Hey everyone, I’m a first-time homeowner and have only been living here for 2 months. Yesterday we had a heavy downpour for about 20 minutes, and my backyard turned into a giant puddle. The water eventually drained, but it looked bad and made me think there might be a drainage issue.
Is this something normal after heavy rain, or should I be concerned? Also, is this usually an expensive fix, or are there DIY options people have tried that actually work? I’d really appreciate any advice—still learning as I go!
by Choice-Vast-7347
42 Comments
How much rain did you get? Has this happened before? How long does it remain standing for? Are your neighbors properties also like this? Are you in mapped floodplain?
There is a lot of info needed to give you better advice. It’s definitely fixable and it’s not likely to be cheap.
Proper drainage is addressed as part of a home inspection. Check your inspection report and see if it mentions drainage. Depending on your state, the Property Disclosure Form also addresses drainage. You may have some recourse, because to correct that problem you need proper grading, drains, dry-wells ect. Not Cheap.
Yes and yes
Welcome to home ownership. Yes it’s fixable. Yes it will be expensive.
Yes to both
Yes
You don’t have to pay someone to dig your own trench to get water to flow away in your yard. If you have a basic understanding of watershed, and where your water should go you can grab a shovel and try it. If you do it wrong, just put the dirt back. If you do it right, then you can DIY some French drains later.
But your patio appears to have sunk. Do you have gutters? You can get the water to flow off the pavers, into the yard and direct it away from there further out. The garden area with the wagon wheel is preventing that currently.
The thing you’re about to learn about homeownership is that “fixable” and “expensive” are not mutually exclusive…
This has been the year of standing water in people’s yards. It’s been a wet year, even though the experts say we are in a drought. The rain has been localized and heavy; gone are the days of a pleasant light rain.
Anything can be fixed. If your neighbor’s yard are not flooded similarly, it is possible you are taking on drainage from their properties. You need to figure out where the water is coming from (sky, neighbors, etc.) and then resolve those issues first.
Your yard appears fairly flat with low spots. If the water is coming from neighbors, a berm/swale is probably needed to divert water to the street/storm water system. If it’s just what is falling from the sky, you probably need a combination of regrading/french drains to move the water away.
Rapid City?
Man same thing happened to me after my first purchase. Luckily the previous owner put in French drains that were covered with dirt. Got them cleaned and it’s no longer an issue. So French drains should help but they are expensive if you have someone do them. Also is your neighbors yard higher than yours?
Start by figuring out where you want the water to go, then begin with the worst spots where water is near the house, and from one spot to the other with slope, trenches, rock beds, Or other types of drainage
Wow – how’s the basement? Have a sump pump or a French drain down there?
I’ve got an issue where i live on a hill and my neighbors retaining wall is all jacked up, downspouts from his gutters facing my side of the house and causes flooding. Our town refuses to get involved and told me to get a lawyer, they don’t have money so i doubt anything would get resolved even if it went to court.
I had to put out about 5k doing a french drain. Still had flooding issues after that, but not as severe. I then did gutters and my own drainage in addition to what i paid to have done. I think i finally got the issue fixed. Point being i’ve done lots of research on what to do, and made lots of observations about my property, physically going outside in rain storms and seeing where the problem originates and contimplating what needs to be done to resolve it.
Look on youtube for a channel called apple drains, he does a great job in showing what you should be able to physically accomplish without heavy equipment. There are other videos out there that show an in ground retaining tank that leaches into the ground. I would suspect that would be ideal for your situation, but gosh, they are really expensive.
Just going on vacation every time it rains. Come back to a vibrantly growing yard and vegetable garden.
I would rent a mini excavator, dig multiple 10’ long 4’deep 2’wide trenches and fill them with rocks 3’ deep. I would cross cross them in the center. I would then cover the top of the rocks with landscape fabric and leave 1’ of topsoil.
Was this disclosed to you by previous owner? You might want to consider going after previous owner if not. It’s going to take a lot of landscaping/grading to fix.
Somebody completely failed to take drainage into account when they designed that place.
I’d be looking at elevation changes, French drains, the works. If you have a basement, water that close to the house is going to end up in it.
Fixable. Probably a combination of grading and drainage. If you can operate a shovel, you can diy this. If not, then pay up. But I think more people should attempt to do their own labor on their own property. Too many scaredy cats in here afraid of a workout and some blisters.
Water runs downhill. Not rocket science, just work.
I would redirect water away from the house with French drains to a rain garden in the rear of the property.
[Both](https://tenor.com/view/the-road-to-el-dorado-both-both-is-good-gif-8304204)
Honestly, this is the time to call a landscaper and see what they would charge for a basic regrading of your property.
It’s going to be a mess for a while, but it’s absolutely necessary. It’s critical that it is done properly, so don’t go with any yahoo with a shovel either.
Look up outdoor sump pumps
Flood zone should have been on the information about home like all other information.
It is both of those things.
Looks like your backyard is the low spot for all surrounding yards. Water follows the path of least resistance. This is fixable and expensive. Congrats, you have your first major project. Welcome to home ownership!
And
Who put all the flower beds and edging in? It looks to me like building those areas up maybe wasn’t such a good idea.
Yes lol
Get a sump pump and get the water out asap
Take a hose and lead it to the front gutter.
Seller should have disclosed this issue. It’s criminal to not disclose known issues and I can’t imagine it didn’t rain at all during the time the seller owned the home before you did.
There is no drainage issue. There’s no drainage.
The biggest thing you’ll need to determine is where you can drain it to. If there isn’t someplace lower than your yard, your drainage challenges become a lot harder.
In our backyard, we used to get flooding with every heavy rain, and it would definitely creep in through the back sliding door (walk out basement). The left and back of the yard were hills going up, and while my neighbors yard to the right was lower, we have a giant shed a small hill that blocks easy water flow. So our backyard was like a bowl, and the only place it could empty was inside the house.
I dug a trench and a drain to the neighbors – perforated pipe and gravel and all that – and it worked fine for a few years. But eventually the pipe started to clog (drain was at the low point in the yard, so sediment was getting into it with the rain), and I was looking for solutions again.
This time I just started digging, working to lower the graded high point in front of the shed. Flattening out that hill allows for rain to move out of the yard, without risk of clogging, and the house has been dry ever since.
So if you have an easy to reach low point – a storm ditch out back, maybe the road, etc, a shovel and some sweat will do wonders. But without an alternate spot to direct the water to, you’re going to have a hard time DIYing it.
Figure out where it should be draining too and why it is not . Also look into what is feeding it . Sometimes neighbours will slope their property into you which is illegal
Did you check the flood maps before you bought?
You might be smack in the middle of a minor flood Zone.
Question: how long is the water standing around? It’s been how long since you have taken this and posted it. Has the water receded since then. Is it all still there with no change at all?
I ask since you said it was a very quick and hard downpour. The area might just have been overloaded and within a day could be drained and that point I wouldn’t worry too much. Would start to worry about the patio filling either way as that is closer to the house.
Yes and yes
I am the low point of the four yards (me and the three adjoining yards that touch my property. My back yard turned into a pond every rain.
For us it was due to the there different neighbors raising their back yards for the tiled concrete surrounding their pools.
I had to install French drains to carry the water to our front yard.
It cost 8,000$ ten years ago. It still flows great but we have had some crazy rains in TX ( 40” Harvey) that flush it out quite well.
Property disclosure if the seller did not disclose this issue then Possible law suit talk to a Real Estate Attorney
Both
Since you have only been there a short time and you did say it drained on it’s own, check around to see if there actually is a drainage system and if it is blocked. In my area, leaves are the usual culprit. If you had an inspection done on your house you can ask the inspector if he noted a drain and where it would be located.