How to Achieve Better Yard Drainage
Does your yard have a wet spot that won’t go away? Standing water can be a nuisance and an eyesore. Not to mention, yard puddles can also kill your grass. This article will review the options for fixing standing water in your yard. We’ll cover everything from grading your land to installing drainage systems. Enjoy these tips on how to achieve better yard drainage!
Soggy yard? Here are your options.
Yard drainage problems in your yard are annoying. If your grass is underwater for too long, it will die. You can’t mow over wet areas; everyone tracks mud into the house. If the damp area is close to your home, it can cause your basement to leak or worse. So what’s the answer? In this article, we’ll review the options.
How To Fix Standing Water In Your Yard
First, try simple yard drainage solutions.
Extend the downspout; downspout drainage solutions.
A basin for water can form by landscaping near the home. The most typical solution is to lengthen the downspout. Before digging a trench or taking any other extreme measure to remove a wet area or standing water in your yard, take a step back and examine the situation. You may need to divert your downspout or run the discharge pipe from your sump pump drainage outside to another location for the problem to go away.
Draw a Drainage Plan
If you can’t find a straightforward solution to your soggy yard problem, it’s time to look for another option. To learn how to achieve better yard drainage, sketch your property with the house, driveway, patios, street, and other features. Then use a line level or a builder’s level to determine high and low locations. Draw arrows to demonstrate how water moves and note the relative elevation of high and common areas. Remember that, in most situations, you should not aim to send water onto your neighbor’s property. Contact the city first to discover what rules apply if you want to discharge water into the street or a municipal storm sewer. Once you have your contour map, look for areas where water seems to pool. These are places where you can install a French drain or another type of drainage system.
Call in the Pros
If you don’t feel confident about tackling a drainage problem on your own, it’s time to call in a professional. Team Paradise has decades of experience and is the #1 yard drainage landscaping company in Annapolis and the surrounding areas. We are here to help you.
Your sketch of standing water will help you decide which of the following strategies is best for your situation if you’re unable to drain water from a low spot on your property; constructing a rain garden or dry well may be your best course of action.
If you feel you can tackle your yard drainage issue, then, by all means, read on for more suggestions on achieving better yard drainage.
Construct a Rock Creek Bed
A creek bed like this is the perfect drainage solution for any low spot in your yard, as it will direct runoff into a rain garden or dry well. A dry creek bed is an attractive landscaping feature that can also help solve drainage problems. Make a swale, which is a thin, gentle drainage ditch. Then line it with gravel or pebbles, and finish it off with boulders, a bridge, or plants to give it some flair.
Of course, you don’t have to make your drainage project into a creek bed. A basic swale can effectively and quietly manage surface water. It’s simpler to build a swale before seeding or sodding your yard, but if required, you may remove the grass with a sod cutter and replace it after grading is complete.
Build a Rain Garden
Consider creating a rain garden if you have an area of your yard that collects and retains water. A rain garden is a section of your yard prepared to catch water with aquatic plants. It doesn’t address the dampness in your grass, but a rain garden makes it look far nicer than a muddy pit. Rain gardens also help the environment by reducing runoff and lawn chemicals, pet waste, and mud that result from it.
A rain garden intercepts runoff from impervious surfaces, such as roofs and driveways. They are typically shallow depressions that flower with native plants densely packed together. An essential element of rain gardens is choosing the right plants for your area’s soil type. Typically, deep-rooted native plants work best.
Add an underground drainage pipe
The most efficient method to rid water from a lower area is to drain it away through an underground drainage pipe. The underground drainage pipe should have a downhill slope of at least 1/8 inch per foot–so if your discharge outlet were 100 ft. from the inlet, it would need to be approximately 1 ft. lower than even with the ground.
To lay a drain, you must dig a gradually sloping trench from the source to the outlet. Then install a plastic catch basin at the start and connect it to the discharge with PVC drainpipe. This technique has several benefits over a French drain. Since the pipe is solid and not perforated, there’s no need for gravel to drain down the length of it. Furthermore, smooth-wall pipe drains water quickly and can be cleared with a drain snake if it becomes blocked.
Drainpipe discharge: The water discharge end of your drainpipe connects to a pop-up yard drain emitter that sits flush with the lawn when no water is flowing. To install the catch basin, position it at the low spot of your soggy area. The grate will sit flush with the lawn for easy mowing.
Install a French Drain
A French drain can help you solve a variety of drainage issues. It sends water into the ground through a buried perforated pipe and spreads it out over a wide area. Water needs to flow through the pipe, which is surrounded by materials that allow it to drain properly. Typically, this was gravel, but NDS offers a system called EZflow that comes with the pipe and surrounding polystyrene aggregate in one simple and lightweight package. A French drain may be used alone or with a dry well.
A correctly designed French drain system does not need an outlet. The water will soak into the ground as it flows along the perforated pipe.
Anatomy of a French Drain: A typical French drain is made up of a perforated pipe, usually flexible and lightweight plastic, covered by a fabric sock. The tube is buried in a trench and surrounded by aggregate. Water enters the end of the pipe through an inlet and flows through the earth or grates. The water is then dispersed into the ground through the aggregate to prevent dirt and sand from clogging the pipe.
Create a Dry Well
Dry wells are holes in the ground filled with gravel or some other aggregate to collect water and retain it while it penetrates the earth. Burying special dry well barrels can enhance the capacity of a dry well. These plastic containers catch water and hold it while it drains out through holes in the sides and bottom. These plastic containers, which must be surrounded by gravel or similar porous material to allow drainage, will catch water and hold it while the water drains out through holes in the sides and bottom. You can stack these wells or place them side by side. Generally, a dry well should be large enough to collect the first 10 or 15 minutes of rain from a downpour.
Paradise Landscape has decades of experience fixing yard drainage problems in Annapolis and surrounding areas. Fill out our quick form for a FREE estimate!
