How to Lay Drainage in Your Yard
Standing water in your yard can create a lot of headaches. It can kill the grass or harbor plant diseases. Serious lawn drainage problems can cause water to back up into your basement. You can reduce or prevent these problems by installing a lawn drainage system; a simple system consists of perforated drainage pipe running into a holding area where the water can leech slowly back into the ground. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Shovel
- String
- Garden hose
- Small stones or coarse gravel
- Perforated flexible lawn drainage pipe
- Large stones or broken bricks
Instructions
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1
Create a soakaway area for the water to go. This area should be placed at the lowest point of your yard in an unused area.
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2
Dig a hole 3 feet square and 4 to 6 feet deep to create your soakaway.
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3
Mark the line, using string, that your main drainage pipe will follow, from the high point of the yard to the soakaway.
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4
Cut a 5-inch-wide section of sod along the drainage line with a shovel and lay this sod aside.
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5
Dig a trench along the line and into the soakaway. The trench should be about 15 inches deep with a downward slope of 1 inch for every 3 feet.
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6
Run water from a hose into the high point of the trench to make sure the water flows freely to the soakaway without stopping or pooling at any point along the trench.
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7
Add 1 inch of small stones in the bottom of the trench and lay the perforated drainage pipe on top of it with the end terminating just inside the soakaway.
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8
Fill the soakaway with large stones or broken bricks to 1 foot below the edge.
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9
Place a 6-inch layer of small stones or coarse gravel on top of the large stones, then cover with topsoil to the original ground level.
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10
Dig side channels leading from other areas of the yard into the main channel. These side channels should be about 6 inches deep with a slight slope toward the main trench.
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11
Add 1 inch of small stones into each of the trenches and place perforated drainage pipe in each, terminating just inside the main channel.
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12
Pour more small stones into the trenches, covering the drainage pipes and filling the channels to a depth of 4 inches.
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13
Refill the trenches with topsoil and replace the sod.
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Tips & Warnings
The number of drainage trenches you need will depend on the amount of standing water collecting in your yard.
If your yard is large and collects a lot of standing water, you may need to create more than one soakaway.
