Drainage around driveway

[Slippy]

My drive winds throught the woods, so not much open space between the drive and the trees. In fact, many of the trees are right next to the drive. It would be difficult to be able to dig a big enough open trench with slanted sides. I can trench with my backhoe, but it will be so close to road I will have to do the french drain method I guess. Question...what type of gravel do you use? I suspect not limestone or chipped rock. My guess would be a round type stone. And should I use a 4" plastic perforated pipe?

 

[GregJ]

Slippy,
How long is your road and is there any slope to it. My road sounds very similar. Trees right next to it, so there is no place for a ditch. When we have a hard rainfall, it turns into a river. Unfortunately we are at the low point for the county road as well, so we pick up it's drainage also. My road is about 500 feet long, so it would be quite a project to french drain the whole thing, but I am hoping to learn something from this thread. My solution my require multiple drain fields.

Greg

 

[Hoeman00]

It's late now but before building drive take a trencher and cut down center of drive and install the tile, stone and fabric then finish drive.
Some of the drains I put in I'll put tee in and face up w/ short pc of pipe above grade and back fill w/ gravel.
After everything is done cut them off just below grade and put on a grate (plastic or metal).
This helps keep water moving if ground gets frozen over.
If u use the smooth wall S&D pipe it lets water move easier.
Also put the main line down below frost depth will help keep water moving.
I've also heard that 1/4" foam insulation has same R value as 24" of dirt so some insulation over the pipe could help against freezing.

 

[Slippy]

I have about 1/4 mile of drive. What we have done is taken a small hoe and dug a 9" trench along the dirve. Kind of snaked it aroung to avoid damaging good trees. I have taken my transit and shot a line. We then dug deeper with shovels where there were high points. Idea. If I had it to do again, I would shot the grade first. Most people know to do this. Once you get the trench in, can't get the hoe back in across the ditch, so we had to do it by hand. Now putting in 4" plastic pipe and will back fill with gravel. Most of the year it should work fine. Probably will freeze during winter, but so will the stuff on the ground. Will leave small swale in top of fill to allow water to run outside the pipe if it does freeze and not thaw before surface snow starts melting and running. I don't really think that will be a problem though, most of our drainage problems come with the spring rains, like right now. It has been difficult to do because it has been so wet and working in 2 feet of water most of the time.