French Drain - River Rock or Crushed Stone

[reggiejr]

I saw this stuff at the construction supply place we go to a couple of weeks ago and thought it was a good idea.
I thought when i saw it that it would be perfect for a diy type project.
It looked like this stuff.
http://www.ndspro.com/images/stories...tion-guide.pdf

[tractchores]

You can also line the trench to keep silt out of the stone and get a longer life. I always use crushed washed stone. That sounds like a really wide trench, any reason to make it so wide? I usually do 1' x3' which is good because my bh bucket is 1 foot and i have less stone to buy and dirt to move.

[gumshu]

I used 1 1/4 crushed rock, the same rock used for septic system leach fields. works great.

[Red Horse]

A lot of good opinions here. My two cents, I would go with 3/4"-1" crushed stone as if my memory is right, that size stone holds the most water per cu. ft. Bed the pipe in 3", put a foot or so on top, and then cover before backfill with filter fabric, or 15# felt (tar paper) or as someone suggested, an old time solution-good layer of cut hay. This plus a buck eighty will get you a medium coffee at dunkin donuts or for you Mainers, this plus 99 cents will get you the same coffee at Cumbies!

[MarkV]

2" to 3" is the size of the stone (it is called b3 in this area). I plan on filling the entire trench with stone.

My mistake, I figured I had to be missing something.

MarkV

[94BULLITT]

I used 57's

5, 357, 56, 57, 68 | Luck Stone

[vtsnowedin]

You can also line the trench to keep silt out of the stone and get a longer life. I always use crushed washed stone. That sounds like a really wide trench, any reason to make it so wide? I usually do 1' x3' which is good because my bh bucket is 1 foot and i have less stone to buy and dirt to move.

I think you need to get your bifocals adjusted. His post #1 says 12 inches wide not twelve feet.
The B2 stone, 2-3" should work great as long as they have run it over a screen to shake out everything smaller then 1/4 inch. I'm surprised he can get that cheap.

[tractchores]

I think you need to get your bifocals adjusted. His post #1 says 12 inches wide not twelve feet.
The B2 stone, 2-3" should work great as long as they have run it over a screen to shake out everything smaller then 1/4 inch. I'm surprised he can get that cheap.

Thought he said 3' see that it's 1' it now... 12' would be one heck of a french drain!

[MMH]

I think you need to get your bifocals adjusted. His post #1 says 12 inches wide not twelve feet.
The B2 stone, 2-3" should work great as long as they have run it over a screen to shake out everything smaller then 1/4 inch. I'm surprised he can get that cheap.

It is that cheap & that is the delivered price (triax or large tandem axle truck). The stone is soft, but for my purposes, it should hold up fine. There is a local quarry which is why it is so cheap.

[SPIKER]

I've put in a few and had done mine as follows.

Dug trench back hoe bucket wide, in my case that is about 18" after the sides pull in a bit.
This was dug about 45 or so feet long leading away from the barn corners started out about 24 ~ 30" deep and ended about 5' deep out at the ends.
I had a bunch of broken or chipped cement blocks that I laid out into the bottom of the trench out in the deep area. I have creek that has a lot of sand stone shale type crushed type run in it. it is seasonal and dry much of the year so I used the larger flat rock to lay out on top of several courses of the block tossed in haphazardly.

I then dropped in a layer of the inexpensive landscape fabric and more crushed smaller stream crusher run sandstone with the pipe sleeved on into the trench and tossed in a cover of the creek run and added a 2nd layer of the fabric and stone & sand mix up with a last layer of fabric and dirt/ seeded grass and has worked like a champ for 5 ~8 or so years now.

cost was mostly fuel w a bit for the fabric so time was a weekend work give or take.

The cement blocks have a lot of dead open space to fill w water so it can absorb a LOT rather quickly. 4'down at my place is a very permeable layer of glacial rock about 6" deep so that helps and keeps it draining quick.


Mark