How To Build and Install the BEST Yard Drain, French Drain, 2 Great Systems Combined

hey good morning Chuck Harris Apple drains today we're going to be putting in a French drain yard drain and you might remember the video the first test your drainage knowledge video well this is that job they finally agreed to go ahead and you know have us do that and they've also graciously agreed to let us do an experiment so let me show you a couple things first so what we're going to do is we're going to run a couple of french drains the white line is was for the locators we always white line the area so they know where we're going to dig and the other interesting note real quick is I always call in and tell them we want to locate the entire property that way they know that's what we need and also we feel much much more comfortable knowing that all the property has been located so we lay out some plastic you can see and these homeowners have graciously agreed to let us do an experiment so what we're going to do is here in this trench we're going to run gravel perforated pipe surrounded by fabric which is normal here in Florida sand the small pieces of sand they definitely you know get into the gravel at least that's what I've been telling you right so over here on this one and over here on this one we're going to run some easy flow that's my pipe I like to use here especially along the foundation what we're going to do is we're gonna have a little test see which one actually flows the best so let's go ahead and get started yeah so you've seen trenches we've seen a lot of the videos you know how the trencher cuts a nice trench I'm gonna speed this up so that we can just go ahead and get the trenches cut and then we'll go start to install so you you could dig this by hand it would take you about an hour to do all this there's about a hundred feet all together maybe 120 if you have access to a trencher yeah it takes 20-30 minutes and you're done trenching I mean there's it goes quick and I suppose that you know if you wanted to you could go random mini excavator there about six to seven hundred dollars for you know one day you've got to have a good vehicle to pull it and all the above a lot of work to rent something that you could easily do yourself with a shovel you can do the work so let's go ahead and get to the install so we have our trenches dug I'm going to come back clean them out remove this excess soil and bring in the gravel and the perforated pipe and the fabric and let's put in some French drain so you'll notice that I'm taking away only one side of the soil this is a tiller side that threw up you know all the bulk of the soil and we leave that other side because after we put the French drain in and the fabric across the top or wrap it either one we need that soil to put back so we can put the sod back on it so a couple of really good points and tips I mean they may seem really silly number one point the wheelbarrow in the direction that you're gonna take it don't point it this way because you're just gonna turn it around and after you move several loads it's going to start to wear you out and speaking of wearing you out you know I'm not a great big guy but I can move a lot of soil and I've been doing it a long time but you can't fill up that barrel and lift it up then take half a barrel you know it doesn't matter you know move what you need to move in other words maybe that's maybe that maybe this is all that you can move right here but that's flying you know so you got a couple extra trips it'll definitely save you some energy I like to fill up the barrel you know I think that's the best way to do it that's--and is about twice as heavy as clay so if you're down south and you're moving soil don't think sand is really light because it's not and this has got some moisture in it not a lot but when it's wet it is at least twice if not three times more heavy than clay so keep that in mind so why do we lay out fabric number one it just kind of keeps the soil clean but number two is that you can kind of pick it up you can just pick it up and put it in the barrel real simple if you notice when I laid this out to begin with that it was one long sheet no problem you want to cut off about you want to cut off about four to six foot you just run your scissors or your your razor through there and you can make nice little pieces all the way through just leave enough soil on there that you can pick it up and throw it right into the wheelbarrow and you can see how clean that is I think the secret is trying to figure out how much soil you can actually lift remember sand is heavy you got to leave the right amount of soil but you know it's not not that bad you can always take more off of it this one's got quite a bit remember to use your wheel barrel because this is a great tool it gives you leverage you move it closer to your area if it's too far away you don't want to carry it too far this is just six mil plastic it's really strong stuff yeah that one had a lot in it it's all good so we got a good full barrel let's go dump it remember point that barrel in the direction that you're gonna take it otherwise you got to turn it around but the wheel barrel is a great tool gives you lots of leverage easy to move okay so we're all done with the you know the trenching portion of this side of the fence and there's always gonna be some hand digging no matter what you do and you can see we've got to go onto the fence but if you look you see that orange marking that's the cable line and it's running around over that direction so we're gonna bring our line right past this crape myrtle into that swell and we'll hand dig this section then I could run the trench or over there on that side okay so here's that cable line and I'd doubt if it's more than just you know two or three inches deep so just got to be really careful right here we'll also find out how accurate they are they're usually right on the money when they do locate it but I hear something right here hold on let's see hello there's an irrigation line here what else there it is I'll show you here in just a second but yeah definitely hand digs across these areas I don't know if you can see it from that angle but let me bring the camera over here and you can see it so yeah it's right beside an irrigation line right here and here's it's a TNT because you can see it's got two four four strands of wire in it and but yeah they're right on the money I mean right here is the location you know they're usually if they locate it you can see it runs really well they do a good job when they do locate always dig by hand so we're going to have to tunnel underneath of this and then continue on out where we're just going to go right out to that swell where it's going to discharge so there's the completed trenches coming all the way out to the swell out here the swell does hold water when it rains hard so we'll keep it up you know high enough we've got plenty of fall and of course you know it could flood you know all the way up back up into the system but there's not much we can do about that but we'll clean that trench out remember after we run the trencher we use our little Spade shovel and that's a six inch wide shovel and it fits right down in the trench and you can see over here it's already been done that's all cleaned out and ready to go we're about 20 to 24 inches deep both trenches all the way back this line it's going to be solid pipe out here because we've once we've collected that water here remember you collect the water and then you discharge the water so the French drain is going to be the collection okay we're going to give this drain every chance for success and you know here in Florida we've got a very sandy soil and we definitely need to wrap that French drain with some type of geo fabric I really like to use NDS quick drain I think that works far better than this but let's take a look so here's where we are I've already poured a base of gravel I trimmed the Geo fabric because I'm gonna you know fold that over and be able to tuck it all in and all that and we've got a nice base of gravel we're using slotted perforated pipe that means it has holes all the way around it so you don't have to worry about holes pointing down but remember if you do use pipe that has holes in it those holes need to point down into the gravel this system floods up not down so we've got all this laid we're going to lay some pipe and basically I'm going to add a over here and we're going to put the GoPro down in here after it rains and let's see what it does we'll put some lights in there and let's just see what it does okay so we've got our perforated pipe in the air I put a tee on it so we could have access to it now we're going to cover all this with gravel so we've got the gravel base we've got the four-inch perforated pipe this is slotted pipe we've got real good fall coming down through here I added a tee so we can have access to take a look and now we're going to go ahead and put more gravel in leaving a few inches for the sod to be on the top and we'll cover it up and we'll check it out so on this this test side we're going to go ahead and run easy flow and we'll be able to see the difference between the two like I say I'm a firm believer and easy flow especially in sandy soil I think it works great it's faster than gravel but let's go ahead and add we're using the equivalent of a number 57 stone this is a river rock but it's the same thing it's that size means it's you know inch to inch and a half somewhere in there and it allows water to pass right through it very very quickly remember we've got a nice base of gravel underneath of this thing three or four inches so we've got a French drain this is a Geo fabric wrap French drain we've got a base of gravel underneath the four-inch perforated pipe then we've got you know the four inch pipe and then we've probably got about I don't know six inches of gravel on top of that and it's running all the way down we're gonna go ahead and fold it over and cover it up and put the sod back on and let it rain okay so there you have it we've got this French drain that is totally fabric encased and it's pinned it looks so good look at that that looks just I mean it's outstanding you can see we've got pins pushing it holding it all together that is really one outstanding looking piece of fabric okay we're gonna go ahead we actually have new side brand new side to put it back on top of this we're going to put a little bit of sand in there so it has something to grow into but not much and let's take a look but yeah remember that excess along the side that's what we use just to pull that in real simple do we take our side and set it right down in place smooth it out a little bit just laying sod okay so here's our NDS quick flow ez drain remember this is perforated pipe encased with the aggregate which is the packing peanuts a very dense packing peanut and it's got the Geo fabric you know all around it it's very self-contained real easy for the homeowner to do or a contractor for that matter but real nice so again there's a lot of misconception about you know how the system actually works let's kind of review what number one if you don't have a catch basin the water on the top of the ground is not going to get into your system it has to flood down to the bottom of that trench in order for it to work and then it floods up through the aggregate into this into your pipe and it's carried away and another thing that's interesting is that you know I've never tried to rate a pipe I'm not I don't really care I know these systems work I've been doing it for so long NDS quick quick drain easy flow and it's the greatest stuff in the world it doesn't magically float up to the top that's pretty much impossible but I mean unless you just lay it on the ground you put something of course you're gonna send your ground it's got soil on the top of it it's not that buoyant but so yeah there's all kinds of myths out there so if somebody's telling you you know that they've got a system that is gonna last forever hey let's take a look okay so now we have two different types of French drain installed here in the yard these customers graciously allowed us to do the experiment or as I explained to them that both systems they will work really good yeah so we're gonna come back the next rainfall should be in a couple of days let's take a look we'll get some more footage and we'll actually look inside that pipe and see what is going on hey this is Chuck with Apple drains reminding you that if you believe you can do something I guarantee you can do it have a great day [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Apple Drains

Views: 568,107

Rating: 4.7366891 out of 5

Keywords: French Drain, Crawl Space, Exterior, Foundation, Waterproofing, Apple Drains, Gravel perforated pipe, yard drain, trench drain, sump pump, How to install a french french drain, how a french drain works, french drain tips, DIY, Florida, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, Melbourne, Miami, Sarasota, South Florida, channel drain, pool patio drain, micro channel drain, how to replace micro channel drain

Id: y9qWT_CtxdI

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019