French Drain Project

vic4news · Mar 1, 2008

Hi,

I've enjoyed looking at the projects other people have done and I wanted to share some photos of a french drain I put in this summer to control run-off.
I also ran a water line in the trench to connect to three yard hydrants.

Here I am digging at the very end of the trench.

Here is the trench with the water line in it.

A few with the pvc pipes:

Ready to fill. I also ran the discharge line from the pool pump into the pvc pipe.

20 yards of stone:

Filling:

I had to make a hopper to fill behind the fence since I didn't have enough room to fill the trench from the side:

Almost done:

A few spectators:

I filled most of it to the top with stone. Part of it I covered with a couple inches of dirt.

Here is what was left of the 29 tons of stone:

JB4310 · Mar 1, 2008

Nice neat trenching, that should help keep yard a little drier, yeah, a ton of stone doesn't go to far.
With that big of a trench and that much stone you almost don't even need a pipe.

asylum575 · Mar 1, 2008

How long was the run? I'm planning on a similar project. Probably about 200 feet of drain. Trying to get an idea of how much stone to order. Will be digging the trench with my BX 12" bucket. Will need extra stone to extend a parking area and them top that off with item 4. here are the prices I was quoted, mind you I live about 30 miles outside NYC..

Item 4 and 3/4 clean crushed stone $42/yard
unscreened fill $15/yard, $17/yard for fill with sand
Mulch $14-$22/yard
Topsoil $25/yard
This is from a on stop shop guy. I think I can do better on the stone from the local quarry.
BTW These guys are getting $75-$85 for delivery.

asylum575 · Mar 1, 2008

BTW,
Thanks for the pictures. Nice collection. Very helpful. How deep did you go? 12-18"?

rtdiggr · Mar 2, 2008

Nice clean job it looks good. That is a large amout of boulders in the first pic, i am jealous.

Shane

vic4news · Mar 2, 2008

Thanks for the comments. The trench is about 200' long. About two thirds of it is 10"-18" deep, at the beginning and near the end where I had a natural slope. The deepest I had to go was about 30". The trench is 18" wide. I considered not adding a pipe, but I thought adding one would extend the life of the drain. I also used fabric a few inches under the surface of the stone to help keep silt out of the trench.

Here is a formula I found on the web for calculating the amount of stone I needed. "Multiply the length of the French drain in feet by the width of the drain in feet and the depth of the drain in inches. Example: Length =100 ft, width =2 ft, depth =24? 100 X 2 X 24= 4800. Divide 324 into 4800 and you will come up with almost 15 yards of drain rock."

The "boulders" are actually an old stone wall that runs through the middle of our property. I'm glad we have it. It adds a lot of character to the property. The next project is to move about 20 feet of the wall so I can open up our yard to a small dug pond we have.

Vic

Egon · Mar 2, 2008

Nice work.

asylum575 · Mar 2, 2008

Thanks for the reply Vic. Using your formula, I can probably get away with 20yards. This way I'll have some extra for the parking area. What was the rock price by you?

Ed

JB4310 · Mar 2, 2008

asylum575 said:
How long was the run? I'm planning on a similar project. Probably about 200 feet of drain. Trying to get an idea of how much stone to order. Will be digging the trench with my BX 12" bucket. Will need extra stone to extend a parking area and them top that off with item 4. here are the prices I was quoted, mind you I live about 30 miles outside NYC..

Item 4 and 3/4 clean crushed stone $42/yard
unscreened fill $15/yard, $17/yard for fill with sand
Mulch $14-$22/yard
Topsoil $25/yard
This is from a on stop shop guy. I think I can do better on the stone from the local quarry.
BTW These guys are getting $75-$85 for delivery.

Ed,
3/4" crushed is one of the more expensive materials at our quarry but definitely try the quarry, that material is sold by the ton not the yard around here, the quarry here charges very very little for delivery (I'm always surprised how little) the other guy is making his money on delivery which is fine if you just need a couple of tons but you need a tri-ax+.

Vic,
Don't get discouraged if you don't see any water coming out of the pipe even after heavy rains, it's working, it'll just take many years for the water to need to use the pipe, after silt starts filling in the lower part of the stone filled trench.

JB,

Cade · Mar 2, 2008

I did the same thing in the summer of 2006. I have a 5 foot stone/ dirt crawl space and my land slopes towards the house. I have a sand mound for the septic so resloping was not an option (except for next to the house. My soil is clay and I get a lot of run off. I dug two french drains to get the water away from the house, however when it rained I would get 2-3ft of water in the crawlspace. The water was coming through the block walls.

I added a second sump pump and dry locked the walls. I had to remove all of the insulation since it got soaked from the humidity difference. I wrapped all the pipes, closed off the vents and ran a dehumidifier. The walls don't sweat, but I still have a damp ridge board on two sides of the house and the ends of the joists are damp. There is a sill seal in place so I don't know what else I could do. The ground on the sides of the house that is damp is below the plate level. This summer I plan on trenching the soil which is ground and 2b ,in the crawlspace and digging the sump pumps down deeper along with installing a larger tank for the sump pumps.

I decided to dig a french drain on two sides of the house that were accessible. My friends and I hand dug the back of the house. This was a mess. The ground was clay and always wet. The backside of the house would constantly cave back it even with bracing. We hand dug the back of the house at least six times. I have rocks galore and wet clay, hand shovels, pick ax etc. I then decided to rent a excavator. This was the best $175. I ever spent. The company dropped it off in the am and picked it up in the pm. I had the back of the house, side of the house down to the front of my property dug in about 4 hours. I dug down to the bottom of the footer at the back of the house, used a transit and tapered it to come out at ground level at the front of the house.

I then found my Kubota for sale and purchased it for $8000. only 640 hours, FEL and backhoe. I couldn't pass this up. This was even better than renting the Case! I had 36 ton of 2b delivered. I used the perf pipe and placed the landscape fabric on the existing wall of ground to prevent the dirt from getting mixed with the 2b. I used foundation coating on the walls and then a plastic reinforced with mesh on the foundation wall to protect from damage during the backfill of 2b and to help prevent water penetration. Then came the fun and justification to my wife.... I used the new toy to fill the ditch with the 2b. I then leveled the ground and later in 2007 I put in a slate patio (SEE PICS under Projects forum titled PATIO).

This project was time consuming and costly, however it did make a difference in the crawlspace. I now only get water coming from the ground level. After I take care of the above ideas w/ the crawlspace, I may end up concreting the floor to help keep the dampness down.

Below are some pics of the project.