Install a Dry Well | How To

hey guys welcome back to part two of the outdoor shower build if you missed part one i'll put a link in the description below you might want to check that out to bring you up to speed where we are today so today's video is going to cover the installation of the drainage for the shower system so as you can see here i have a drywall kit i have some cargated piping i'm going to be installing that somewhere out here in the yard and running the piping up to where the shower is going to be located now before we get started i wanted to mention that this video will be helpful to anyone that is looking to install a drywall system in the yard whether it be that you have bad drainage maybe you want to drain some of your rain gutters away from your house i'm actually going to be tying this into this system as well if you have a pool one of these might be useful near your pool filter to aid in dispersing the backwash water and really you can use this in any type of application where you have a problem with water drainage so like i said today as you know we're going to be installing this for an outdoor shower and i'll show you the entire process i'm going to be doing here today i have a unique system planned for this area up here to drain the water once it drops below the deck because as you know i mentioned in the first video we're going to be extending the deck out and shower's going to be mounted up on the house here and we're going to drain the water away from the surface of the deck somehow so i think i have a solution for that we'll see how it goes so without any further ado let's get started all right guys as is the case with all my videos i'm going to put links down in the description where you can purchase all the good stuff i'm using here today so this is a drywall kit made by nds it's called a flow well you can get these in lowe's and home depot and like i said i'll put links where you can purchase them online that's what you uh would like to do so i've used these a lot in the past these are great kits and what i usually like to do first is take everything out of the package and assemble it because i want to get it together so i can lay it on the ground and mark out exactly what i have to dig to fit this into the ground so as you can see here you just have to do some assembly i guess they do this so they can fit it into a small box and get it to the store as cheap as possible so you basically have these tabs on the side of this it locks into each of the side panels through these holes and uh it's really not all that difficult okay keep the hammer and just tap the thing together and just like that is put together comes with the three sides and a lid all right so obviously this whole this whole thing gets buried in the ground all right so the kit itself one of them stands 32 inches tall so we have to dig at least a 32 inch deep hole to fit this in and obviously the diameter of it also which looks like it's like right around a little over two feet 26 inches that's for one of them like i said earlier you could stack these things if you need more capacity in the ground for more water storage and you can see it has a lip on the bottom you could stack a bunch of these together and make this deeper if you need to but the whole idea of the drywell is not only the water capacity that you get on the inside of this thing but it increases the surface area of the ground beneath the the lawn or your soil to allow the ground to absorb that water and disperse it you just gotta check your soil conditions i'm gonna show you a little trick when we get a little further along in this process here to improve your conditions inside the hole when you dig it right this really isn't a hard thing to install guys it's just a lot of grunt work so let's get started with uh digging our hole first thing you got to do is decide a spot you want to put this thing in okay all right so i think i've decided on this area here only because there's a spot where this toilet my kids have sits in the on the lawn here and it's all dead so rather than destroy the grass let's put it here you can use shovel like this with a flat end and cut your sod so you can lift it up put it aside and then if you dig your hole you can put it all back i'm not gonna have to do that here obviously because like i said there's nothing here it's all dirt so i like to do i put a tarp down and i throw my dirt onto that that way you're not ruining the lawn all right these aren't new tricks guys everyone does this it's just this is new to you maybe it'll help so i'm going to go around the whole outside of this thing and basically just rim it out so i know exactly what i gotta dig now i'm going to be just dropping this thing right in the ground there's a few ways you can install these obviously like i said you can stack them you can also dig this hole bigger than the actual drywall unit and what you can then do is take all these knockouts on the sides of this thing here i know what you can see that right now but there is holes that are pre-stamped you knock those out with a hammer and then you can fill the whole outside of this thing with gravel and what that will do is double your capacity or triple depending on how big you make the hole of the water that can go into this thing so it will fill up the water and then it'll drain out of these holes around it into the surrounding gravel and just give you a little bit more drainage if you need again i'm not going to be doing that today i don't need to so there we go there's a hole that we're going to dig let me go get another shovel start all right so nothing special here just have to dig this whole area out now obviously some of this dirt is going to need to be moved somewhere else time being i'm just going to throw some on the tarps because i need some to backfill around the edges but i will switch over to a wheelbarrow at some point and move the dirt to the back of the yard somewhere so i'm going nice and easy and just once you know it i already have a pipe here that's going to be in the way now let's see what we got you could expect this guys this is going to happen if you have a sprinkler system you probably obviously like i said you might have to jog this thing over a few inches if you hit a line in the process it looks like so far i might only have one here so that's good got i have a 12-zone sprinkler system in this something like seven or eight zones just in the backyard here so i was afraid there's gonna be a bunch of pipes in this one little spot but like just one so all right let me show you [Music] so that's what we're dealing with poly pipe sprinkle line not not the end of the world so i'm gonna do instead of having to move that thing i'm just gonna move this whole hole over like six inches this way that way that thing can stay there don't have to mess around with it it'll make the job a little bit easier so again just going to take the drywall and to see on the edge of that where i got to be and again not rocket science here guys it's pretty easy easy stuff i'm just gonna mark this area out instead right here and we'll move our trench over a little bit hopefully hopefully there's no pipes over here now but we'll see what happens so i am going to save some of this grass because i'm going to need this now again just get underneath it and usually it lifts out pretty easy grassroots are only a couple inches deep so we'll save that over there on our tarp and uh that's it we should be good let's see see what we have here yeah i think we might be good there so that's where our hole is going to be moved to now all right guys after a good solid half an hour digging you can see what we have that's about a 30 inch deep hole and it should fit that thing pretty well now the reason why i went a little bit deeper than necessary is two reasons number one i want to throw some pea gravel in the bottom of this thing before we drop that in there and what that does is it improves the water to soil contact in terms of it being able to percolate down into the ground i've always found that to be a better way of doing it rather than just leaving the the sand or the soil whatever you have on the bottom of that thing another reason why i like doing that if you ever have to pump this out for whatever reason if you can drop a submersible pump down into this thing it's nice to have that bed of pea grav on the bottom so you're not dropping the pump right down into the mud and sucking all that mud up into your pump all right so i'm going to go ahead and drop this in here just temporarily to show you what i'm talking about you can see that thing's a lot deeper than it needs to be now but like i said we're going to add gravel and we can't forget about the lid the lid the lid adds about five six inches to the overall depth of this thing because you can see it's tapered so when this thing snaps into place now you can see now we're even closer to ground level and you really never want this thing to be up real close to ground level and the reason for that is if you're going to be planting grass back over the top of this the grass needs a place to grow the roots got to be able to get down into the soil if you put this thing too close to the top too close to ground level i can tell you right now this thing's been sitting out in the sun for about an hour and it's already hot to the touch you throw a little bit of soil on this thing it's still going to get hot this area of the yard is always going to be dry then the grass isn't going to grow you're going to get a dry spot where it's dead and it's just not a good situation so you always want to sink this thing down in the ground right around probably five or six inches from the top of this thing and that'll eliminate that problem so nothing i want to show you guys here on the lid you can see there's a knockout right here in the middle of this and what this is for you punch this out and you can slip a piece of sdr-35 pipe four-inch sewer pipe into this and bring that up to ground level and then install grade on the top of it so what that does it also gives a spot for any surface water that can accumulate to drain down into the drywall the other nice thing about that is it marks out the spot exactly where our hole is here for the drywall so if we ever have to get in there to service it it's not a guessing game where this thing is we'll have that great right in the top of this at ground level now we could pull it off the service and take a peek in there and see if there's any issues alright guys fast forward into the future about three months we are in the midst of a tropical storm here on long island as you can see and this is storm tray it's dumped about three inches of rain in the past couple hours and i want to show you another reason for adding the drainage grate to the top of the drywall so as you can see the dry well has completely filled the water the ground can't absorb any more after all this rainfall i also have the shower on right now to embellish the problem i'm not going to turn around because i don't want to give away the project in the rest of the video series at this point but as you can see the water is dumping out the top of the drain grate and that's exactly why we want to install that or another reason why we want to install that this is what we want we don't want that water backing up the shower drain that close to the house that wouldn't be good obviously we have the rain gutter attached to it as well we don't want the water coming up there either and this is a safe spot in the yard to disperse that water so again just wanted to show you how the system works when it gets filled up it's working perfectly that's what we want i'm going to get inside now before i destroy my camera and we'll get back to the drywall install hoping you guys are seeing this good sun's getting a little intense out here now one final step i like to do before we throw some pea gravel on the bottom of this i like to take a post hole digger and right in the center of this hole i like to dig a little hole and the reason i do this is this hole will also be filled with pea gravel and it aids in the drainage of the water in the bottom so you're in a poor drainage area like i said i have sand here this isn't going to be an issue for the water to drain but if you don't have this so you have a lot of clay digging that hole down even further well does a couple things one maybe you'll get down to that sand level below the clay who knows right number two it gives more surface area for that water to drain into the ground okay this again a lot of things we're doing here this can't hurt it's not going to hurt anything it's a couple extra minutes of work do it now and hopefully it eliminates a problem down the road if you have one all right that's all you need that's down about a good foot and a half and we'll just uh we'll go ahead and fill that now with some pea gravel and we'll add about two or three inches of gravel on the bottom of this thing as [Applause] well all right guys that's just some pea gravel i had laying in the yard here threw it in the bottom of the hole and the nice thing about that is it also gives a nice firm base for the drywall system to be installed on the bottom of that it's a lot easier to level that than it is dirt that kind of self levels itself that's it you can see we filled in that hole in the middle there doug got a nice layer of it now on the bottom let's smooth that out a little bit more all right guys well that's pretty much it it doesn't let it look pretty it's gonna be buried in the ground no one's ever going to see it just has to work all right so our next step we're going to install our cargated pipe from our drain location into this drywall so as you can see here on the sides of this thing there are knockouts those are four inch knockouts they accept the four inch corrugated pipe there is an adapter piece you could buy that locks into the side of this thing to accept that thing a little bit tighter you don't need it i'm gonna put a link in the description you can't find these things in lowe's or home depot unfortunately they don't sell them you don't need it i'm going to show you how you can install this pipe directly into this without that piece okay so the only consideration we have here now is we have to line up you can see these things are they're all on the inside of this all right same on the outside here here's one of them you just got to line one of those up with where your trench is going to be going over to your drain so i'm probably going to use that one right there and then we've got to trench out a section to lay that into that only consideration with this in terms of digging the hole for the pipe is that it needs to be pitched this all works with gravity there's no pumps or anything so in short the drain up there has to be higher than the outlet down here so the outlet here has to be lower than that spot there so the water can gravity drain down usually they tell you like a quarter inch per foot i believe for uh drainage in your house you don't even need that much for an outside drywall like this if there's any little bit of slope on it the water is naturally going to work its way down only thing you have to think about with this make sure there's no obstructions in your path you might have some pipes running through here irrigation electric that type of thing those things can't be moved and you can't really belly this thing because it can create an area where debris can gather in the pipe and obviously we can't lift it over obstructions in the ground because water isn't going to travel uphill and down it's going to back up to the lowest spot which more than likely will end up being the drain so let's hope that when we excavate this we don't hit anything major that we can't move all right let's get started digging the trench all right bring you guys up to speed here got the trench dug up to the drain location putting my kids to work cheap labor find any way you can to get this job done so anyway yep so anyway the drain up there obviously has to be higher like i said before than the inlet into the drywall because this is all gravity fed so you can see i got a slight taper on the trench and as i mentioned earlier there's all those sprinkle lines that i was worried about so we got so we have our first one here that we moved the drywall over for got another one here another one right down there there's another one right here watch out guys let me sneak in and well that's it and then over here's gonna be where the drain is so our first pipe here i think i'm gonna be able to sneak underneath this one with the drain pipe the second one here i think it's going to be low enough where i can go right over the top of it i'm going to dig i'm going to dig underneath that one on either side and see if i can just push it down a little bit that should be good and then the last one here down there i think i'll be able to sneak the pipe underneath that and then we got our inlet right there to the drywall that we've got to punch out and stub the corrugated pipe into so we're going to continue to dig my son right now he's working on the other section of trench that's leading up to the downspout that is right over there so we're going to bring that piece of pipe down i'm going to put a t in here connect everything together and it's gonna float in for a look here what we did so this pipe i decided i'm gonna push it down and run the the corrugated over the top of it um see what i did here i extended the trench out on either side to expose the sprinkler pipe a little bit better dug underneath it and into each side underneath and what that allows you to do is gives you a lot of flex with this thing so we can now push this down in the ground put our drainage pipe over the top of it and then we keep our pitch and everything is good we'll backfill it and everything should be okay we have our trench dug up to our downspout which is back around over there so that's good we're going to install this tee and then that pipe basically just snaps into all the sides of that no glue no no other fittings or screws needed and then you get further up the trench here and this is going to be our drain basin that we're going to use so this is sold separately you have uh you have this piece here that the pipe connects to that sits down in there you can see it it basically has a little well in there that traps debris and doesn't allow it to get into the pipe so the idea is that every once in a while you pop the you pop the lid off and you get down in there and clean it out and it does a pretty decent job of keeping your uh your pipe and your drywall clean by trapping any dirt that falls in here all right this is called an atrium drain and what that basically is is the drain portion rises up above the ground and what that's good for you see there's a lot of times up on roofs and the reason why you use these is it could pack all up around the edge of this with debris all the way up to the top and even if this whole side gets plugged up the water can still drain in the top so it's great for an area that is difficult to get to in terms of maintenance it allows the water to drain because if we were just to install well this is a little bit smaller but let's say we just installed a flat grate in here that thing can get plugged up really easily with debris and uh being that it's gonna be underneath the deck like this it's not gonna be a place that i can easily service i can obviously pull a couple deck boards up and get underneath here but who wants to do that so this will prolong the maintenance schedule for me getting underneath here to clean this thing out so i think that's going to work good obviously we have a little more work to do here i'm going to show you what i'm going to be putting in place for this but obviously we have to finish up this pipe first i think the best place to start this process is over here at the rain gutter so i removed the downspout that ran out into the yard and you have a choice now and how you want to connect this to the drywall system the fastest and easiest way is to get one of these adapters right here now again i'll put a link in the description below for all these items but you can pick these up in lowe's or home depot i always found lowe's to be the preferred choice for this type of drainage stuff only because i have a better selection so you can get one of these basically that just slips on like that and on the bottom of this [Music] you you connect your black corrugated pipe this is just just a snap this is a bell house uh this is an adapter to connect two pieces of pipe together you cut this off but this basically slips onto the pipe like that inside now that's an okay way of doing it it's just that i don't really like the look of this stuff above grade it's like an unfinished look i just don't care for it the way i like to make these connections is with pvc so you can get one of these adapters right here okay that goes on the bottom of the downspout and then you just take a piece of sdr pipe four inch in between this and a 90 degree elbow you put this down on the ground obviously like that connect it with a piece of pipe and then you get one of these adapters right here and this goes from four inch drainage pipe back to cargate pipe slips right over this so then that sits in the ground and all you have exposed above the ground is a piece of white pvc and it matches a lot better with the rain gutter and what i think gives you a much more finished look when you're done get a measurement here for our pipe looks like we need about 15 15 and a half inches get us from our adapter down to our elbow all right so you by no means need a miter saw to cut this pipe a hacksaw will do but at the saw here so i'm gonna go ahead and use it if you are using a miter saw to cut this pipe or any type of pipe just make sure you have a good firm hold of it because the blade will want to grab this thing and it'll start spinning it around last thing you want to happen so just make sure you hold it nice and tight so there's a piece of pipe now i usually don't glue these connections because it simply doesn't need it it's a tight enough fit and just a little tip for you guys that live up north a lot of times it will happen in the winter time is and there's nothing you could do about this it's just the climate we live in the downspout gets dammed up with ice like i say it snows and then you have a warm day and snow starts to melt and then freezes at night and this whole thing gets filled with water and damned up with ice and freezes and then what will happen a lot of times it'll crack the the downspout adapter up here this thing will crack right off all right because the ice will start coming out the top and it's not the end of the world you just got to replace it but if you go ahead and glue all these parts together you're going to have to replace all this onto ground excavate it it's just a lot easier not to glue this thing and then you can just pop it off in the spring and replace just the coupler it's not the end of the world but you do what you want just giving you advice along the way here so there's no need to uh to glue these up once you push them together it's hard to get them apart this pipe isn't under pressure obviously this is just water draining out of it all right and uh that's basically it you just attach your pipe right to the bottom of that now that's in place this isn't going anywhere that's nice and tight pretty tight quarters up in here guys i'll try to insert this the best i can i might be better doing this connect you heard that snap that was the pipe snapping onto that adapter now we're just gonna wiggle this back into place like that and that's it all right that's essentially how that goes together pretty easy that runs down i'm gonna put our teeth down there nice easy install now it all gets backfilled you'll never see it on the bottom just that piece of pipe sticking out nice clean look this is a piece of pipe coming over from our downspout now until our main trench our shower drain is up this way and our drywall is behind the camera so we're going to cut this tee into place here main thing you want to make sure you do here is make sure you don't cut this pipe too short right this is like an accordion you can push it back a little bit and push it into this this member when you're pushing this flight the corrugated pipe into this has got to go to the back of this bell here on the fitting so you want to measure touch right through this stuff pretty easily put it like that and that just snaps right on and you're done it goes right into place you can see that we'll dig this out a little bit more and we'll be able to slip this pipe right underneath all right guys so where the shower is going to be located here now we got our drain basin we've got our pipe in the trench running down to that tee we just installed and the pipe just slips right into the drain basin like that and what you could do if you want is you could pop some screws into this just to hold it in place but a lot of times as soon as you backfill this it'll hold everything together i'm going to pop a screw in there just to hold it while we're doing all of our work all right so this is completely temporary there is there is no need to do this it'll just hold this thing in place so it doesn't shift around on us while we're trying to backfill the trench there's no need for it once everything is filled the dirt will hold everything where we need it all right we're going to establish final grade for this when the time comes we're just looking right now to get all the pipes connected to the fittings all right so here's where the tee is located so we got to cut this pipe from the this is from the shower drain into the tee and so again just find the inside of the bell on the tee which is uh looks like to be right about here on this rib and we'll go ahead and cut that all right just like that now one thing you want to try to do is make sure you don't get a lot of dirt into this pipe and we're going to snap that together and that looks really good all right and then the last section here we've got to come off the tee and run that down the trench and into the drywall all right so here's our inlet we have to take out to run our pipe into the drywall just get yourself a sharp razor blade and basically just cut these tabs out and i don't know if you're supposed to be able to knock this out with a hammer but i tried and i'm worried i'm gonna break the thing so let's get in there at the razor blade and it comes right out there and it just comes out like that let's go ahead and pop this guy back in here okay all right so that looks looking good yeah got it that looks good all right guys so down here at the bottom of the trench we have to put the pipe onto this last sprinkle pipe like that and then as far as slipping it into the drywall opening i told you earlier they sell a fitting for this so you can snap this in but it's hard to find lowe's doesn't carry it and you don't need it what you can do is just take a knife and just slice the top of the the pipe like you see here and what that allows you to do is kind of fold it in on itself and then just push it right through the opening put the drywalling in and this thing pop the board again anyway you get the idea i'll snap that back together but that pipe just sticks into the side of the drywall opening like that and you're done all right here's an overview of the whole thing what's that right t runs up to our shower drain and obviously from this section of the tee back over to our downspout adapter that we put in so all good to go ready for some backfill all right and let's start putting our sand around the outside of this thing filling it in see why you have to leave some dirt in place while you're working because you gotta fill the whole outside of this thing back in obviously when you're done installing it so a good thing to check now too is to make sure that this thing is level on the ground before you start going too crazy backfilling it i should have done that earlier and luckily for me this thing is almost perfect actually maybe a little bit down there yeah with that on i mean not super critical but if you're at this point you did all this work why not do it right uh so that's it i think i'm gonna cut the camera off right now i'm just gonna backfill this whole trench no real need to show that on camera a little tip around this you to pack the sand in or dirt whatever you put it around the outside of this thing real good it's hard to to push it down in here you can use the end of your shovel if you want and kind of pack it in as you go or another good trick is take a garden hose and turn it on and the water will wash everything down in there real good and pack it down nice and good tight you don't want this thing to be loose in the ground because it shifts around remember these things are going to unlock and open up and we do not want that happening we want this thing to stay nice and tight and locked in place so real real important step here that i left out before you start back filling around this thing put the lid on because as you're putting the sand or dirt around the outside of this thing it's starting to deform the sides of the wall on the drywall and then it gets really difficult to put this lid on you have to start prying on the side of it with the shovel and pushing down to try to get the there's a there's a rim underneath the lid that locks into the side so definitely want to put this thing on before you start going too crazy backfilling the sides of this thing because it could be real difficult to get into place if you do it last so i caught that before it was too late i was able to get it back on there so just keep that in mind so last part of hooking this thing up here we have to finish the inlet into the top of the drywall now like i said this isn't 100 necessary you don't need to punch this thing open if you don't need a surface drain i did it just for the sake of being able to locate this thing easier in the future for service and uh it also doesn't hurt to add a drain up on the lawn here for other things if you ever need it to drain something into it maybe the pool cover or something like that so so the way you establish the height of the drain here get yourself a piece of wood that can span across your hole here and lay it down on the finished grate on both sides and that'll establish where that finished grade is here in the middle and then just get a measurement um this pipe goes down into the inside of this lid to the lip so we got to measure up from that to the bottom of this board and looks like uh a little like a hair under three and a half inches so what i'm gonna do a little spider walk it across the board there but uh what i'm gonna go ahead and do is i'm gonna actually cut the pipe at three and a quarter inches we don't want the drain to stick out above the finished grade above the grass obviously you want to be able to run the mower over the top of it and it's always good to have your drain recessed a little bit below ground level to aid in surface water draining into it so we're going to cut that pipe at three and a quarter [Music] yep so i'm going to go ahead and cut that pipe at three and a quarter get that installed i think i mentioned earlier it's been a long time since i installed one of these things it turns out that sdr pipe doesn't fit right in the top of this lid i thought it did so what this must take is schedule 40 pipe which is a little bit thicker than sdr 35 pipe but the nice thing about this is an sdr coupler that usually couples two pieces of pipe together has the has the same outside diameter as a piece of schedule 40 pipe so coupler actually fits perfect up in the top of this and then one of these strainer grates fits perfect in the top of that so you can either like i said use a sdr coupler or a piece of schedule 40 4-inch pvc pipe for the top and that's really it see that fits in there real nice gives it a nice finished look when it's done and like i said it gives you a demarcation point for exactly where this thing's located what do you think does it work yeah all right guys got a hose in the drain up there giving this thing a test and that water is pouring in here pretty good so i think he did a good job right yeah where's the water going down the green yep it works right yeah all right we did a good job yeah all right guys got everything backfilled now put the grass back everything's looking really really good i'm gonna call this one a wrap um i'm going to design and build the shower pan on the next video of this series and just keep this one as is strictly drainage like i stated earlier you could use a lot of the things i showed you in today's video from multiple applications other than a shower and like i said let's keep it to the point drywall installed piping installed everything's looking really good i showed you earlier i put the hose in the shower drain here we have nice flow down to the drywall off camera i also put the hose in the downspout pipe over here and that also flows out really well too so successful job good day's work started it this morning like around 10 30. right now it's a little after four so you know a bunch of starts and stops throughout the day uh with the kids but you know good workout not all that difficult have a good breakfast for you come out here and start doing this work it's just a lot of digging labor intensive but like i said it's not overly difficult you could definitely do this yourself and save yourself a lot of money and hiring a pro all right guys well if you liked the video give the like button the top any questions or comments put them down below again check the links in the description below for all the products they use today and as always thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Fix It With Zim

Views: 41,615

Rating: 4.8634148 out of 5

Keywords: drywell, drainage, yard drain, drywell install, yard flooding, standing water in yard, flood, outdoor shower, sump pump, french drain, runoff, flooding, dry well, drywell kit, drywell cost, dry well tank, dry well size, dry well drain, septic, puddles in yard, how to drain a low spot in yard, how to remove standing water from your yard, how to improve yard drainage, storm water, yard drainage solutions, what is a dry well, how to install a dry well, how to fix yard flooding

Id: iVbggK9Yny4

Length: 38min 43sec (2323 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020