How to install a French drain.
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- Опубліковано 20 лип 2024
- When installing a French drain yourself, or hiring a contractor, its important to follow these two simple rules to achieve good water flow and infiltration.
Be sure to maintain proper slope of 1% throughout your landscape drainage system. Proper slope will allow the French drain to quickly drain and remove water from the area that needs to be drained.
Soil on site will help determine best French drain installation practices for your landscape drainage project. To ensure good water movement into the drainage system make sure to remove heavy clay soils and backfill the French drain with a more permeable backfill - such as filtered top soil, sand, or washed gravel.
We use NDS drainage products for all our storm water management systems.
www.ndspro.com/
www.bellislawns.com/ - Навчання та стиль
This is definitely one of the better videos on youtube about french drains. I think you're the only person I've seen that (1) even mentions the importance of considering the different soil types you may encounter and (2) actually understands the effects they may have on clogging up filter cloth and drain pipe over time (especially clay and silt as you mention). That's a critical factor for a quality install and so many "experts" out there don't even have a clue about it. So bravo for showing true expertise in french drain installation.
Yes great video to talk about the different types of soils. Probably the most important thing before you start. It would be nice if you could explain which system works best with different soil conditions.
Thanks. Having a french drain installed. Now I know the right questions to ask.
schutzrr the most important two to ask are: depth and width. And what material will be used to back fill. There are many to choose from. Stone being the most common.
Thank You. Your videos are very informative and instructional...more than just the technical aspect of the drainage installations, which makes for better planning.
Thank you!
And I forgot to mention the importance of the different soil types which I had a concern with. Well done. Thanks for posting.
I am in the process at the moment of doing both a french drain and a gutter-drainage system. I used corrugated due to the price difference but I hope I don't regret that due to leaves clogging on the inside ridges. I kept them separate. It took more pipe to do this but I felt like it was the better solution. I have perforated corrugated 4" pipe wrapped around my house foundation 1 ft or so from the foundation and around the patio and that fits into a connector at the front of the house where it turns into solid corrugated to go on down the front yard where it exits near the ditch. Then I have solid 4" corrugated pipe going to the two gutters (one in the back corner of the house and one in the front corner of the house) using the proper connectors, and a T-Connector and that is solid all the way down to the same exit point in the ditch next to the french drain exit point. I am going to snap on a drain vent on the ends of them to keep rodents out as well.
It's been a lot of digging but I believe it will be worth it. I have a woods to the left of my house that I turned into yard and the slope is fairly significant to where when it rains heavily, the water slams my house and goes under the foundation. I hope this project will minimize the amount of moisture that enters my crawl space. I hope there is no black mold already from all of these years before I purchased the home. It's about 60 years old.
Thanks for the advice.
Shaquanna Richie no problem. Best of luck on your project.
In one of your other videos you said you only need 1% slope for every 10 ft which was 1/4 inch and you used a leveler….in this video now u said 1% for every 10ft is 1 in. Im in flat land which one do you recommend for 100 ft if perforated pvc pipe?
I appreciate your talking about clay soil and PVC vs corrugated. In just about every video I see pros using corrugated, but in forums people talk about it silting up where solid pipe doesn't. I'm replacing a horrible excuse for a French drain in a house we bought 3 years ago. We have heavy clay soil here in south-central KS as well and the previous owner hired a wretched handyman that just buried bare perforated corrugated at very little slope with little underfill, no fabric, and no backfill. I'm changing it to HDPE in a 16" wide trench that I had planned to put an inch or 2 of washed gravel, just put the fabric directly around the pipe, then cover it to grade with river rock that will also function as a pathway. Does this sound feasible or am I playing with more heartache here?
Patrick Griffin the only thing I would recommend you not do is put the fabric directly around the pipe. The fabric should in-case the whole system - lay the fabric in the trench with plenty to go around the system once all gravel is added. Over lap it and pin it. Or you could use the NDS product. It so much easier to install and comes prefabricated. I like to back fill with sand more than any other material, but others work just as fine! Good luck and let me know if you have more questions.
Bellis Lawn & Gardens much appreciated!
good video
+Romero lawn care thank you my friend :)
Thanks so much for the video because it clarifies what took me a while to figure out. I'm currently installing a French drain around the perimeter of my pool patio. I'm trying to carry the water around the pool and drain to a lower area. I'm using the NDS EZ-Drain because of the curvy shape of the patio. Unfortunately I have clay and was advised by NDS (Dr. Drainage himself) to lay in landscape fabric first, then put in the drain, close the fabric and backfill with sand, stone or topsoil. I have two questions. (1) Part of the final perimeter will have decorative, 3/8 Delaware River Rock and some will have grass. Should I backfill with sand or cheaper stone before getting to the decorative stone/topsoil level? (2) And how the heck do you figure out slope with EZ-Drain and curvy layouts?
You can back fill with either choice...sand, or less expensive rock before bringing to final grade with your decorative rock. The section with the grass I would use sand then sod. I fail to see the use of the extra filter wrap in this application. Clay soils are not indicative of soil fines migrating, which is the purpose of a geo-textile fabric to collect those fines. The most important step when installing in clay soils is to make trench wider. Perhaps 4" wider than the NDS EZflow. The easiest, and less expensive way, to check your slope can be done by using a plumbers level and a piece of 10 ft solid pvc pipe. Just remember, your slope should be .5" for every ten foot of run when using NDS EZflow, unlike a quarter inch for solid pipe. Check out my other video ua-cam.com/video/QDbXsMGUCu8/v-deo.html to help with slope.
Thanks for the response! Regarding slope, did you mean 1.5" per ten foot of corrugated pipe, like you mention in the above video or did you mean 0.5" per foot? That seems like a lot of slope. Regarding fabric, according to NDS, they feel with clay soil, the geo-textile fabric should go in between the existing clay soil and the EZ-Drain. One NDS tech said to lay it in so that the bottom and sides of the trench are covered before putting in the EZ-Drain. He also said to leave the top open and cover with porous backfill. The other tech said to wrap the whole thing, protecting the EZ-Drain from getting clogged. I'm with you because what they are telling me sort of defeats the purpose of the product. I just want to do it right. I like making the trench wider and backfilling with sand and/or gravel. Here's the NDS clay video for reference ua-cam.com/video/lgmsNKrgms0/v-deo.html
Joe Magrino the minimum slope for corrugated is .5” the recommended is 1.5” per 10 ft. Site conditions often limit the desired slope so I always try to give minimum slope requirements. If site conditions allow for greater slope then by all means achieve as much slope as possible. Especially when using corrupted pipe. Hope this helps ;)
Thanks for clarifying. The weather is finally breaking here a bit in NJ, so I'm looking to get out there and finish. And thanks again for your videos!
Joe Magrino good luck with your install. Starting to finally get some calls here. So hopefully we will start some installing some systems on our side ;)
So when using this in clay soil you say to put more permeable material around the drain. Is this effective at draining water coming from the sides, or only surface water the falls down into it?
MrBlowmyselfup water moves from areas of higher concentration to areas of lower concentration. Creating a porous area allows water to flow quickly and easily into the drain. Regardless if you use this product, or a traditional gravel drain. This drain was not designed to collect surface water quickly (it will collect surface water), as the main concern was the subsurface water at a depth of 2.5ft. If you want to collect surface water quickly we recommend completely backfilling with sand using the NDS Ezflow.
MrBlowmyselfup backfill all the way to grade with sand when you do!
can you create proper slope by digging one end increasingly deeper?
1% slope on 10 feet =120 inches ÷by 100 =1.2 inches
cristiano silva yes. 1”-1.2”