How to Clean French Drain Including Gravel, Complete Guide for Homeowners

hey good morning chuck here with apple drains it's florida it's hot today let's take a look at what happens when we get a call we get a call says french drains backing up you know the yard's flooding things like that we have to come out and assess the problem find out what's going on can we troubleshoot the problem can we clean the line or does it need a new line let's find out so when we get a call you know they it's really great all they say is the french drain's backed up they don't really know if it's a french drain or if it's a downspout drain all they know is that it's flooding their yard so you can see we found the little grate right here let's expose that that looks to be a 6x6 catch basin so we want to get all that you know overgrown stuff off the top and then we're going to pop the lid off take a look down in the line real simple and we can see right away what's going on in here you see it doesn't look like there's any real problems here a little bit of sand and debris normal sits down in the bottom of the basin but what we need to do is get out the drain cleaning machine and send this cable down the line so we can find out where it goes and i can see the line you can see it here in the photo you can see the line where it goes but we need to send the cable down there to find it so to clean and troubleshoot your system you're going to need to have the you know a drain cleaning machine we use a spartan 1065 i've showed you this many times of how this machine works what we're going to do is we're going to add water bring the garden hose over here fill this up start to let that water run at the same time we're going to run this cable down the line and find out where the line goes as well as if there's any problem in the line so we need a lot of things we need a garden hose we're going to go ahead and let that water run it's on right now we just want to stick it down the line just a little ways that's far enough and let that run we can send the cable down the line at the same time it's not going to hurt this at all so next we're going to go ahead and get our gloves on we always like to wear gloves because this is a steel stainless steel spring wound cable and it could grab a hold of your skin leather palm gloves work the absolute best if you're going to do this yourself you can rent this machine from home depot and it's about 100 bucks for the day so it's well worth it as if you if you had to replace this line which we'll find out but if you have to replace a line it could be two or three thousand so a hundred dollars for a cleaning well worth it so we pulled out some cable and we're just going to get it started down into the pipe itself takes a little bit of work to get it started but once you get it down the line you can see you can push it easily down through there so remember we've got water running take a look we want to let that water run this appears to be a french drain so there's going to be gravel perforated pipe down through here and it's going to lose water as we send it down through there go ahead it's going to lose water but eventually it'll fill up and we'll we should see a flow coming out wherever it comes out we're going to find out so now we're going to kick on the machine remember how this machine works [Applause] the reel keeps spinning and spinning as you send the cable down the line if it hits the stoppage the end of the cable stops but the machine keeps spinning it builds up tension enough that it will spin and cut any research of leaves will it hurt uh if the pipe of course not it's just this pipe this is running through there whether it's pvc or corrugated if it's collapsed or broken hey it's collapsed or broken it's that simple pull some cable up and then push it down in the line always kind of keep an eye about how many feet you've got out we've probably got about 10 feet out and we can walk down and find out where that cable is i'll do that while he's running this line yep i can hear it can you hear that the table's going right through here no problems we're just sending a cable down the line remember we had a call that said hey the french drains not working what that tells us is that we got to find out what's going on [Music] looks like there might be a y right here so it's picking something else up i see another line that runs right up through here so i'll bet you there's another drain coming from this section as well so this line's taking all the water we can give it we're going to keep sending the cable down there remember i could hear it out here let's just see if we can see any water flow coming out here at the front into the swale oh yeah here's the pipe you can see it's kind of overgrown so we found the end of the line i'm just pulling out a little bit of debris here and you can hear it down that line oh yeah that pipe's super clean but we'll send that cable all the way out here make sure we get a good flow then next we're going to go ahead and show you how you clean this with a jetter and the jetter is really interesting because a lot of people say hey don't use the jetter in a french drain but we're going to show you they're wrong the jetter does such a good job it actually cleans the gravel as well so you can see where chance is he's about 50 60 feet from here cable's coming all the way out [Applause] so we're gonna let that cable run for a second the operator is coming out to see it he's going to take a look and make sure he knows where that cable is you can see it came all the way out now he can pull that cable back very slowly and then we'll come out here and we'll send the cable down the line again let's find out what's going on with this french drain we'll dig it up see if it was wrapped or if it's just got gravel around it let's take a look and find out so we're pulling the cable back and see how easy it grabs a hold of grass and roots really easy it binds up everything on it just let that cable spin in your hands and then go ahead and turn your machine off perfect until the machine stops turning hold that cable and you can see it picked up some grassroots just here on the ground that's how quickly this thing and there were roots in that line that would pick those out of there as well so we want to spin those off then we want to examine the cable to see what's going on what we're looking for to see if it's shiny and this is not shiny at all there are some shiny spots that's normal shining means friction so if there was a real problem down in this line this would be real shiny down through here there was no problem at all that cable went all the way out to the swale out front without any problem you can also see that we're running that water and it's taking all the water directly it takes a long time for a system to fill up before if it's a french drain okay because water is actually leaking out through here this is not a rainstorm when it rains water is so much ground water that the water rises up and enters the system and you'll see water flow instantly but with a garden hose it takes hours before you see water to begin to flow because it's leaking down through the ground it's leaching out like a drain field so we're going to expose this line just to see what's going on here basically not a lot of sod here but we're going to cut cut the sod good couple feet on both sides and and dig this up let's see what let's see what they did here let's see what is going on underground why why was this backing up we sent the cable all the way through there had no problem let's take a look yeah that's totally wrapped so we want to keep on digging around it on both sides open the same do the same thing on the other side so it looks just like that only takes a few minutes and i can see the water coming out you see it down there it's actually filtering out through that gravel through the fabric and now we're seeing some water coming into the ground now so once he pulls that off let's pull off this little bit of saw that's on the top with our hands just clean it all off and let's find it and open this system up just find the you know where it's wrapped and open it up there we go see they actually had a a pin in it see the pen so let's open that all up now use your hand and just scrape this gravel let's find the pipe there's the pipe right there good this is perforated pipe which means it's got holes all the way around i'm sorry a slotted pipe it's got holes all the way around it and again we do see water that came out through the bottom of the fabric but very little like i said fabric does not really let water penetrate as well as you think this little bit of grass root system that's very normal that will not stop or hurt anything but what we want to do now is get the jetter out and we want to send the jetter from over here at this catch basin down the line we want to see if that jetter cleans the debris that's around the gravel on the outside out here at the end of the line we finally have a little bit of water that's coming out not a lot remember that it's actually losing water down into the ground this is you know a typical call that we get someone calls and says hey we've got a french drain backing up they don't really know if it's a downspout drain or a french drain or a yard drain everyone calls everything a french drain but we found out that this does have a system it's got gravel perforated pipe surrounded by fabric and we do see water came out to here we send our cable all the way through this line's in good working order so why is it backing up let's find out so the mini jetter it's really cool you can see it's got a little nozzle on the top and then behind it you see those little jets they're all around the back of the nozzle as we send this down the line the front one it cuts debris and the back ones they pull the debris back to where we're starting where we start work it cleans out the line very thoroughly we start by putting the nozzle down that line a little ways because as soon as you kick this on it's going to start to move see that water we know the jets right there keep it running but now we're going to go into the line this is going to feed itself because those jets are pushing it just like a jet engine what we want to do is see if we see any water come out through these holes we'll just let it run yeah see that water coming out hold that oh yeah nice and clean i can see that right away that actually cleaned the debris along the side see there's no sand here that jet cleaned all this debris did a really nice job coming back through remember to keep your pressure running as you pull it back because that's what's doing the cleaning it's actually pulling back those back jets they're pulling back all that debris to the point that where you started you just want to keep keep pulling it back [Music] all right very clean line very clean look at that beautiful beautiful okay shut it off pull it out nice really nice really nice let's take a look inside the catch basin real quick just a little debris not bad at all that thing really did a nice job of cleaning we went all the way to the end now we're going to go to the end and do it from there back to this cat spacing so the really interesting note of what i wanted to show you was if you look and see that cable that that's a hose as it came through here it cleaned the debris on the outside in the gravel it actually cleaned that debris and so if you're going to try to clean a french drain if sometimes you've got to use a drain cleaning machine there's no doubt about it but if you can get a jetter down through there it's going to clean not only the pipe but your gravel as well hey this is chuck with apple drains reminding you that if you believe you can do something i guarantee you have a great day [Music] are you ready to do this yourself subscribe today and continue to learn how to install clean and maintain your rainwater drainage system

Channel: Apple Drains

Views: 25,626

Rating: 4.858521 out of 5

Keywords: French Drain, Roof Drain, Gutter drain, 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, channel drain, pool patio drain, micro channel drain, downspout drain, PVC, Drain Pipe, Basement Waterproofing, french drain installation, How to unclog drain pipe, snake french drain, clean gravel, geofabric

Id: VMVB4WffdyQ

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020