House is below grade. Driveway has a French drain at the low point. No curbs or stormwater drains at road level, just some culverts at the far end of the yard. Granted this was a hard rain and the French drain was completely overwhelmed but this keeps happening and my flower beds get destroyed and my garage floods. Not to mention the fear of the water rushing in through my front door. I didn’t even plant anything this year because we had so much rain during spring.
Any ideas on how to stop this?? Is the solution to rip out the French drain in the driveway and…replace it with what? No drainage/stormwater pipes to tap into.
by TeaRemote258
41 Comments
Water control is all about where it’s coming from and where it needs to go. You aren’t showing enough of either for anyone to accurately tell you much of anything.
Switch the mulch for rock is about the only thing I can tell you. That’s really just addressing a symptom though.
https://www.ournestingspace.com/blog/creating-a-dry-creek-bed
I would possibly install a dam and capitalize on hydroelectricity
I mean it seems to be moving well.
Im assuming they don’t have enough permeable ground and the gutters are dumping into the ground. Can you confirm OP?
If so, I’d see about running the gutters to the street. I also get the feeling this is more than a 1 time event. If the driveway is creating this situation, the dry creek idea may be necessary.
just a french drain it’ll fix anything lol
You can improve the situation by videoing on sunny days.
Is the water coming down your driveway from the road? You may need to contact your city to have them fix the problem
Rain garden
Have the apron on the driveway fixed so you aren’t getting a deluge of water coming down your driveway from the street
Are your gutters properly diverting water away?
If this is all coming from your driveway, you will need to put in a swale (basically a long low hump of asphalt that would direct the water down into the street. )
Holly fuck that’s a lot of rain….
You need to install a large grate drain in the driveway and catch basin before the driveway. You also need to grade the front of the yard for a deeper swale in front of the sidewalk. I’d say 8″ minimum pipe, but I can’t really tell from the video. You probably need a permit for this, don’t just collect the water then pipe it somewhere else. It’s ok for a small yard drain, but this is a huge volume of water. If you accidentally flood something or cause erosion you will be SCREWED.
Dig a trench along the side of your driveway and add a drainage grate.
https://a.co/d/dnnSrqF
Trench, creek…
I don’t think you’re going to stop what’s happening if the source is not on your property but you can certainly redirect? Water will take the past of least resistance everytime so you’ll need to give it a pathway. You could raise the garden beds to prevent all the soil running away, install drainage parallel to driveway to redirect off the property, you definitely need to make sure that’s running away from the property and not towards it. I’d definitely consult a landscape construction company on this one.
Shop vac
Are you in a flood zone?
At your drive way add drainage system to move it to the road.
“House is below grade” is literally everything that causes it and that should have been fixed at the time of building that underwater dwelling.
Holy cow!
Your elevation needs to be mapped and then the front lawn shaped to move water away. Aggressive French drains would help. Ya might want to consider a more aggressive curbing from the street to your drive way.
I live on a steep grade and get plenty of downhill runoff. Just be thankful your house isnt in the way, like mine is. My entire 100ft drive way and 30ft of hardscaped backyard basically serve as a stormwater conduit to my back neighbors’ driveway (purposely built to our property line), which is 150ft downhill to the street that leads to a drain going directly to a river close by. A whole side of my property is dedicated to collecting and diverting stormwater away.
I’ve dug a ditch that ran to a drainage system and put down large enough pvc going to downward angle with a cover then threw the dirt back on but I don’t know the regulations for the city sewer system unless a hole gets cut into your side walk to connect it to the street
Don’t worry it will drain allot fast once it washes all the mulch away.
Consider adding river stones because it’s flowing quite nicely?
Where are you located? Been looking for a good fishing spot.
Do you have a 1.5” depressed curb between your driveway and the road? Can’t tell from this video.
Looks to me like you’re pulling in a bunch of roadway runoff bc your driveway slopes back towards your house. A depressed curb would prevent that from happening, and would allow the road runoff to continue flowing down the gutter.
More info on the situation. If we could see the house ie where the water is coming from an idea may materialize.
Like another poster stated. Water likes an easy route and will end up in
The lowest path.
Perforated drain pipe might help, but looks like that may be quite a bit of digging, you’d need multiple lines, and I can’t see where a good spot would be for the output of it. A cistern seems like it would not work for that volume of rain water.
Is this going toward your house away from the street?
If that’s the case, I would want to probably put in some French irrigation and add material along my house to that. There’s a slight downward slope away from my house.
At least around where I live all the houses are graded up above the street, so water should always float towards the street.
more native plants!!
Do you have gutters?
Make it rain less!
There isn’t a French drain design in the world that will fix this issue.
From your comments it sounds like the driveway is sloped towards your “French Drain”. It really should be sloped towards a swale in front of your garden beds and off to the right of screen towards that road ditch.
The only way to prevent flash floods like this is to demo and rebuild the driveway. Raise your garden and entry walk an inch or two higher than your driveway. Or give up on the topsoil and place down some rock to prevent erosion and add potted plants and inground plants as desired.
Trenches on the sides of the walkway filled with rock. Also add more plants, you’ll have less mulch to worry about then.
Sandbag the water to prevent it from running onto your property.
Have you tried turning off the rain?
Build a lil moat and shit. Like your own personal front yard creek or pond , use it to your advantage..sheesh too many people complain instead of thinking outside the box bro😂
Great opportunity to bury a drain with a deep dry creekbed from the driveway along the sidewalk to lead as much water away from the house as possible. Give it a channel and somewhere to go. Also consider mud-jacking your porch/sidewalk so the water runs away from the house.
Put some rocks where the garden is and add dirt and a raised garden on top.
If you have money, redo the walkway slightly higher too and direct the water to run through on the lawn. Rain garden of rocks probably along the walkway.