My wife and I recently purchased an older home in Louisiana, and with the summer rains picking up, we’ve noticed the backyard has a bad flooding problem. We initially thought a lot of the problem would be fixed with installing gutters and having the downspouts aimed into the existing storm drains, but as you can see in the second picture, we’re still having issues.
The backyard is down sloping towards the house so we know water is going to pool around the back porch anyways but we’d like to try and fix this as much as possible. I’ve put my phone in the drain pipes to look for obstruction but they seem clear so I’m not sure what to do now. The guy who installed the gutters suggested adding another downspout at the corner of the house at the end of the rocks in the second picture but I’m just not sure how much that will help. Any suggestions?
by Logical_Unit
12 Comments
In my humble opinion, what I’d do is call a company to see if they can clear out whatever is in the drainage that I can’t see. If they don’t find anything, installing a French drain to lead to the street, while also moving that down spout to the other side of the house to an area much dryer.
Poor draining soil needs bigger drywell. A civil engineer can do the calculations for you
My drywell almost the size of a YMCA swimming pool
Pay a plumber to snake the drains or go buy one like $40
Bro I’m replacing all my gutters because of this damn rain, it drops into a corner too close to the house and causes issues. My pockets are hurting.
Get a sump pump.
The downspouts should be piped into the drains, not discharged into them above ground. Looks like they’re discharging water right past the drains. Just pipe them in directly. It’s no good to capture that water with gutters then discharge right there along the house.
And where do those drains discharge? Do you know where that water goes?
Is that PVC pipe at the corner not an underground drain pipe? If it is, then by all means, listen to your guy and add the downspout and put it straight into that pipe. In fact, I don’t know much about gutters but I’d be curious, if your gutters could handle it, either removing the closest downspout altogether and changing the pitch towards the new downspout, or somehow tying it to that same drainpipe. If gutters can’t handle it maybe making a new drainpipe under the existing downspout and tying in into the drainpipe underground. With the rocks there really shouldn’t be too difficult. Again, assuming that existing pipe sticking up is a drainpipe. I think it could work wonders
Assuming drain isn’t clogged – you have a capacity problem that you can alleviate possibly with landscaping/bioswale-raingarden instead. But you’ll need to do the legwork
Damn, that’s tuff and problematic. You are going to have to put those down spouts into pipes that lead a considerable distance from the house to sump, with a clean out access somewhere between.
I’m not an expert in the field but that’s what you do.
Shit ain’t cheap either
That is a pretty old concept for water mitigation and you most likely are going to want to put in some barried downspouts as well as a French drain (depending on how bad that back yard grading really is).
Contact a few local drainage companies to get some quotes. I’d also recommend watching The French Drain Man’s YouTube videos so you can have a productive conversation with these companies about a mitigation plan.
French drain
This isn’t a lawncare question. Your existing system was designed by a landscaper, but you need an engineer.