The REAL TRUTH about Geo Fabric, WARNING, May Not Be Suitable for All Viewers

Hey good morning Chuck here with Apple drains you know I think I need to show you guys the truth about geo fabric there's so much hype about this stuff and the French drain and all these things so I'll try to put it all together for you and just show you some facts some truth take it for what it's worth but I think that you'll find it very interesting so there's lots of kind of fabrics we all know this this is what people are calling the four ounce fabric for your geo fabric and it's the same material that is used on the NDS quick drain it works great it keeps out the sand because here in Florida we have a lot of sand and yes it does help keep out some of the debris if you put it in clay but we all know this it takes water directly coming down comes down great but what is it's worth you know I talked about I'm not a big believer you know I've talked about this a lot I'm not a big believer in fabrics in clay soil and I'm gonna put some clay on here and you guys can take a look and again take it for what it's worth but I'll put the GoPro down here and we'll see how much water actually gets through and we'll see how much sediment gets through in the clay I mean let's just take a look okay so put some clay on the top nothing special the same dirt that's in your backyard if you're in there but north and this clay is gonna be it's always going to be the worst dirt we're soil in your yard if water has been laying there and you've got a low spot so I've got to go perm running if you can see it down the bottom so we can just watch inside and yes you're gonna see water come around the outside here of course but let's just take a look I'm going to simulate a rainstorm and if you look carefully you can see that water it's boiling it's going through the fabric but it also still sits here right I mean it's good it's draining but it's very very slow remember how a French drain works there is perforated pipe surrounded by an aggregate which is rock or the newer stuff here which is the styrofoam peanuts and that works really good but you can see if this is the bottom of the trench right water doesn't really come through if it's the size of the trench it doesn't really get into the system does it when we can run this for hours and hours and really simulate you know water rising up but I mean you can see down inside and the GoPro is picking that up it's just drops of water that get through there it's it's nothing it's truly nothing so these are facts that you need to understand about what people are calling the four ounce fabric it's really slow okay so let's go back let me sit down does that have anything to do with the French drain no your French drain is going to work no matter what you do as water rises up it will find a way into that gravel perforated pipe and the pipe will carry it away it's just that simple whether you put fabric around it or not does the rock get Pacwa sediment of course but it doesn't matter it still passes through the fabric made no difference at all am i a believer in fabric no down here in Florida yes I I know that we need fabric and I know that's very controversial you know how can I say I don't believe in it yet I do but it's totally different soils so here in the sand you can see the sand back here behind the shop yeah there's that that particle is so fine that it does try to get into the system I'm not worried about the peanuts they they're gonna stay open for years and years and years the gravel would definitely get packed up but the pipe is what we're concerned about so people have really knocked a lot of my stuff saying oh you need to put fabric around it but you know what all of my drains I've put in over the past 30 plus years they still work and they weren't great otherwise we wouldn't be in business right let's do another test real quick so there's lots of kinds of fabrics here is a I'm sorry this is an 8-ounce what people were calling 8-ounce geotextile fabric and it's the same material that you'll find that's wrapped around this pipe you've probably seen this in Home Depot or Lowe's Ace Hardware whatever 100 foot roll they've already got this pipe this fabric wrapped around the pipe and there are good applications for this while we have this out here let's talk a little bit about the holes in the pipe this is slotted pipe can you see those holes in there hopefully you can see them there are four slots all the way around each one of these ribs okay and it allows plenty of water to get through there they're quite large but what's interesting is let's take a look at another piece of pipe there's another manufacturer of that same same idea this is the 4 ounce fabric what people are calling 4 ounce fabric and this one has holes at the bottom of the pipe ok 2 holes and they're spaced out evenly across you know all the way through the pipe remember if you use this pipe to put these holes pointing downward into the bottom of your trench especially if you've got gravel underneath of this water floods up into your system and the reason that the reason that there's different types of pipe is because you the homeowner and other people they get confused about it um see those holes they point down so the manufacturers went ahead and just made slices all the way around there's lots of different types of this material that are all the same crush they're basically rated at 3000 pound crush and that's rated at 6 inches under the ground that's what they crush at so again all great stuff but what I was going to show you is the diameter of the little what I was going to show you was that these holes that are slots slotted pipe versus these holes it's actually the same volume of water from these holes as all the slots the difference is when this is pointing down into the trench it picks up water much faster water has to rise much higher on the slotted pipe before it begins to flow so interesting stuff but let's take a look so remember there's lots of different types of fabric this is what people are calling the 8-ounce fabric I don't call it that it's basically geotextile and you can actually find this at Walmart it's not an expensive material that stuff this piece is just a piece of landscaping fabric this is what you the homeowner normally pick up and and using as geo fabric let's see how well this actually works this works extremely well let me show you okay same kind of thing remember we have the clay and you can see there's still water sitting in there but I've got an old piece of landscaping fabric it's got a couple holes in it but you know so what this is woven fabric and this is what you the homeowner normally pick up and wrap your drains in let me just show you and you can see that it takes water extremely well maybe not quite as fast as the nonwoven but it still works really good we could run that water for hours and hours and you already know the result it takes water so remember the first the first little experiment where we put the clay on top of a really good fabric and how little water actually got through that system so does it really matter it's a nice fish or this does it really matter so you're gonna I mean the answer is no but let's put some clay on here and find out okay same thing and we already know the result but let's just take a look actually it looks like this is taking water faster but let's just run some water on here for example so you know I'm looking down inside and yeah it's just dripping down through there and you can see water still sits here it's still the same let's pull this guy over there you can see them both it's the same so let's do this again and you can see there they're almost as far as water passing through the clay down into the fabric you've got one of the best fabrics available what people are calling the four ounce nonwoven geotextile and then you've got just a landscape fabric which is about the same weight if you're gonna weigh something four ounce that is a woven material and it's about the same in fact you can see it's actually draining better but it's probably just there's more clay on who knows but either way neither of these things work do they help protect the stone of course they do but what's more important is that they help protect the pipe and that's why manufacturers have come up with this type of material that has the fabric wrapped around the pipe so this has this applications I'll show you that in a second but I really wanted you to see the difference between a woven fabric and the non woven fabric am i a believer in either of these no but if you're if you live up north I would take either one of these and put it across the top of your gravel and then put some dirt and then put your sod up there so the sod can grow the reason I would put it across the top of your gravel it's just because sediment does try to drop down through it and why not go ahead and protect it so it goes down let me give you some history to give you a little history about gravel perforated pipes you know septic tanks have been used for many many years and the invent of gravel perforated pipe what people call French drain it actually works the opposite direction you know in a leech bed or what we call a drain field you know water from the tank comes out and it goes down through the gravel okay instead of being picked up it's actually discharging through the gravel years ago they actually covered the drain field the top of the drain field was tar paper before that they used newspaper and it worked and it's some of it's still working today they used a lot of newspaper but tar paper you know the roofing material it works great to cover that septic drainfield so let's talk a little bit about pipe and the fittings and what what people are showing you out there let's start with with PVC okay this is SDR 35 this is not scheduled 40 you can see this is called a thin walled pipe and even though it's green it's a little thicker than thin wall but it's still thin walled pipe this is a schedule 40 coupling and I see a lot of videos out there where they're telling you that they're they exclusively used PVC schedule 40 and they're not you know they're telling you something that's not true this coupling you can see how much play there is it's this is not this is not what they're using they're using thin walled PVC here's a thin walled fitting and again take a look here's a coupling this coupling is designed to go over the pipe it actually goes over the entire coupling on the thin wall so there's big difference there here's a piece of whoops here's a piece of thin walled PVC this one's actually a really neat pipe it's got the smooth inner core and then it's got a layer of PVC around it but it's still thin wall but take a look this is schedule 40 PVC 4 inch and you can see it slides all the way through there so these people that are telling you that they use schedule 40 PVC they're not and it's just something that I think you should know let's move on I saw another video where they talked almost entirely about using this perfect PVC tape to tape up a French drain remember the French drain has holes in it here's a regular coupling that you could buy that it snaps on okay and you could snap on another piece and join these two pieces together just like that and whether or not you tape this with a great PVC tape that's waterproof or not well it has holes in it so I mean this video talked exclusively about using this PVC tape for what I have no idea I think one of the neatest things that I've shown you guys is how to join pipe together and if you take a piece of pipe cut it in half and then slice we need about six about six inches or more your slices in half you're going to take this and you're going to squeeze it together really tight really tight and then you can slide it in one side of the pipe and it's going to expand it's going to expand inside of here and be very secure very tight and you do the same thing on this side but again squeeze it hard and put it together and then you just twist and push until it snaps all the way together this is this is so secure sorry this is so secure you can't pull it apart coupling works good but that's even better and if you look inside I'm if you can see it or not but you can't really you can't even see the coupling I mean it's it's so it's so perfect inside there and that's probably the best way to join any type of corrugated pipe I mean it's super strong doesn't cost you a dime you know these are about three bucks and yeah they work really good we use them too but in a pinch or if you really want to secure coupling that's the best way to do it okay this is the 4 ounce material as you can see but what I want to show you is you can see the mud that got through here it didn't make a whole lot of difference that little fine sediment is what's going to pack up your rocks or yeah that's what's gonna pack up your stone not this great big stuff up here that doesn't get into your stone it's this fine material that gets into your stone and yeah that will slow down the system will it still drain of course but it slows it down and of course you know nothing lasts forever you do need to maintenance it same thing over here if you look carefully you can see there's a lot of sediment that got through that sediment is what Pat was what blocks your stone this is just landscape fabric this is a woven material same stuff so again there's lots of ways that you could install a French drain you could rent a mini excavator spend five six hundred dollars you can rent a trencher for a hundred dollars or you could use a shovel none of that makes any difference basically you can do this and we've got your back if you have a problem I've got live help we're really busy on the live help but if you have a problem sign up online I'll get to you we can answer your question within minutes I can tell you and answer any question that you have about installing any drain not just a French drain that's all available and this is all good stuff and I think all the videos out there although some of them are very extreme they're all good things and they all believe in what they're telling you and that is that french drains they collect subsurface water as water rises up it enters that system and it's carried away whether you use fabric whether you don't your system is going to last French drain won't last forever but it will last a long time so and I've showed you a video about how to correct that forever French drain so you're all set hey this is Chuck without the drains finding you but if you believe you can do something I guarantee you have a great day [Music] I've had comments about me using my handy dandy Black & Decker and I just have to mention a really quick you know what difference is that whether I have a row B org you know whatever other kinds of battery operated drills [Music] don't forget about Live Help video consultation via skype or facetime and we're also available for nationwide time and travel we can come to your job site help you with all your project oversee consult and install we can even come to Michigan [Music] you

Channel: Apple Drains

Views: 415,531

Rating: 4.7775083 out of 5

Keywords: French Drain, Crawl Space, Exterior, 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, Florida, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, Melbourne, Miami, Sarasota, South Florida, channel drain, pool patio drain, micro channel drain, how to replace micro channel drain

Id: Lq4-MH_APmc

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019