If the land around your client’s home is higher than his home, or if the neighbor’s land slopes toward your client’s land, then moisture and excess water is usually a problem.
Pooling water or a saturated lawn is typically the end result of poor water drainage, although excess water can damage a home’s foundation as well. The easiest and most effective solution to this problem is to install a French drain.
A French drain often consists of an underground drainage pipe, although a traditional French drain is basically an underground trench filled with gravel.
The following steps will guide you through the process of installing a French drain:
- Before you begin, check with city ordinances regarding French drains and make sure that your French drain will not impact anyone else’s land (i.e., run off into the neighbor’s property). You will also need to check with the local utilities before you begin digging as to not hit any underground cables. Most communities have a service where the location of underground cables is marked beforehand.
- Determine the spot at which the water is pooling and the spot at which it needs to be re-routed.
- Locate the area at which to place the drain and mark the trench lines using landscaper’s paint.
- Create a slope for your French drain. Basically, in order for the water to drain, you will need to create a 1% slope. In other words, your French drain should slope one foot for every 100 feet.
- Pound two stakes into the ground to mark the beginning and the end of the trench and tie a string to them. Then determine your slope by leveling the string using a level. Continue to check yourself as you go to maintain the proper grade.
- Although trench widths can vary depending on the magnitude of the moisture problems, most French drains are about 5 to 6 inches wide.
- After you have dug the trench and checked for the proper grading, you can begin laying landscape fabric along the entire length of the trench. The job of the landscape fabric is to keep dirt out of the gravel and therefore facilitate the water drainage. Make sure the width of the landscape fabric is about as twice as wide as the trench.
- Shovel coarse gravel over the landscape fabric and along the entire length of the trench. Then, take the excess landscape fabric and wrap it over top of the gravel, creating a tube of sorts.
- Shovel coarse sand over top of the covered gravel and then add another layer of landscape fabric.
- Add about 4 inches of top soil over the fabric-covered sand and then replace the sod.
For larger jobs, a backhoe may be a huge timesaver. You can also rent trenchers at local equipment rental shops.
If you are unable to find a desirable area to accommodate the run-off from your French drain, consider adding a dry well, which is essentially an underground rock pit, located at the end of a French drain, where water is channeled.
