Wet Soggy Yard?

we're also putting in a French drain you can kind of see that groove in the yard there the ditch that's from the homeowner he'd dug a trench just to get the water to come out it's going to go back around by the pool and I and you can see what happens here neighbors irrigation just had it on look at all that water that water has no place to go this ground is saturated and that water you can see it on their house although it's newly painted you see that they've created an edge for the grass we really prefer that people pull that sod away from the house and do a gravel bed or landscaping whatever but not the sod that just brings that water right up to the foundation and you need to take a look over here of how bad it can get you can see that cracking the wall you see all the blocks they've tried to you know hide that with mortar but it just pulls apart because they're active cracks that means there's movement doesn't mean the house is gonna fall down it just means there's movement and it will continue to crack so putting in the footer pipe so this little section is done and we can move on to the next spot you know real friend strain it picks up subsurface water take a look at this water this this yard is totally saturated soggy mud this is what a real French drain is supposed to do and we solved this problem every day these people up north showing you how to do a French drain they don't really have a clue of what is needed in a soggy wet soil it is so different it's so different and you can see it I'm just showing you how much ground water when we install a system this is what we dig through its just soggy soggy soggy mud and that water has no place to go it would be so easy to do this if there wasn't any water in the ground and yeah it would be a lot different but this is what it's like to do a real French drain and you can see we're gonna solve this problem this yard is gonna dry out as well as the neighbor's yard and we're gonna use easy flow and gravel perforated pipe and it's gonna work great okay if you're digging on the property line take a look you can see back there the fence is showing you the property line we've got the white fence and we've got the wood fence the homeowner to the right is the one that's actually paying for this job we don't want to make a mess on the neighbor's property so a couple of little tips first of all be sure to cut your grass see how high that sod is that is just way too high it is very difficult to dig through so always cut the grass first what we like to do is to set our sod off to the side two three four feet out of the way then lay plastic down along the side we don't want to be on that neighbor's property I even ask the guys not to walk on that property do you remember all that groundwater in the back take a look these yards are so saturated you know as a true drainage contractor with over 30 plus years experience I see neighborhoods like this every day yards are totally saturated one of the best things I've learned is definitely do not badmouth another company you'll notice in all my videos that I tried to help everyone not just the DIY but the contractor and I know that everyone watches these videos and they learn a lot and yeah sure we may poke fun at people but calling them drug addicts that's a little bit far-fetched creating more screen names making comments on people's channels actually redirecting wept the website to their own site telling you they do two or three jobs a day when it's impossible I mean an hour and a half video just of nothing and they don't show you anything so watch and learn how to install a French drain in soggy soil and yeah we're using easy flow styrofoam rocks they work so much better than gravel in this soil okay so let's review we're gonna cut the sod off and move that side a good distance from the trench because we don't want to be on the neighbor's property take good care of your side cut nice pieces you don't need a sod cutter this is easy to do you'll easily have two-three inches of soil underneath of your side if you take your time this French drain is nearly a hundred and forty feet long just to the back fence and we're going to continue that back into the backyard normally we would run the trencher but we cannot because there's a gas line here and there's also so much irrigation wait till you see how much irrigation pool return lines there are so many things underground here that running the trencher or bringing the excavator to this job site would just be a total waste of time so carefully cut off your sod set it far off to the side let's lay out some plastic after you have everything laid out remember we cut the side we moved it over here on the way far out of the way lay out your plastics take your shovel you can hear that soil it is a supersaturated but it only needs to be a shovel deep right here come back through it work backwards always work backwards will only take just a few minutes even though it's very heavy very wet soil you can see the water in here now you can even see the water do all this round water like I said there's nothing like this up north nothing they really don't understand what we do and that's okay they're doing their bastard come back use your bodyweight I just clean out your trench and you are at the perfect depth it's perfect every time something you guys can easily do you don't need a sod Center you don't need a excavator we could have run the trencher here but there's so many utilities and irrigation that of course we're going to have to dig it by hand it's just that simple so basically you continue this process throughout your entire trench and a couple of real quick tips right here notice you see the water sit laying in there I left a little dam so that that water doesn't come over right away to where I'm working you want to keep that water away from us it's hard to dig through water this trench will fill up with water the groundwater will rise but we can work a little quicker without having to pull up all that water we can make a much cleaner trench remember that we're always going to be down about 12 inches minimum sometimes we're deeper this is you know we have to discharge at the street we can't go lower than the street without a sump pump so we've got enough fall enough gravity to send us all the way out to the street let me readjust the camera so you can see just how far I've actually dug and you could also see that we do have gravity going out to the street but we cannot be below that street so the average depth is usually in almost every yard the average depth is about 14 inches sometimes 20 inches it really depends on where you're discharging continue this process keep digging you notice that I've dug all of this there's nobody else out here there's just me the crews on the other side working and they're working really hard and I'm just doing my part like I do every day so I've said it several times in this video make sure that you try to dig backwards of course there's times that you have to be on the side of the trench but for this long run of pipe is much quicker to dig backwards this whole job on the side took me about 20 minutes to dig by hand I mean it really doesn't take long I'm gonna speed the video up so that you can get more information the one other thing that is so important is every French drain needs a catch basin Printz drains are designed to collect subsurface water so if we have a very heavy downpour water is just gonna flood right across the top of this system and it doesn't have time to get down into the ground adding a catch basin allows a media surface water collection so as that begins to flood and there begins to be a river down through here it'll drop into those catch basins and be carried away okay let's take a look here in the back where the boys are digging and you can see it right away they have done a tremendous job very difficult spot to dig yeah I'd dug a hundred and forty feet but this is much harder than where I was digging this area is all clay it's very hard soil and it's in full Sun you can see the pool filter so you know there's return lines going over to the pool you can see all that electric there's electric lines feeding over to the pool to pull light other things over there as well so if you look carefully right here you can see the pool return lines and you'll notice this right where we want to put a why so what do you do we could retake a whole new trench and try to move it over but either way we're going to come across this all of these lines and the other thing is that we're at the proper depth remember we can't be deeper than where we're discharging and that's out it out at this front street at the walk this is a spot where most contractors and the homeowner become very frustrated what do you do you've got to tunnel underneath and it is not an easy tunnel it's not like a sidewalk these are pipes and you've got to get deep enough that you can get a four inch pipe down through there so again those pool return lines and you can see we had to put a Y on there we've got to go underneath of the next set of irrigation lines very difficult install when you have all these things underground and they're always in your way always but we got it so remember if you're doing this yourself or if you've hired a contractor and the contractor is doing this your job is to make this work and you're gonna have to do whatever it takes to make it work this is not an easy install right here there are things in the way you've got to be able to tunnel that walk and make your fittings correct and make good downhill run this line actually starts from a downspout in the pool micro channel drain and you can see it going back to that section but you've got to get this line where it runs downhill from where it begins I hear so many stories from homeowners about similar situations where their contractor says oh yeah well we can do it but it's going to cost you ten times as much and they jack that price up so high for something that is not needed we don't do that at all this is included in what we do and that's what you pay a good professional contractor to do necessity is the mother of invention and that's where the DIY always wins because they will figure this out and they will make this work just like we do so this area is actually all clay it's been backfilled and brought it in soil here and it's just rock hard and what we need to do of course is get underneath of those pull return lines there's three of them and then just to the right there's two more irrigation lines and then a few of more feet there's more irrigation lines we've got to get underneath of those and be able to have still have good fall that goes out to the sidewalk remember we can't be below the sidewalk or we'll lose the gravity of the difficult job guys sometimes it's easy sometimes it's hard but I promise you that if you work at this you can do this and for those contractors that think it's that you know all about using machines you'll have to think again okay let's go ahead and lay some pike we're going to use sections of Ravel perforated pipe we always have to wrap that here in Florida because of the sand and basically we usually run that between a catch basin and a fitting catch basins are so important please don't let these people tell you that they're not needed at your French strip they are so important they pick up a media surface water runoff also don't forget to put a small base of gravel under this pipe it is so important that water needs to perk up through the system and it uses that gravel to get into the line oK we've got all the pipe installed we've started to backfill and put our sod back you can see how it's gonna come out this line was a very difficult install not so much because of the French drain that's actually very simple but we've attached so many things to a line not only we've got the downspouts coming into that section there we've added the catch basins remember those catch basins are so important we've got sections and gravel perforated pipe we've also got the footer tile that sump pump line is what you see that comes from that wall over to this line won't hurt that French drain at all it's not gonna pump that much water you can see the easy flow and how great that actually works look how dry this yard is already it works instantly back here in the back remember this was a very tough section the guys are covering that up and we'll put this all back together hey this is Chuck with Apple drains reminding you that if you believe you can do something I guarantee you can do it have a great day [Music]

Channel: Apple Drains

Views: 104,872

Rating: 4.8418078 out of 5

Keywords: Yard Drain, French Drain, Wet yard, Flooded Yard, Soggy, Mud, Catch Basin, Apple Drains, How to Build a French Drain, How deep is French Drain, Adding Catch Basin to Drain, Back Yard Drain, Perforated pipe, EZ Flow, NDS, Rainwater Drainage, Drains

Id: hWf_vPXK2ZI

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020