that French drain look at that look at all that stone all that inch and a half cobble you think that's gonna flow a lot of water man that's gonna move a lot of water so right here is for the surface water and remember a six-inch pipe can move 550 gallons per minute so that's crankin and that's just like on a 1% slope which we have 3 percent slope back here then our high octane it's in a sleeve or sock that's rated for 300 gallons per minute through a square foot of that sock so I'm not worried about the sock slowing down the water going in the high octane I want the sock on the high octane because of all the small stone chips and our stone unlike the dirt it doesn't wash through it actually gets caught in those inlets and that's where the problem lies so that's where this sleeve or the sock shines this is the only place that we use a sleeve or sock when we're dealing with stone that's fragmented you whether it's a crushed stone and you have little you know pieces of crushed stone whether it's you know crush cobble mixed into the cobble so look how big this lift stations gonna be and there's our sump you can see and you know another thing that stumps gonna serve I'm gonna put the heater in that some that's a great place to drop the heater so this system here well-thought-out I mean we really put a lot of time into each and every system that we build and so look how many elements we're dealing with here we're building this monster lift station we're dealing with a French drain we got a yard drain inside our breeder wrapped French drain so yard drain French drain lift station with a monster chamber these guys are working really hard to plumb that right now getting every little detail perfect here in Michigan we have no room for mmm if you mess up and leave a belly somewhere that freezes everything's got a drain everything's got to be smooth the bottoms got to be smooth everything's got to flow it has to empty and leave no water behind especially at this charge line so we'll go over some some of that look at the corner of that house how it's sunk during all those years of wet backyard look at how it's cracked look at can you imagine what it takes to fix something like that look at the damage already caused from a yard that did not drain properly are we here in time well the gentleman bought the house a couple years ago and found out very quickly he inherited this you know flooding problem and he loves his home his wife their beautiful baby and the family dogs he's just trying to get this fixed right man look at the corner of that house such a shame that this all could have been prevented had there been a good system in place so somebody probably took a couple of tries aunt draining this property and just never got it right that's usually the case I could see that they definitely brought third in you know that's how the yard got so flat to begin with I mean the flatter it is now you scattered the water everywhere and it's gonna take more effort to collect it in this case it being a smaller lot in Sterling Heights Michigan we're able to repurpose all the dirt worth digging out and ground it on a bigger piece of property you can't do that the Hollin is so ridiculous they just got to grid the whole yard do French drain grid which you guys have seen my French drain grids just go on YouTube and just put in French drain grid a couple of my videos will pop and that's how you dry out an entire yard when you can't afford to bring in gravel train after gravel train of fill dirt so we got our inch and a half cobble and we got our high octane in there with the sock on it so that none of those small chips those little fine chips make their way into the high octane Inlet the guys are still hard at work almost done with this lift station so see the heights we're gonna keep that height what's nice is you lift the water to that height and now as you pump it out to the front it gives you slope the higher you lift the water the more slope you have to work with and of course we're gonna run the discharge line just along the side of the house in the front until we get to our leach field so this looks great this is just about done back here we did have to take the fence off to get our machines in there and we barely we were barely able to get in there even with the fence being you know disassembled the hardware was in the way so whatever it takes you know we try to save the homeowner money if this would have been all done by hand the price would have literally been double on this job so you want it machine accessible even if you got to take the art apart so here's our leach field manifold along with some knife cut now I have a lot of videos on knife cut and how we use it in leech fields and right there I sprayed out where our leech fields gonna be so there's our discharge line from that lift station in the backyard but there's a whole nother project that lies ahead we have to build this leech field and it's got to be done right if you miss on this then all this work is for nothing now remember that yard flooded bad and now we have to come in build a system that collects the water build a system that lifts the water we got our slope in a flat backyard I taught you guys how to do that we sloped all the way down to this lift station it doesn't matter if you're a foot 18 inches two feet down as you get more and more slope you just have to have a taller riser on your lift station so I laid that out on the ground just to make sure we had our dig right we marked it off everything looks perfect to me and in Sterling Heights Michigan you have to be six feet from the sidewalk when you're discharging water I don't expect very much water to ever come out of the system I'll explain why as we're building it when you see what we put into this leach field you'll understand so there's still a lot of work back here you know we still got to get a finished grade and put some seed and straw down we gotta get the fabric pulled nice and tight and trim it and size it and we still got to get some more stone in and we're putting stone top of that chamber look at that 20-foot chamber that has holes drilled throughout it so it's gonna take in water too it's actually part of the collection system so think about that when you drill a bunch of holes in your chamber that now is part of your collection system so we have all the way across the backyard collecting water we have all of our 20 inch round basins set as the lowest points in the yard so the water's gonna funnel right to them how do you like that every time you go through there you got to raise your bucket and you're dragging the wires it's you know something we see on each and every job there's always something overcome that's why you want skilled trades that's why you want guys that have a lot of experience you know operating machinery my guys they're less laborers now than ever and more machine operators which is perfect I want to extend their career and I hope they stay with me for decades and decades to come the electrician's there what we're doing here there was an old pool back here and there was a plug for some of the pool filter I mean this is above-ground you know doesn't have as much stuff going on as an in-ground and we're just basically relocating that we just cut it off right there and we're using it it saved a couple bucks it didn't save a lot because there's quite a bit a lot of work to you know getting everything wired and put in place for that for that lift lift station that we built so the fabric goes in now you can see our electrical is gonna be deep enough notice how I don't even think twice about the downspout in the corner of this house see that's just gonna pour right into our collection system I still can't believe how badly that corner of that house foundation is cracked all right so there's so much cobble in this broken cobble and that stuff we were just talking about it it's frustrating so now this is the final this is for keeps we got everything dug right we got everything sighs perfect we're putting in that chamber for like the third time and again that's just because you're digging you're adding length you're you're working with the slope you're working with the the basin I got that sump there to collect additional debris since we have a yard collection system we know debris is gonna be in that 6-inch solid pipe and it's gonna bring it into our chambered system so there's a few places you could take a shop-vac okay look at the neighbor's pool yard look at all that concrete I mean there is not a Greenbelt anywhere to be seen and look at this here we go all that concrete drains towards my client that shouldn't even have happened I'm Sterling Heights and in their inspectors drop the ball or maybe some of that was done after the inspections I don't know but the fact that I'm working for a gentleman who just purchased this house a year and a half two years ago you know he really doesn't have much saying all that that stuff was there when he bought the house and it was not disclosed that this house had a yard drain issue so there's the high-octane there's the sock over it that's a filter sock to keep little chunks of stone from plug in the high-octane inlets we just started bringing in that this year because we were getting so many people all over the United States and Canada saying hey is there any way you can suck high-octane because we're getting a lot of stone fragments too and it is just so timely and so costly to try to screen that out that it's just not even worth it for the cost of a sock put on high octane that's so right now we're digging a sump so we're making the some part of it deeper than the rest of the chamber and yes we're going to connect the piece to where dirt from the yard drain can just fall in that sump now the hole can very responsibly take a shop-vac go around suck out all those basins all those catch basins because remember look at that look at those little pieces of rock that block your inlets on your pipe I mean this gets so frustrating seeing that look at that all that stuff will fit in the void of high octane in the inlet of high octane I'll just plug it so that's why we got the sock on it so if you're considering buying a certain stone that really has good drainage properties you know it's an inch and a half maybe even two inches but it's got a lot of stone fragments you want high octane with a sock without a doubt that's how you want to go so we've talked this over me and the guys you know we we plan this and even with a plan you run into all kinds of things like all those big chunks of cement that I showed you from the fence that was there prior to the existing fence that actually changed a few things we got a big hunk of concrete where my boys are right now where you see Francisco and Valente diggin there's there's issues there so we're trying to overcome that to make sure that everything fits proper everything slope proper so dealing with the concrete a lot of times there's an old footing there from it could be a shed god only knows our job is to somehow chisel away at it you know sometimes we've got a jackhammer just a section out just so we can get our systems in when you're not working on new construction you know and most our work is not new construction we're dealing with all existing and most contractors they hate working with existing you know we've kind of made a career of it right from day one I learned quickly how to get in and out of people's backyards without screwing them up you know plywood smaller equipment power wheelbarrows all the different things then you know through the evolution of equipment you know we now have these ditch witches that is really changing everything because now the productivity through the roof so I explained everything that's going on to the homeowner he came home from work and of course his yards all tore up and he just wants to know where is this going and how is it gonna end I reassured him everything's fine as far as in our world it's just another day at the office so you see that piece of high octane with the sock on it that's going to go in that trench right there and we're gonna connect it right to our 20 foot chamber of our lift station so we have water that we're catching right up by the house we have water that we're catching all the way across the backyard and then we have this nice whale that we formed right down this side and we're grabbing up all the water that comes out of that one pool yard that's cemented all the way to the fence and it's just a parking lot it's just so much concrete and you've been in shopping malls where you run to the car because it's a downpour and maybe you sit and just wait for the downpour to pass so you don't have to drive in it and you see that river of water flowing in that parking lot that's what he's getting from the neighbor so we built a system that will handle it a six-inch yard drain with solid pipe and then we have our high octane in a sock with a 20-inch chambered lift station the homeowner when this was all done he was blown away he said man this is some serious serious stuff here he said I knew from watching your videos and trying to figure this out on my own that I had to bring you guys in and he said and watching it it was much more than he even had bargained for he was like I can't believe what it took to make this right now look at the corner of that house that's all cracked and then somebody took a mortar that didn't match to try to fix the crack that was because this yard was so just saturated it was so wet that literally the house settled and just broke the corner of the house broke so we're still burrito wrapping this just like we would any of our French drains because it is a French drain now of course the yellow pipe is solid it's insider French tree and these inlets that take in water they only go to the solid yellow 6-inch pipe it is not tied in with the high octane I know that a lot of people are having a hard time understanding this but this is how you build a yard drain with a French drain so we got Sparky over there getting our electric you know finalized so that we can power this lift station you can see that guys are working really hard to pull this fabric tight we teach you guys pull the fabric tight don't leave any wrinkles we have tens of thousands of holes punched in this we have process where we double punch it so we can get some bigger holes in there for the grass roots to fit in because the water travels down the grass roots into the system so that's what's nice now look at this 1050 I want the contractors to pay attention you see how there's no extra room for that machine he was running into the fence the 1550 has added length and that's one of the biggest negatives but that very length that it has also gives it more stability so now look at that I think that's pretty darn good considering we took a bunch of crappy dirt that had low percolation that's why the yard just held water and we broke all that clay up luckily we're in a drought here in Michigan so it was pretty dry and now the guys are putting down a real nice mix of bluegrass and we have some annual rye just so that he gets grass right away and bluegrass takes 30 days to germinate so in that amount of time we need something to hold things together now we got blind inlets right there those blind inlets are gonna catch that downspout water and then eventually the grass is gonna grow right over those blind inlets and the roots will just take the water right down through the fabric but for now we got our royal blue high-octane huh those match our royal blue high-octane pipe and a lot of people want the royal blue because that way everybody knows their yards their yard drains running on high I had a guy sell his house and he told me people recognized the royal blue blind inlets and they were so happy to know that we were there we designed a system we took care of the drainage because then they knew there was no yard drain problem so that was pretty cool we have all colors of blind inlets if you want green we have green if you want the black for wintertime because they radiate the most heat in the north we have the black we even have white because a lot of people it just matches whatever they got going on for color scheme in their yard but believe it or not ever since we started selling the blue you know blind inlet grates I was shocked a lot of folks they're putting in their high-octane French drain and they want you know people to know hey I'm running on high octane so they use the royal blue blind inlets that we use now you won't see that royal blue forever because the grass will grow over it that's the plan so there's our sump viewer which I absolutely love because you don't have to take the lid on and off on and off now that lid that was at grade level the heaters in there and we already installed that now this system so big I put oh there's those blind inlets the royal blue blind inlets the grass is just going to engulf those and they're going to disappear you don't have to remove them you don't have to trim the grass out around them let the grass just engulf them because then you got the roots dangling in the stone and the water just moves right through all those holes it follows the roots right into the stone so we've been trying to teach everybody that our fabric has holes punched in it for grass roots see the low lid that's where the heater is and I got a twelve hundred and fifty watt because I ain't messing around it's rated for 50 to 600 gallons of water this system it could be say below zero in Michigan and we're still gonna have the water underground it's gonna it's gonna be flowing freely so now is if you would think all the hard work was already done all the heavy lifting has been done now we got to build our leach field so we're gonna show you guys how to build a leach field I've done videos on it but I want to do a video that shows a yard drain with a French drain combination I also wanted to introduce you to that sock on high octane I wanted you to see a lift station and I wanted you to see a perfectly flat lot because everybody's always telling me I can't get the water out of my yard it's perfectly flat everything's flat I can't get the water out how do you do it and you're learning that today so we're digging out the leach field so we got to just haul all this away we're done with the backyard this dirt here literally filled our 20 yarder so that says a lot our leach field we removed not quite 20 yards because of all the air pockets and clay so we probably took out 15 yards of soil here now your leach field has to be level your leach field cannot be running on a hard angle otherwise it doesn't do its job you want to leach field to be completely level that way it comes in contact with so much soil in the front yard and that soil even though it's poor percolation it's gonna absorb quite a bit of that water now remember our leech fields are built out of knife cut this is not 8 slot nor is it 4 slot staggered this isn't solid pipe what is knife cut knife cut it looks like you took a razor blade and just that's it literally just cut the plastic but you removed no material it lives up to its name it looks like a knife cut and there's the whole point is to load these pipes with water all four of them let's load these pipes up with water and let it very slowly be released into our leach field now what is a leach field a leech field is a betta stone now you're gonna see a different type of stone used for this leech field the back yard I had our inch and a half cobble you're gonna see this is gonna be really small it's not P stone but it's called six a six a is what's used for leech fields so once we get all this clay out of here and we've completely dug out our leach field we're then going to fill it in with this six a at that point I'm gonna show you guys how to plumb and put together the pipe for the leach field we're gonna be on a flat surface so in the front yard there was just the you know ever you know slightly just a little bit built up on the side of the house as it normally is so the dig was the deepest where Valentin is standing next to the retaining wall down in a giant trench that's going to be a leach field now we take it to our twenty inch round FDM basin and we tie the two Center pipes in this forefinger leach field because remember we got a manifold and the manifold it has four knife-cut pipes that we want to load with water that's going to slowly leak into the six eight that's going to be underneath these pipes and then if there is an excess of water during a hundred-year rain event yes it can come up out of the great we're now in the front yard and it's not gonna be a problem I don't care how cold it's gonna be because I have a twelve hundred and fifty watt heater in that monster chamber I want to bring that water into this leach field hot enough to where there's no issues so the digging on this is just the majority of the work for this leach field and it's a whole separate project all by its if as you can see I mean Francisco is just slinging and slinging and slinging shovels of dirt and we're running them out with the ditch which as fast as he's shoveling them in we had a tree out front a big maple tree and we're getting into all these anchoring roots they're not tap roots they're just the anchoring roots so they're really strong roots you know Valentin's got to take an axe cut through these roots I mean it's it's quite a bit of work this again could have been a whole separate job just all by itself for most crews so you can see we have our leach field fully assembled we have our 200-year FDM tape holding it together and we are ready to plumb our lift station into our leach field that we've been working on so we render the tree roots a little slower going you're gonna see axes flying I mean Valentin don't ask me why he enjoys it and we just let him have at it he's pretty good with an axe he's a pretty strong guy for buck 40 wet in his boots and we're really lucky to have him you know he's been with me for many many many years and we've been making youtube videos now for the past four years and you guys have seen him with us each and every time we keep him on the veteran crew because he's so good look at that that is just amazing with all the tree roots that we had a tear out chopped out remove beautiful flat flat flat bottom to this leach field this has to be flat this is key your leech field has to be flat you want the water to load into those knife cut pipes the knife cuts remember they're not ground out those cuts are made with a razor blade like type thing so when Baughman tiles running a bunch of knife cut these blades don't grind they don't remove material they just slice so you get a like a sweating effect is the best way to describe knife cut when you load it in a leach field and you the way we're using it so we're really really really close to having the dig done on this leach field and by this time we're all getting ready to get home to have dinner with our families I'm not gonna lie to you guys it's been a long day that backyard was a handful as you can see there was a lot of work and there's only four of us and one is just making video for you guys the other three are doing all the work so you can see Valentin he's over there chopping away at those anchor anchoring roots do not worry about that contractors your clients are gonna say is that gonna kill my tree no they're anchoring roots the roots up near the surface are anchoring roots you would have to cut them all off all the way around and yes the next big windstorm would blow the tree down but this is not gonna be a problem cutting roots on one side of the tree so the right answer to clients that are concerned about you cutting their tree roots and trust me if that tree does anything in the next five years they're gonna blame you and I can tell you that just from experience but no anchoring roots will not kill a tree it will not be a problem get them out of the way get your system in and you know we're building this to be a leach field so we're not so worried if in the years to come the tree has an effect on the leach field it's not gonna be a problem so our dig is done now we're lining it with four ounce fabric so we have our double punched four ounce fabric we're gonna grow sod on the top of this when we're done I don't want the stone to migrate into the clay and I don't want the clay to migrate into the stone now we're cutting out the four inch so here we are we're cutting out the four inch we're gonna connect the two Center the two that are Center on this leach field you got it the manifold allows you for pipes you see for knife-cut pipes they're not solid they're not for slot staggered they're not eight slot it's the six cuts in every Valley that's knife cut that's what we have there so our manifolds all together we have it you know with the 200-year FDM tape everything's in place we see the light at the end of the tunnel on this job now we're gonna get in all this 6a so you see how we have the 6a in the bottom we're working on getting that level we want 6a at the bottom I'm not looking for bigger voids in a leach field I need this leach field to just absorb the water and then slowly allow it to leach into all the soil in the front yard that's what a leach field does now you can elevate your leech fields if you're having issues with it you can elevate them and let me tell you you want to talk about evaporation rate and drying out quick man an elevated leach field if you have an active active say sump system that you're gonna put in you know tie the water that it's pumping into a leach field elevate it elevate it because it's going to evaporate it's gonna dry out it's gonna keep up with that active system so there we got a 20 inch round Basin at the end we got the two Center pipes tied to that that's all in the event that we get a hundred year and the hundred-year comes and we get six inches of rain and X many hours at least this has an outlet very rarely will the customers see water coming out of that 20 inch basin very rarely and we're six feet off the sidewalk to make Sterling Heights happy I'm on really really good terms with Sterling Heights then one of the main guys there he's an older gentleman he's seen so much of our work and he's just so great to work with you know he knows what we're battling and our goals are the same he's looking out for the residents of Sterling Heights and so are we our best interest is in our client that we're working for so now we got our pipes set right where we want them or putting more 6a on top of them so here this is what we're doing the Builder leach field now remember it was a little bit deeper over here where the landscape was all this was built up once upon a time just usually if it's built up at all it'll just be that centre of the home at one point and you see how we got that plumbed we got the manifold in there forefinger leech filled with knife cut and we have it plumbed ready to cut our discharge line to size and slide it together and then use some more of our 200-year tape so we don't ever have to worry about this coming apart this is going to withstand all the freeze and thaw that Michigan sees so people in Canada UK anybody that's dealing with that and you know what these leech fields work in Florida they work in Hawaii I mean if you do this they'll work if you're gonna see tropical storms see this leech field I would recommend one that was several times longer if we were dealing with the tropical storms and you could buy a manifold run for 100 foot you know coils of knife cut now that would be a screaming you know leech field for those regions that see a lot of water elevated a little to add to the evaporation so now we want to make sure we take care of all the bellies in this line because we talked about it we seen where there were some bellies in that line so we want to smooth out that line I like the black line by the way you guys might see white you might see black when you're watching our videos I favor the black because it has more flexibility this makes it such a joy to work with it does tighter bends a lot of people want me to build some systems and lift stations that have it discharging from a certain point and I tell the girls in the office I don't understand I mean I'm building them in the best interest of the client it's the way the pump sits in there it's so that the float isn't near the side wall of the chamber there's nothing touch the float so it can't hang up you can just buy the black discharge line and it'll make a sweeping 90 or it'll make a sweeping 180 I mean you can take it wherever you want so just another thing that I want to bring up that comes up a lot so there's our 6-inch round I mean right now we have a bunch of green lids in stock I can get them in black as well I think we only have a couple left some people because we're in the north want the black ones because again it could be 20 degrees but if it's sunny out that radiant energy will follow that Basin out so again I've you know brought this up in other videos but I'm trying to put so much information in this one video that you guys save it and you make your own FDM playlist and you use this repeatedly time and time again because of all the different things we've covered here so we're getting really close here we're starting to put a little bit bigger stone over the 6a right now we have our inch and a half cobble we're just going to top dress it in that you know again we want it to evaporate you know we want you know some air circulation up top here and you're gonna see the guys pull the fabric really tight you're gonna see them go ahead and and and pin it and breed or wrap it I mean this leech field it's built just like a giant French drain but it's just the opposite we're not trying to draw water out of the soil we're actually doing it in Reverse we're pumping water into a leach field manifold that has knife-cut loading these pipes of water and letting it sweat and dissipate into the soil in the front yard so I can't tell you how many people dog me in the comment sections oh you had a lot of slope oh you had a storm drain you had a ditch I mean oh you had a you took it to a creek I mean the list is long and I'm like you know I just never shoot one of these because the more hands you have involved in building this stuff the sooner you get home to your families and usually I'd be on a ditch which more and more actively involved mostly all I did on this job was I became the video Agra fer as well as I exercise my CDL so I was trucking in the stone and trucking out you know some of that heavy clay with all those big routes and in bringing in equipment and whatever the guys needed I was there for him this kept feeding them what they needed because I didn't want him to miss a beat didn't want them to be slowing down and I wanted this job done in a day even though this is a monster job and everybody's always like FDM what did this job run what do you guys get for that kind of work well I'm gonna tell you this job right here runs 14 to 15 thousand dollars depending on you know accessibility and a few other things but in Michigan that's what we get I know you guys in California and a few other places where the cost of living is through the roof I know you guys are getting more than we do I mean I've talked to you and it's pretty actually shocking to see what you guys are getting notice how we took care of the bellies on the discharge line mounted to the house we went ahead and mounted it in the areas where it had a belly and now it's a straight line nice straight line all the way down to the leach field meaning that it can't hold water anywhere to freeze in winter notice how the guys are pulling this fabric super super tight and pinning it because yes you know in the event that there was some rain this could take water in through the surface as well so that's pretty cool now we're in Michigan you don't have to do this if you're in Florida you don't have to do this if you don't know ye Louisiana all those places that get hot and stays pretty warm year-round but we have to put straw over our leech fields this is so that they don't freeze and they keep working properly so we go ahead we pack the strong really really tight it's it's a great insulator and I've dug up systems that were you know 15 20 years old you still see the straw so because that's another thing people always say when there's low oxygen because you're gonna grow sod over it we're gonna put the sides you know stamp it in and once the sod roots gross through the fabric it'll grow through the straw through the fabric the water is just going to follow those roots right into the leach field any water it happens to be out here they didn't have any problems out here but in the event that there's a lot of rain a hundred year storm maybe even areas where they had problems you know they might see puddling not here where this leach field is this is gonna take care of them check out downspout right there we're just letting it pour right into the leach field no need to do anything more than that its head has these extensions that the homeowner already did to get it out of that corner and it can just end up in the leach field it's not gonna be a problem all right everybody don't forget to give us a thumbs up until the next video you you

Channel: FRENCH DRAIN MAN

Views: 907,068

Keywords: yard drainage, Yard Draianage Contractor, perforated drainage pipe, how to build a french drain, french drain pipe, what is a french drain, Yard Drainage, french drain, french drain exit point, french drain mistakes, french drain without pipe, french drain slope, french drain depth, dry well, french drain ideas, how to slope pvc drain pipe, backyard slope drainage, minimum slope for surface drainage, french drain with no slope, minimum slope for storm drain pipe

Id: 4HtU8iJnW0U

Length: 59min 29sec (3569 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020