How to Dig a Dry Well | This Old House

[Music] frank we still have a little bit of a water problem in the basement and when we got here you had a big water problem yeah it's gotten a lot better uh it used to be the old gutter system drained into these old sewer lines here right we pulled the old gutters out capped them off with cement noticed the water problems started to subside a bit right but we're still going to have a lot of water coming off this roof and we do want to get away from the house right roger right and one of the issues where you are coming is a hump and you can see there's a low spot trapping water in against the house yep okay and over here we have a downspout that's coming out right at the foundation now that water is just going to wash down and do damage to the brick in the mortar so we got to do some grading but we also got to do what with these gutters we're going to get the water out into the lawn away from the house so we're going to put in a system of pipe that will carry the water to a dry well nice little digging involved and we're fortunate we've got volunteers here today mike and joe are going to start digging for us all yeah well i love to see the volunteers and i love to see the heavy equipment we ready to dig we are kevin because we called ahead and had the gas line marked out so now we are ready to dig and safe to dig nice all right [Music] so [Music] so that's our tank there roger that's a tank a 50 gallon tank so how are you deciding how big of a tank we need for our house well there's a formula to figure out how many gallons you're going to have and that starts by measuring the roof we know our roof here is 30 by 40. that's 1200 square feet but we divide that in half because we've already put a tank on back and that leaves us 600 square feet so how does 600 square feet of roof translate in terms of gallons of water in a rainstorm well there's a formula so we're going to use 600 square feet times .62 and during a one inch storm that's how many gallons you get is over 300 gallons so it's like 360 gallons right you got a 50 gallon tank so in a one inch storm we're in trouble or what one inch storm is a massive storm and not the average you're going to get right but we have 50 gallons plus what we leach in the trench what to leach out around the tank yeah so this is a perf pipe so we're going to lose some water there we're going to lose a lot of water in the hole yep and then what's going to happen is we're going to put a cap on this that when it fills up the water will come out and it'll go down on the grass away from the house the key is we're getting all this water away from the house so even in a massive storm now the water's going to be out here not in there so this is going to be a big improvement going to make a big difference all right let's put some stone on top of it guys okay roger i've got your pop top now this is gonna sit on top of your tank if your tank ever filled with water it'll take and open up and allow that water to escape out onto the lawn and then afterwards it'll close and then no leaves or debris will get in there and it'll work fine for you all right so a little more stone in here yep flip the fabric over put some soil on top and we are done all right well we are going to keep working in the kitchen we got some work to do in there but thanks for this you're welcome all right frankie with me [Music] 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 what you see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed

Channel: This Old House

Views: 64,344

Rating: 4.9248433 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, dry well, Roger Cook, Kevin O'Connor, drainage, yard

Id: PoNIpc7YA_k

Length: 4min 9sec (249 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020