What Causes Drain Pipe to Clog - How To Correct this Problem

hey good morning chuck here with apple drains today we're installing a backyard system but we're actually working on an existing system someone has come out here and put in a french drain that's what they've told the customer but we're not really sure what it is yet so we're going to explore that clean what they have installed possibly repair it but we're going to solve this backyard problem let's take a look so to give you an idea of the lay of the land you can see we've got the pool we've got the channel drain which runs through the pavers and that just empties out right here onto the ground it has no place to go someone had come back not too long ago i guess within the year and they installed what they had told her is a french drain so before we can do anything we need to clean or explore the existing pipe the french drain that someone installed then we can hook up the channel drain and the downspout but only if the existing line is in good working order so we dug this line up to find out you know what's going on here and you know what this line has a belly let me explain what a belly is first a lot of people ask about a belly you know what is a belly kind of can figure that out but what that means is that when there's a line installed it needs to continue a downhill flow it can't really go down and then back up or up and back down in this case you can see the water here from the discharge of this pipe and if you look it's rising up nearly six inches before it goes back down again we have to repair that we're just going to go ahead and retrench the line and get it much deeper so that we have good fall on the line here's an example of a good installed drain you can see that it's going downhill people talk about one percent two percent slope well i don't talk about that i talk about the ground level and you can see right there the ground is higher and then it drops back down again so most installers when they install this stuff they use the ground as their guide and you can kind of see what happens is if there's a low spot in the yard then they're still staying at that same depth and then when there's a high spot then they're still staying at that same depth and they end up with a belly so it doesn't matter if you use a shovel or a trencher or an excavator your line must go deeper through the high point of the yard another common question or problem people ask or face is they say you know my backyard's lower than my front yard when in fact it's really not you can kind of see that there's a low spot maybe it's by the house but the front yard it does go downhill out to the street again shovel excavator trencher it doesn't matter you have to make this deeper in the high spot of the yard that's why people talk about you know one percent two percent three percent slope it's because they're we're trying to explain to you that you must dig deeper through the high point of the yard so many people talk to me and ask me how deep should we dig it's very difficult to answer that question because every yard is different the answer is you must dig through the high portion of your yard in order to get proper fall on your drain and again it doesn't matter if you're using a trencher a shovel or an excavator this line must go deeper in that high spot right there when you have a belly in the pipe water still travels through the line it still flows through the line grade but when there is a belly the pipe holds water you can see it right here and what happens is debris builds up at the bottom of that belly and causes a blockage this forces you to clean this line often and it or you could replace it either one up here that's about six inches higher than where you see that water i mean it's just really bad and so we're going to take care of that so there's two ways to address this problem one is to do what we're doing here and that is to dig out that section and replace that with new pipe and that can be costly this one's not so bad but that can be costly depending on how far you have to trench the other is to go ahead and clean the line put it on a maintenance schedule have that line cleaned you know once a year or however often you need to have it cleaned the best time to clean a drain the downspout drains and yard drains is in the fall right after the leaves fall okay so we're just about ready to lay some pipe and you can kind of see how deep we are see my knee right there but we're gonna be plenty deep enough and we're gonna discharge right out here underneath of this sprinkler we'll just put a pop-up on the other side of that we should be good to go but yeah it is a lot deeper than what they had originally installed and of course it just backed up right away i guess but so now with the new section of pipe installed it's working really good we've gotten rid of that belly and it's going to discharge to a pop-up out here at the street it kind of runs level here at the end but because of the street that's just how it has to be but there is no more belly and that water comes out really good now that we have a good working drain going out to the front we can hook up the catch basin that's collecting the water from the pool and eye the channel drain and the downspout the channel drain you know it sits down kind of deep so that's why this line was so deep to begin with but again we're ready to go this is looking good so basically we had to dig out that old pipe what they had put in was just such a belly it ran uphill so dramatically from you know back in here so we went down about two and a half feet and we had to move further out on the discharge this is a real normal discharge here in florida where we've got a swell out front and put the catch basin here we might still we could get more fall if we could come come out on grade but they like the catch patient so we'll see if that works when you have a belly in the pipe water still travels through the line it still flows through the line grade but when there is a belly the pipe holds water you can see it right here and what happens is debris builds up at the bottom of that belly and causes a blockage this forces you to clean this line often and or you could replace it either one so some key points about this video to remember is the best time to clean your line is actually in the fall right after the leaves fall and that way you get all that debris from the roof make sure that's good and clean if you need to replace a line the best time to do that is whenever you need to that doesn't make any difference and this video just kind of talks about a belly and the problems that we see when we come out to certain jobs we find you the line runs uphill from a previous installer and it's it's not hard to correct but it does take a little bit more work 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] you

Channel: Apple Drains

Views: 4,554

Rating: 4.9542856 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, channel drain, pool patio drain, micro channel drain, how to replace micro channel drain, Charlotte NC

Id: 8s-ROCZlrOc

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021