Backyard Drainage Problem
Hi. I wanted to find out if anyone had experience with drywells, backyard drains or other water management systems. My row house has had an ongoing drainage problem during the heaviest rains. All the rainwater can’t exit fast enough and water starts backing up into the backyard, which then causes flooding into the basement through…
Hi. I wanted to find out if anyone had experience with drywells, backyard drains or other water management systems. My row house has had an ongoing drainage problem during the heaviest rains. All the rainwater can’t exit fast enough and water starts backing up into the backyard, which then causes flooding into the basement through the hatch. I’ve had the line snaked and looked at with a camera and there appears to be no cracks, roots or other obstructions that prevents the water from reaching the main street line. It seems that it just becomes overwhelmed during serious downpours by the roof water and backyard water meeting up with all the water in the main line on the street. One of the plumbers that came to snake it suggested putting in a drywell, which would divert some of the water from the roof and backyard, allowing it to slowly leak into the surrounding ground. I’ve also had a waterproofing company suggest a version of a french drain. I would love to hear other experiences as well as recommendations for companies that might do this sort of thing.
We have a huge drywell AND a drain under the back hatch. And half the yard is grass to absorb rainwater. If you have an all-cement yard it’s always going to create way too much runoff. The city is trying to lessen the load on the sewers and get people to have more grass to reduce runoff. It’s why they’re putting in a lot of new, large tree pits. Everything helps. Regarding French drains, be careful, you can’t just send rainwater into neighboring yards.
we have drywells on our block in most of the back yards and community driveways. only flooded the basement once and that was due to the grate being covered with debris.they work great just clean it out once a year or so.
We had the same problem here due to the poor draining soil (clay). We ended up with puddles at the end of our drive which remained for days or weeks. I too thought about a dry well and my secondary plans included one but I have not had to go that far. What I did was dug an 8′ trench in my yard sloping from 18″ deep to 36″ deep. At the end of the trench I dug an 8′ deep hole about 36″ inches around. By doing this I was hoping to get below the clay which I did not – which had me thinking that what I was doing was not going to work. But I put some rock and pea stone in the trench and down the the hole, not much a 4″ bed. then I drilled holes in 8″ PVC pipe and wrapped it in cloth made for the purpose of keeping sand and dirt out of drainage pipes (HD has it). I put the pipe into the trench with a cap on one end and an elbow on the other where it connected to another 8″ pipe (drilled and wrapped) that went straight down into the 8′ hole – where it too was capped at the bottom. Then I backfilled this thing with about twenty bags of rock, sand, and pea stone and on top of that I made a brick patio.
Now, this thing drains. I think it allows water to go down into the hole and the weight of the water above forces the water on the bottom out through the clay. I am not an engineer, so I am not sure if that is what it is doing and my neighbor looked at me as though I had three heads when I told her that was what I was hoping it would do.
It sounds like you have a lot more water in a short time, which may require something like what I describe above with more of a dry well at an end. I was originally planning to use the above type system with the pipes, tied into a plastic drum with holes drilled in it as a type of dry well and thought i may have to tear up more of my yard and put that in later – it never came to that. That is the thing about this though, if what you start with does not work good enough, you can always ad onto it with bigger pipes and more stone.
check out the ‘net, there is plenty written about french drains and dry wells.
Steve
sorry, I was thinking of a prefab trough, with a grating on top that is attached to the main. They are used on many walkways. I beleive the moniker ‘french’ has been attached to these many times (or maybe I’m the idiot who attached the name to it). I didn’t realize the french drain was as DIY as the drywell.
A french drain doesn’t have any pre-fab to it – just a deep hole filled w/ progressively smaller rocks – sometimes lined w/ landscape fabric &/or p.v.c. pipe w/ holes in it. Plus to a french drain is that it’s unobtrusive & can be dug across the width of the plot of land for maximum drainage.
Both of those suggestions are good. I would think the drywell is better, as you can dig down as much as you want and backfill with gravel to collect and disperse the water (as opposed to the pre-fab french drain, which I assume they’d want you to connect to the main?). What is your backyard covered with? Is it soil, concrete, or mixed? If it is a planting area, then putting in the drywell will be easier. If it’s concrete, then of course you have demo a bit.