Drainage Project - Part 1

Mike and I have been working hard on our backyard drainage project. It's a lot of work, but we are hoping it will improve the water issues we are having in the way back.

There's a slight slope from left to right, and a bigger slope from front to back. The current grading is good in the fact that it moves the water away from our house and garage, but a lot of it ends up stuck in the way back like a big bathtub, and the water has nowhere to go. Only during the driest months of the year is it walkable back here without wellies, leaving a huge chunk of our property unusable.

It wasn't always this bad, but our neighbors uphill from us regraded their yards, added drains to fix their water issues - sending it straight to us and our neighbors to the right down the slope.

We tried adding river birches and plants to help absorb some of the water six years ago. We filled in the back right corner that used to be a sort of water retention area and some other low points that will fill up. But then a couple of wet summers made the water problem everywhere else in the back so bad that two of the river birches and some of water loving plants drowned and died.

So our new plan is to do the hard work and put in some real drainage. We are digging 3 trenches, the width of the yard, and filling them with gravel and drainage pipes with socks. The pipes have spaced holes on the top to let in water, but the sock keeps out mud and debris from clogging the pipe and allowing the water to flow freely down the slope from left to right. These drainage pipes will be buried surrounded by gravel, topped with sod so we won't see them.

The trenches will be located strategically - one right behind the raised bed garden, one in the way back, and then one in between.

At the end of the line by the fence, we are digging 3 dry wells at the end of each pipe as a courtesy to our neighbors down the slope. Dry wells are basically big (and deep) holes filled with gravel to catch and hold the water underground. We are also thinking about doing a 4th drain that would connect to these drain pipes running to the way back of the yard, dumping the water in farthest right back corner (to avoid flooding my neighbor's yard), but we don't know if we would need this yet in conjunction with the dry wells. We might wait until spring to see if it's necessary first.

Hopefully this will really help with the drainage and water issues, giving the water somewhere to go.

So far trench one and two are dug. There were some MASSIVE tree roots that made Mike crazy, but he got through them. I started filling the trenches with 6 inches of gravel. After that we add the drain pipe, more gravel, then the sod back on top.

You can see how the water pools inside the trench on the lower end - it's basically a clay bathtub and the water has nowhere to go. So we're hoping this will significantly help with all of that.

Trench two is going right between the other two trenches, next to the back corner garden (which will hopefully be redone in the spring).

Trench three will be along the back of the yard, in front of the river birch trees. There's a slope there and we also don't want to damage the tree roots or the roots of the forsythia on the other side, as these are also helping soak up water.