One more drainage question

[Sigarms]

If anyone of you remember, had some questions when I had gutters put up.

Ended up running the 4" plastic hose from all the gutters on the side of the house to the back. With some heavy rain recently, everything seems to be working fine. When my back brace comes off, will be digging in the springtime to burry the plastic pipe.

However, I've noticed another issue (now that I'm looking for them) with water from the driveway.

Have a cement driveway in front of the house. House sits on a slope, as well as the driveway (very slight leaning towards the lawn which is on a slope as well). The water from the drieway is coming onto the lawn, causing some erosion in the area just below where the driveway ends (on the slope).

You can see fromt he second pic the worst part of the area in question is about 5' up from where the lumber ends to the drivway. You can see the water "sitting" on the lawn. This is the "problem" area.

I added a side door to the garage last spring (seen in the first pic behind the tree on the right corner of the house). Since I have a large deck out back of the house, wanted to keep this simple.

Eddie, in retrospect, you were right the first time as far as wanting to get "creative" with a deck. I ended up just putting in simple steps for us and the dogs since we use this door about 90% of the time to get into the house. Issue became that with rains and constant use with us and the dogs, even harder erosion sp? with the ground at the base of the steps.

Thus, I laid down some timber and put in gravel going up to the cement driveway from the base of the steps to ease the wear and tear of coming in and out of the house.

Now what I'm thinking of doing is rip the trees and brush out from the corner of the house (per the pic) and put in a deck that leads out from the side garage door directly to the right, out to the drieway (figure about coming out at leat 10' from the house, and about 15' wide). This deck will only have one entrance, that being to the cement on the driveway. This will force the dogs to go out onto the drieway from the enlcosed deck. I'm hoping this will ease the "wear and tear" from the dogs going in and out on a regular basis on to the lawn, particulary in heavy rains. Bottom line,, the deck would end up covering all the area were the tree and brushes are, as well as the area where I laid the landscaping timbers as well as gravel.

Before I do this of course, I will dig for the piping under the deck for drainage. Thinking of using hard PVC (for drainage) just for under the deck because once I lay the pipe under the deck, I won't have access to it.

Needless to say, the lumber I laid down to contain the gravel will be coming out (for laying the underground pipe for starters).

Now, since I'm planning on doing all of this, I would like to take care of the issue with the water running off the drivway onto the lawn.

My first thought was to dig a deep trench along the drivway and fill it with gravel. I'm thinking this may not work if we get a heavy rain because the trench will just fill up and I'd still have "overflow" issues. I also don't want to just end up leaving a "path of least resistance" directly to the house for the water from the driveway.

Is there anyway to lay pipe down on the side of the driveway to catch the rainfall? I was thinking of some way to divert that water (from the drieway) to the pipe I'll be burrying in the springtime on the right side of the house (from the pic).

 

[ByronBob]

Could you build your walkway as you mentioned in front of the bushes and then add additional bushes with the landscape on the other side of the walkway to extend your mulch out to the wet area?

It doesn't seem to be all that wet there and I thought a few shrubs and additional mulch might solve the issue.

 

[dmccarty]

Along with ByronBob's landscaping suggestion can you dig a slight depression along the driveway to catch the water and send it down the hill? We had a much bigger problem and I used the box blade cranked up at the highest angle I could get to make a depression/ditch up hill from our house. This greatly reduced the water flowing along the south side of our house.

In your case it might be hard to do with the boxblade due to the concrete driveway. But it does not take much of a "scratch" to get the water moving.

But since you don't want the open ditch then the gravel and pipe will work. Just takes more time and money. At our old house one side of the lot was taking the water from our home and the neighbors leaving a very soggy yard. I dug a trench down the fence line, filled it with sand, and the covered with dirt. It worked very well. If I had to do it again I would have dug the trench and used landscape fabric wrapped around 67 stone.

If you are going to be building a deck is there any reason you could expand the deck over the wet area? Sounds like the deck might be big enough anyway. You could ditch alongside the driveway and it would be hidden by the deck?

Later,
Dan

 

[Racer71]

Your gravel trench idea is called a French drain, almost. Dig the trench. Place a perferated pipe 4" (They make these.) at the bottom and cover with gravel. The water goes down the gravel and into the pipe. It flows away inside the pipe. Place the pipe with the holes side ways rather the top and bottom.

Another idea would be to change the slope of the ground there. It wouldn't take much digging to to get the water to run off.

 

[rtdiggr]

yes use the drain with a fabric wrap then stone around it, it is hard to tell in the pic but the driveway looks pretty flat i think i would run the drainline out toward the bushes on the left side the land has a good slope there.

Shane