How I Built a French Drain to Improve Drainage on Clay Soil Part 2
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- Опубликовано: 8 июн 2024
- Greetings and welcome to my channel, ten months ago I made a video "How I Built a French Drain to Improve Drainage on Clay Soil", this video explains 6 steps I came up with for building a french drain to improve drainage over suburban clay soil.
In this update video, I'll be answering some frequently asked questions from my french drain video and reviewing it's performance over the past year.
Here in Austin Texas, new suburbs have dense clay soil brought in for building home foundations. In most cases, developers plan for drainage, but in my case, there are some ongoing drainage issues. I've built this french drain to get rid of standing water in my backyard, and to remedy root rot issues for my backyard orchard's peach trees.
Improving the clay soil was an option here, and I've taken some steps to improve the soil with pearlite, aeration, and compost. That being said, one year later, the drain still works as designed.
Video Chapter Timestamps -
0:00 Chapter 1 - Intro and Recap
1:27 Chapter 2 - Peach Tree Update
3:00 Chapter 3 - Birds Eye View of Drainage Issues
4:26 Chapter 4 - French Drain Anatomy Revisited
6:23 Chapter 5 - Why the French Drain Doesn't Go To the Street
9:30 Chapter 6 - Closing Thoughts
Thanks again for watching Austin Texas Gardening!
#AustinTexas #Gardening #Frenchdrain #Horticulture #Zone8B #suburbangardening
It HAS been so windy lately. I’m glad you were able to film the French drain in action though. You did such a great job on it
Thanks baby!
Hello friends.
I would like to add some suggestions that are pretty crucial when installing your own French Drains.
1) Call 611 (or whatever your states "before you dig" utility finders number is to ensure you are not going to cut through or hit any utilities. (Cable lines usually sit just under the surface when running from the hub to your home. If you have landscape lights that are low power, those electric lines are also usually just under the surface and cutting them with a shovel is the easiest accident to do.
You may think you know where everything is, but you should be sure. Don't be the person that messes everything up for your neighbors.
2) Generally, when using pipe for French Drains you need to dig at least 18" in the ground. The reason for that is so you can put stone below and on top of the pipe and still have a deep enough layer of dirt that will allow good root system for grass/flowers. Of course, this is a general rule and you don't need to follow this if you don't play to reseed or grow anything over the French Drain.
3) Grading. Just because you are installing a French Drain doesn't mean the water is automatically going to flow where you want it to flow. You still have to install the French Drain so it runs downhill at a rate of 1 inch per 10 feet. If you have a 30 foot run of pipe, you would need one end to be 18 inches deep and the other 21 inches deep if you were digging on a flat surface. Take into consideration the grade your yard already has. Many times it will already have more than enough of a grade, but if it doesn't, say they only had the grade of 1 inch for every 30 feet, you will not drain any better.
4) DONT WRAP THE PIPE IN THE SOIL SEPARATOR FABRIC! @10:10 you can see the fabric is clinging to the pipe. That is a bad thing because that fabric will clog the corrugations in the pipe and the pipe will do nothing. Not only will the fabric clog the pipe itself, but it will make any dirt over time that makes its way through the rocks to cling to it and will clog the pipe even worse. It should be fabric, stone, pipe, stone, fabric.
5) This one is more for Austin. Solid work dude! Hand digging trenches is not fun, not fun at all. I am sure you figured it out by now, but when you use a drain cap like you have, you really need to have an angled fitting so the drain can sit flush with the soil. In all honesty, you don't need the cap ever. only in really rare cases when the water running off the land is so drastic that you would have some type of erosion concerns. The cap is to created the faster way for water to leave the surface and get below ground. in many cases, you can just lay the pipe, and surround it with rocks. no need to cap, or anything. If you have a concern about rocks or soil washing down the pipe, then you can use some of the soil separator fabric and some wire. Cover the opening of the pipe with the soil separator with enough excess that you can use the wire to secure it to the pipe by wrapping around the circumference of the pipe.
6) The river between you 2 houses could be, rather should be, addressed by the HOA. It would be best if the had some form of a rock creek bed to prevent soil erosion. Once that grass gets damaged or starts to die from the soil compacting that is happening with all that water on it, that is just going to become dirt with no roots, it will just run and cut a gully through there. I am also noticing your cooling pack seems to be in that area too. A huge concern is that it will create settling or erosion under your HVAC unit while will create even more problems. The last concern about that area between your houses is the sidewalk. That sidewalk is preventing water flow directly to the street. I cannot tell if there is a drain next to the sidewalk (maybe a block box) but if there isn't. there should be one just by seeing how much water is in that video. That that area near the data and utility hub is left unattended... its going to created major wash out problems for not just the utilities, but also for your driveway too. So I hope you can Ask the HOA to take care of it or at a minimum get permission to make changes yourself like just putting down some river stone down.
Other than that man, it looks like it is doing what it needs to do. Happy no backyard flooding and tree growing!
Be well!
Appreciate the pro advice, thanks for adding this helpful info to consider
Amazing how a strip of drain is enough for your large yard.
Its worked really well over the past two years now
That’s awesome man. I used to do French drain work at least once a week for the company I used to work for, and I know it’s back breaking. Good job bro👍🏾
Appreciate your encouragement!
Swap popup with a just a grill.
Extend gravel at top of french drain to capture more water.
Good suggestion
Working on my French drain in North Austin, no pipes in yet but the water is already flowing like crazy.
Happy Easter! God bless 😊
I’m glad the video helped! It’s a lot of hard work but it’s worth it
this is perfect. IM DIYing a french drain and wasn't sure about going to the street. There's a enough of a swale between my house and my neighbours..This helps greatly, thanks!
Happy to help!
I’m currently digging my trench in heavy rocky clay soil up in Leander. I called 811 to mark utility lines and will be following the way the “French Drain Man” installs them and also order 4” perforated pipes from them. Due to so much rocks in clay soil, digging is such a pain where a shovel just doesn’t work. I need to get a pickaxe to dig about ~200ft around the entire fence line. Will see how my project goes.
Please update me and let me know how it turns out, 200 feet of trench is no joke!
I think you did a good job considering the waterlines, gas pipe lines and other utilities underneath the ground. My yard has a gas pipeline running right down the middle of my diamond shaped yard. My house is at the end of the cul de sac. Having the utilities running underneath the majority of my yard has made placement of my trees a challenge. I actually have a jujube tree planted in a 40 gallon pot trying to ensure the invasive roots don’t disturb the utilities.
Next home purchase I will make sure I study where the utilities and city drainage pipes are.
Yep, I don’t know what the future holds for my family’s living situation, but thankfully most of my actual backyard doesn’t have utility lines running all over the place
THANK YOU SO DAMN MUCH!!!!
Happy to help!
Nice drain. I paid a lot to have mine done and it really changed my life 😂
Work with the fiber company, and your neighbor, and finish the job!! 😂
Good job man.
Thanks for the affirmation
Nice! Glad that's working well for you. I'm lucky enough not to need it but my neighbor sure does. I look out my window after a heavy rain and his yard looks like yours used to. Just a giant puddle for his 5 dogs to play (and get filthy muddy) in. For my yard I'm actually thinking of putting micro-swales into my yard to keep water from flowing out of my yard and into my neighbors. (Not his, mine flows somewhere else.) Or maybe just broadforking along the contour lines, sort of merging swales and keyline ploughing concepts.
Good thinking, there are many ways to resolve drainage issues, it’s interesting how out of control drainage issue can get, if my grade was messed up a bit on the eastern side of my yard, I’d be dealing with a full swamp scenario
Have you found the fabric clogging/slowing water permeation with the clay?
No clogging yet that I’ve found, it’ll be a year since I installed the drain this month
I've seen construction crews laying pipes lightly blanket newly excavated clay soil with lime. Wouldn't that be a helpful step ?
im not sure what purpose that would serve, but im sure its done for a good reason
Congrats on the success. The Universities call them rock-inlets & with or without fabric they're rated to last ~10-years-unmanaged, the classic variation was simply a 4ftx4ft stretch of buried interlocking gravel/stone/or-whatever.
Some constructive criticism to cover other angles of study/opinions, You actually want all water in the summer to be stopped near your foundation to prevent your soil from shrinking. Odds are your home is built on 'expansive soil' where moisture is necessary to prevent soil-shrinkage around the foundation causing a loss of support. After $20k of foundation repair we were told to add 20 minutes of daily foundation-watering when outdoor temperatures are above 90f to keep our supporting-foundation-soil expanded/moist.
For more drainage you're probably at the limit & now have to go up(raised beds/mounds) if necessary.
3:26 I had a stray destroy a few of my hens & the dog was infected with Hookworms & Whipworms which both can eat the brains of children[the dog was adopted & now has full preventive healthcare].
No-offense to your unused-dog-house but in 2020 Texas requires flooring off the ground, I'd suggest one 19 inches or more up so that any yard-fleas won't annoy your parasite(flea)-treated-animals after they've jumped off your pet.
That’s good feedback Bob, we use a soaker hose on our foundation in the summer because we get huge cracks in the expanding Clay soil.
Also that dog house needs to be burned down or thrown out, sugar is a properly spoiled inside dog and she never uses it anyway
@@AustinTexasGardening In my county it's $500 for burning anything man-made that wasn't sold as a burnable-product.
Nice work man! Personally i would of burrito wrapped the rock with the pipe, then put soil back over it so you cant see it. You def should extend it down the side of the house where all that other water is also, you can avoid that fiber line easily, and even if you do hit it, theyll come put a new one in. Not sure if you can discharge to the street. If you cant just dig a big hole, fill it with alot of gravel and use a T fitting so the water can try and go back in the soil and once it fills up the other end can be a pop up.
I’ve considered extending it, but there’s a bunch of powerlines right on the other side of my gate and I’m not really interested in digging around them