Testing French Drain Scenarios To Find Out....Fabric or No Fabric? Which Is Best | Dr Drainz

[Music] hey welcome back dr drains with apple drains of north by god carolina so we're back to our experiment here and what i've done this has been in here a couple of months i've created three different french drain scenarios and just as a quick update this is a scenario where we have stone around our perforated pipe with the holes in it we got clay right on top of it and i just cast a handful of grass seed on here just so you could see that it does grow now the next one over here we've got our perforated pipe with stone and we have fabric and if you can imagine this one in the next one i've got the fabric laying on top of the stone and like a bowl and that is through clay on top of it so what this simulates is the water coming from the top down same for here and then the very last one as you can see this is a little browner now all the yards here in north carolina with fescue are brown because we've had very little rain here recently so absolutely normal it's not dead it's just dormant so this one if you'll notice in the front we've got two pipes we've got our perforated pipe with stone and then we've got our solid pipe now the solid pipe goes through here and this is a t so what happens is water hits here goes straight down into that pipe and leaks out so this is all encapsulated together here but again i've got the stone and the fabric is so what i'm showing you is that inside your french drain this is what's going to happen the water is going to go through here and any water that doesn't end up in here that goes in the dirt will slowly seep up into here or it'll slowly seep down and actually it's like a sponge and pulls it out so we're going to stop uh taping here in just a second so we can set it up and i'm going to show you uh one more thing sorry sarah come over here i want you to look in here this is what happens with clay in north carolina it dries what it does is it shrinks if you look on the edges over here the clay is actually shrinking same thing over here it's actually shrinking so what happens is the clay as it gets moisture it will expand and as it dries it'll shrink so if you put like a schedule 40 in the ground in clay that clay is going to move back and forth and schedule 40 has a tendency to crack on the on the heels especially up north like in where it's cold like in michigan ohio that ground gets water in it then it freezes so it'll expand and then it'll it'll thought when it thaws it actually contracts same thing with clay so that's why i don't like using schedule 40. it's a really good product it has its place uh definitely not in any sort of clay though for sure we would not do that all right so we're going to take a break and come back and uh run our water experiment so what we got is completely dry the soil is dry so let's see what happens in a yard for these three different kind of french drains uh and surface drains when we get a massive rainstorm all right let's see i don't know what's going to happen it's going to be exciting sir is it going to be exciting yes it is i can't wait all right see you a second all right we're back so what we're going to do is i got three buckets they got about four gallons of water in it i don't know if they'll all fit in there and see they'll definitely fit in this one because it'll suck the water out let's see what happens when we have a big rainstorm i do want to point out something here sarah will come down to the front you can see what happens when you don't have any fabric on top i'm not talking about the sides of the trench at the bottom when you don't have fabric on top you see how the soil is starting to run into the rocks right here what's going to happen is it's going to create a seal it's not going to drain nearly as well that's why we like to use the fabric the fabric keeps the rock separate because the rock is what drains the french drain from the bottom so water comes up where it comes down usually comes up it comes through the rock into the pipe if this clay gets down here and starts plugging all this up because there's no fabric to protect it it's not going to flow so just a side note this is why we like to use the fabric now all fabric is not created equal we use a very specific fabric it's a geotextile it's punched it's six ounce you're not gonna buy it at lowe's you're gonna have to buy this stuff online we buy it online it's no secret so use the right fabric all these people out here showing these videos of oh it's all plugged you can absolutely use clay with the right fabric cray with clay with the wrong fabric it's going to plug every time all right so let's see what happens again about four gallons try to be as even as possible but what you're going to find a lot is this water is going to make it through very quickly all right that's four gallons of water now look here now if you look up here you see the cracks in the soil that's where the water is going through now what's going to happen when the soil gets saturated again it's going to seal up and it's going to lock this is normal so that's fine your first rainstorm the coil is the the the soil is super dry it's going to find the cracks it's going to run through but look at this look what it's taking with it it's taking all that soil into your french drain because it's not filtered not good all right we're going to do this in real time got another four gallons now this is the one we have filter fabric on all right you can see that coil of that soil is just like a big old sponge it's just because it's so it's so dry right now so dry abnormally dry okay four gallons in [Applause] as you can see we're coming out there again not nearly as muddy it's coming through it's being filtered through this filter here so we're still getting some brown but you're not getting the clumps of soil like we had in the other one so it's filtering through the filter fabric that's that's clay it has to go through the fabric so if you got people telling you fabric doesn't work i mean i mean come on it works it will not stop it and this is clay sitting directly on that fabric but in all fairness it's super dry clay all right still in real time here's the fun one now again we have an open here to an open solid pipe this is our french drain this is meant to handle moisture from the bottom this is meant to handle moisture from the top so we have if you if cereal will wash the top here what you're going to find it's going to be difficult for me to try to keep all this water in here if you see that surface inlet is just sucking all that water straight out which is what we want we don't want the water in the yard standing in the yard all right there we go look at that so again we have a little brown tinge but no chunks of clay so it's filtering through the clay coming through the fabric into the stone into this french drain it's leaking a little bit but it's catching the surface water here so the surface water is jumping right on top so it rains it comes down to the low spot and it goes directly into the solid pipe easy stuff so for all those people again who say that you cannot use fabric on clay they're absolutely wrong the correct answer is you need to use the right fabric for clay and that's what we're doing here super important don't buy it from lowe's huge mistake don't buy cheap stuff online uh i've had the other video i tell you exactly what product to buy exactly and it absolutely works so what we're gonna do is i'm gonna go grab some more buckets i'm going to get this clay saturated and then we're going to do this again all right we'll be right back all right so what i've done is taken the hose and saturated these bins so what you can see once there to really get in there you see the mud that's flowing here you can look up here this is what happens when you have clay with no separation and these large particles are going to stay up here if you have a fabric but when you don't have fabric they're simply going to flow right on out so you're actually not helping yourself so if you look up here you notice and i've completely saturated this it's going down the cracks it's like air is going to take the path of least resistance so it's going to go straight on through and if you don't have this now and i want you to look at this now that water is almost completely clear so what's happening in this water from the bottom is seeping up getting into the pipe so we're filtering up here the water's getting down you can see it's starting to saturate starting to sit on top a little bit so the french drain is not designed to take surface water away at all what a french drain is designed to do is to take the underneath water as it comes up like you can see right there right there and it takes it away so the surface water you have to handle a little differently so i'm going to come around sarah's going to show you over here this takes care of the surface water and that'll carry out this big pipe and then the french drain see here we'll take the water from the bottom up so let's take our hose here see if we can cheat a little bit let's go around this try to get some water all the way into the bottom there we go actually this is leaking right down here oh got to fix it all right let's try over here so i'm gonna have to fix my little container it goes so if you notice i bypassed the see how clear that water is that's what it's going to look like coming from the bottom up through the stone so if you don't use the filter fabric on the top you're going to send clay straight down it's going to clog it up it's going to be a mess you got to use filter fabric to clay and i'll say it a thousand times a thousand times more you gotta use the right filter fabric you notice going straight through this is surface water all right so let's pretend the rain's turned off now this is going to take all the surface water that's pitch down to it and then the french drain is going to handle the water coming up from the bottom okay so nutshell french drain with rock and no fabric batting clay french drain from pulling for the water from the bottom up with the correct fabric good what's a better way of doing it this way use a french drain in the same trench run a solid pipe catch that surface water surface water instantly goes away front strain catches any problems from underneath so after it rains the spring strain will slowly dry out your yard this is the way we like to do it now you can absolutely do it this way or if you want to save some money just do it this way i'm talking about just the surface on the top you can catch some low spots no problem and you can get that water out of your yard as long as you don't have a problem with it sitting there so if it's three or four days after it rains and your yard is a little bit saturated with water you need a french drain this side if you want us to do it all at one time it's way cheaper let us do both at one time if you really want to save some money if you're a diy dig a trench put some tees in it use some surface drains make sure you go downhill pretty important and just get it out of your yard but this way if we're doing it i definitely recommend this this is the economy way but for a super low spot you probably want to do them both all right we're going to keep this experiment going i'm going to fix my bin and uh we'll cut back to you in a couple of months and show you what it looks like all right thanks for stopping by [Music]

Channel: Dr Drainz of Apple Drains

Views: 33,418

Rating: 4.8363638 out of 5

Keywords: yard drainage, french drains, apple drains of nc, drainage fabric, yard drains diy, diy french drains

Id: JhmVT9FO72I

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021