Which is Better, French Drain or Downspout Drain? Which Solves More Problems?

Hey good morning Chuck Kerr with Apple drains today we're looking at a house that has flooded backyard flooded crawlspace they actually have a full basement as well it has a crawlspace and a basement and I look down in the basement I checked the crawl space and you know what the problem is the down spouts drains so we are installing a little over 450 feet of four-inch solid and it's all down spouts take a look down spouts drains are the most important drains of any rainwater drainage system your roof gathers so much water when it rains and if that water just comes down the downspout you can see how it was laying here it just soaks right into the ground goes right back into the crawlspace or the basement and it probably floods in your backyard as well always call to get your utilities located before you dig one thing they don't locate are things like this this is the old brick walk this home was built 1908 and there's all kinds of things underground it has been added on to over the years but the yard itself so many things underground the trencher will cut through most everything and it takes a little bit of work but you'll get through it if you've got all your utilities located try to run that trencher as much as possible here in this hard clay it is much easier to run the trench here than it is to dig by hand of course you will have to do some hand digging that's just normal so we've got most all of the trench dug we've come back and cleaned it out you can see Derek's down here at the end users finishing cleaning out the end of that walk right at the walk so we can put the pop-up there and then we're going to start to lay some pipe remember we've got a little over 450 feet of pipe to lay we hooked up every single downspout whether they were a short run like this it just came out to the sidewalk or whether it was a long run like in the back all these downspouts need to get out to the street or to the sidewalk you see this is on a steep hill a lot of tree roots trencher makes this real quick and easy on this side of the house it's actually a very steep hill and we were able to make a very nice clean cut all the way through this is connecting another downspout in the back and you can see it it's the same thing all the way you need to trench all the way as far as you can with that trencher before you have to hand dig you can see what we're doing is just moving that dirt off of the sidewalk cleaning it up gonna mix it up into that soil and it'll just disappear off of this downspout we actually found the water lines and the power you can see it's right beside us there so we had to hand dig all the way across and you can see how deep that is it's quite a deep trench Darrell's got an easy task really to get underneath of those irrigation or water lines whenever they are and we'll be able to let run our pipe right down through there so we're ready to lay pipe one of the great things that I like about corrugated is that it comes in a roll so you've got a hundred-foot roll and it's all solid there's no holes there's no seams so you know that it's a solid piece of pipe and because it comes in roll it makes it pretty easy to just roll this pipe out through your trench and I've showed you guys a lot of different tips of how to unroll the pipe but if you're by yourself if you can start the pipe down in the trench put your foot on it and just roll it and you'll be able to unroll all of the pipe run it right through your trench you can see how it sticks down in and I'm basically just unrolling the pipe once you have the pipe all rolled out down in the trench then you can start making your connection whether that being a tee a cat's Basin hooking up to the downspout roll that pipe out first lay it all out let it lap across the next trench and then you can make your cuts and make your connection here in the front on this side of the house we're hooking up two downspouts one is a regular aloo downspout and the other is a rain chain so we have some special needs that we're going to be putting in for the rain chain I've talked about where you begin to lay pipe and I've mentioned it in a few of the other videos previous to this always start at the end of the line and work your way back this is the back of the house and you can see we're hooking up and downspout there to the right and you saw the rain chain at the side of the porch we've laid the pipe all the way out now we're going to make the connection with a tee back to that rain chain the rain chain needs a huge catch basin and we're using 12 inch culvert pipe and we cut that to size we fill that with gravel and let the chain come into the gravel but we still need a discharge you can't just go into the ground it has to be able to discharge so we'll run a four inch solid pipe over to the culvert drill a hole in it and then when that water fills up through the gravel it will come into the system and be carried away snap your tees together and then come back and clean out the rest of that trench you can see this guy's left a little bit of that dirt right there but that's okay easy enough to come back and you know connect all that together but you can see how long this line is it goes out all the way out to the sidewalk on the side there's two rain chains in the back the rain chains are really cool and I actually like them but they're not that efficient they do let water escape during a big rain when it's raining three four five six inches so I've opened up this trench just clean it out just a little bit more and then we'll be able to lay the pipe all the way back to the rain chain we're down pretty deep here and the line actually starts about 18 inches deep and continues down all the way out to the sidewalk so as it comes out there by the fence it's probably about two and a half to three feet deep it's quite deep through there okay let's go ahead and hook up the rain chain assembly we've remember we've got an 18-inch culvert acting as a catch basin and the rain chain comes down into the center of that so what we need to do is go ahead and get some more pipe this is actually our third roll of pipe that we're going to unroll here and bring that over and we're going to keep installing pipe for those of you that don't know what a rain chain is this is actually a chain that comes from the gutter down to the ground there's actually a hole the drop is cut into the gutter and the water comes and what it does is it spins down the chain it's really neat it just spins right down the chain and goes straight down to the ground it doesn't splash as much as you think but it does splash when the winds blowing in this heavy rain and that's that's my reason for not liking it but it does work and it works really good and it's a very decorative especially if you light this up at night it just sparkles as it comes through so we've got our culvert pipe you slice the line it's a four inch hole slice the pipe slide it inside next we'll make a measurement to the T pull that pipe straight out stretch it out and when you make your measurement cut to the inside of the coupling so that you know you've got an exact fit pretty straightforward and there's so many different ways that you could connect this we're using a tee you could use a Y you can have a catch basin and let it come into the catch basin but I like to run T's I think they're very quick and easy makes the job go very quickly good connection double check it you'll hear a snap when it goes together that one's done let's move on to the next one again the rain chain needs to have drainage and the best way I found is to actually create some type of a catch basin here we're using that culvert and when the water comes down the chain it goes into the culvert that culvert we're going to fill with gravel by the way so that it doesn't splash out and it gives it a chance to slow down the water drill a four inch hole into your catch basin or the culvert run your four-inch line over slide your pipe inside and you're all set I like to you know slice our pipe like this and then slide it inside because once it goes inside it actually opens up expands and is extremely tight next we'll go ahead and put the tea on to connect to the main line you always have a main line somewhere everything is going to connect to your main line and we've started this in that rear of the house that's the main line from the downspout and we're connecting everything to it snap-on teas so simple they just snap right in place you'll hear it click when it goes together so you know it now we'll make a measurement from the rain chain to the tea and this section of the pipe is complete time to backfill you can see we've raked it all overall into the trench and we've smoothed it out a little bit we like to leave it a little bit high and we know that it's going to settle it just takes a few rainfalls this line starts here at that front downspout it picks up another rain chain there in the front and goes out to the sidewalk along this side is where those downspouts used to flow they used to come out here and just flood this area this is a basement and that water went straight down into the basement having the down spouts drains is moving all that roof water away from that foundation they are the most important drain in the rainwater drainage system we still have a little cleanup here to do right there at the curb I'm going to bring the guys over here they'll shovel that up and we'll haul that away for the discharge of the pipe because we're on a pretty good Hill we can actually cut that at an angle and let's let it be an open discharge just like it was going out and through the curb this will come out we'll put the sod back right there and people can mow over it or whatever else they need to do and there it is that's a pretty good install guys something that you guys could do yourself it does take a lot of work remember there were four guys out here and it took us about six and a half hours to get all this installed and cleaned up properly 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: 68,902

Rating: 4.8620691 out of 5

Keywords: French Drain, Roof Drain, Gutter drain, 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, channel drain, pool patio drain, micro channel drain, downspout drain, PVC, Drain Pipe, Basement Waterproofing, french drain installation, downspout rain chain, rain chain

Id: vLsKXY40boQ

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 12 2020