How to Prevent Underground Buried Downspout Pipe From Freezing During the Winter

[Music] welcome to the french draymond channel i'm your host robert sherwood we're going to show you guys a demonstration we're going to take you through a setup that will reduce freeze-ups in the wintertime the underground pipe for your downspout system it's a legitimate concern if you live in the north that you have to be vigilant to avoid freeze-ups there's techniques that you have to use so that you have success with this this is a three inch pop-up i chose a three-inch pop-up because it holds less water in the elbow it is on a clear translucent four-inch corrugated pipe you can see the water in this corrugated pipe so the water's coming down in this corrugated pipe it's finding its way to the pop-up emitter again the pop-up emitter has a three-inch elbow the technique that i'm going to show you will work for a four inch pop-up if you have trees with big leaves stick with a four inch elbow on your pop-up if you have no trees in the area and leaves aren't a concern then in the north a three inch elbow holds less water and you're going to perk that little bit of water much quicker and easier than you would the four inch elbow so one percent slope is pretty easy to achieve all homes when they're built have slope i realized that some of the older homes before there was uh you know building codes building officials to hold the builders to certain standards i know the older homes have issues but anything that's been built since pretty much 1970 and current is going to be fine you're going to have that one percent slope now what we're going to do is we're going to stop you know feeding this pop-up water we want to shut off the hose that's feeding this corrugated pipe and we want to see how much water is left to sit in this corrugated pipe so the water all runs down to the pop-up now you can see pop-up there's less pressure there's less pounds per square inch there's less psi but it's still running out at one percent slope here so let's see how much water we are left with with one percent slope all right so you can see you have a few feet that holds water now we taped up the hole on this three inch elbow so that we can do this demonstration if we're not going to design the system to perk i want to show everybody this is what you're going to end up with you're going to have water right there okay so dynamite dynamite dynamite got a couple of feet a couple of feet left that's great that's great one percent slope no problem this is no big deal that's not a lot of water now a basin holds a lot of water it's like a five gallon pail of water so in clay you're never going to get that to perk in a little area that's the problem with those drain basins now the few cups of water that are left behind a couple of feet and just a four inch pipe we're going to take care of that show you how all right we went ahead and we put a few feet of knife cut on we're gonna we're gonna show you what happens when you add three feet of knife cut now knife cut it has a really really small cut in it no material removed unlike our eight slot or our four slot staggered there's actual material removed that's too big a hole i just want a blade to cut it so this is what knife cut is when they manufacture it these are just blade cuts no material ground out okay so when we install this we actually have the knife cut in stone and fabric just like our french drain system so here we've loaded it up with water these very detailed and technical demonstrations that we put together for you guys so we're loading the whole pipe up with water i mean we have really really good flow now we're gonna cut the flow of the water we're gonna show you you see how the water's just sweating out of the knife cut see what it's doing so when this stops when there's when there's no more rain when the rain event is over thunderstorm whatever and the water's running off the roof out of the gutter downspouts the final bit of water comes out of the pop-up you can see it leached out of the knife cut now this won't hold any water then let's go to the three inch this is why you know i encourage the three inch when you don't have big trees big tree leaves and you need a really big you know four inch pipe to feed all that debris we basically cut little holes in the bottom of these so they can leach too and i just we just taped it up there it is just pouring out slowly just leaches into the soil so when old man winter shows shows up it's not an issue because the knife cut ran down the last few feet of corrugated pipe on one percent slope here and then the holes that we have in the bottom of the elbow drain out the pop-up and that's such a tiny little bit of water that it will leach even in clay now remember clay does perk some that's why it goes from being hard as a rock to soft lake pudding and that's why we got away from using the drain basins we won't use the drain basins anymore because they just hold way too much water as you guys know come winter time it just becomes a block of ice so this here is bulletproof this is how you keep your line from freezing up in the winter now this is not going to keep your downspout from freezing up the only thing that will keep your downspout from freezing up is heat tape but yeah you bury one of these big guys in clay you just got five gallons of water and you're asking it to perk just in a small area it's not going to happen it doesn't happen here we have small pipe for four inch diameter pipe we're just asking it to leach a little bit of water not very much and then right in here we just have a cup of water this will keep your line from freezing up again downspouts still freeze up you're gonna have to put heat tape in your downspouts all right everybody until that next video [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: FRENCH DRAIN MAN

Views: 93,691

Keywords: frozen gutters and downspouts, frozen gutters, downspout installation, How to bury downspouts, buried downspouts, roof runoff, roof runoff system, gutter drainage, gutter system, underground downspouts, bury gutters underground, Yard Drainage Contractor, french drain pipe, perforated drain tile, drainage trench, yard drain, yard drains, yard water solutions, Baughman Tile Company, underground downspouts clogged, pvc downspout underground, pvc downspout

Id: yFxGFxfSD0A

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021