Purchased a home recently and found the backyard turns into a swamp when it rains. I have a sump pump with drain tiles along the West and South of the building. However, I think my plot is the low point on the street and the soil is very hard with a lot of what looks to be clay underneath the soil. So it turns into a swamp.
Would a French drain be the solution for this? Does anyone have any recommendations?
I've attached a picture of the property plat of survey. The black circles are the down spouts. The red is where the water pools up. I also uploaded a picture of the backyard after a recent rain storm.
Please and thank you 🙏
by Enjoy_Calculus
5 Comments
If the problem is that the soils are basically made of so much hardened clay or urban fill that water cannot penetrate it, a french drain and soil amendments could work as a path to get infiltration going.
But if the soils allows infiltration easily and you see that, it likely means you have a shallow water table and a french drain wouldn’t do anything (without a lot of grading work).
A photo like this won’t tell you what specifically is the problem but you can check yourself what your soils is like. If it drains even moderately well, then the water table is just too shallow and digging a french drain is just a very expensive way to ad ~10-20% for storage volume to what soils remains… maybe.
If that ends up being the issue, getting some more water hungry trees and shrubs in can soak up that water to a degree for a “relatively” cheap cost.
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If that still doesn’t work go find a local civil engineer who does stormwater management and ask for a consultation to get advice specificto your area.
If this is relatively new construction, my guess is no or bad top soil as it’s annoyingly typical to see a GC respread fill dirt on top of or mixed with top soil. May need to give the GC a call to fix it.
what you need is a priest
You need a couple of bass.
Nah man looks pretty good to me
You need a French colonial empire drain