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Getting Rid of Standing Water in Your Yard
by Michael J. McGroarty -
www.freeplants.com
Last spring we sold over $25,000. worth of our little plants
right from our driveway in a matter of about six weeks!
Click here to see one of our plant sales, photos of our
house, and our backyard nursery.
Do you have one or more areas in your yard that hold water
after a rainfall? This is a common problem, and sometimes
difficult to solve. Over the years I’ve talked with dozens
of people trying to battle this problem, and on several
occasions I have been hired to solve the problem. So what
can be done?
Too often people come to me asking what kind of a tree, or
what kind of shrubs can be planted in a wet area to dry it
up. This is the wrong approach. Most plants, and I mean
almost all plants are not going to survive in an area where
the soil is soggy for extended periods of time. The roots
need to breath, and planting a tree or shrub in a water area
will kill it.
Another common approach is to try and fill the area with
topsoil. Depending on a variety of variables, this can work,
but many times adding additional soil to a wet area will
only shift the water to another area just a few feet away.
If you are lucky enough to have some natural fall to your
property, or a drainage ditch near by, this problem is easy
enough to solve. If you happen to live in an area that was
developed over the past few years, there might even be
system to remove storm water near by. In many new home
developments I’ve seen storm water catch basins already
installed in backyards. Trust me, this is a good thing.
There is nothing worse than having a soggy yard all the
time.
If you are fortunate to have some fall to your yard, or a
storm water system that you can drain water into, this
problem is easy to solve. Make sure you check with your
local officials before you do anything at all with a storm
drain. All you have to do is go to your local building
supply center and buy some 4” perforated plastic drain pipe.
The best kind for this purpose is the flexible kind that
comes in 100’ rolls. This type of drain pipe has small slits
all around the pipe. These slits allow water to enter the
pipe so it can be carried away.
Just dig a trench from the center of the low area you are
trying to drain, to the point that you intend to drain it
to. Using a simple line level you can set up a string over
top of the trench to make sure that your pipe runs down hill
all the way. A line level is a very small level that is
designed to attach to a string. Any hardware stores sells
them for just a couple of dollars. Set the string up so it
is level, then measure from the string to the bottom of your
trench to make sure you have constant fall. You should have
6” fall for every 100’ of pipe.
The highest point is going to be the area that you are
trying to drain, so you only want your pipe deep enough at
this point so it can be covered with soil. Once the trench
is dug just lay the pipe in. At the highest end of the pipe
you’ll need to insert a strainer into the end of the pipe to
keep soil from entering the pipe. Cover the pipe with some
washed stone, and then backfill the trench with soil. The
washed stone creates a void around the pipe so that the
water can find it’s way into the pipe. Washed stone is
usually inexpensive stone that has been washed so it is
clean and free of mud. The only part of the pipe that needs
to be exposed is the low end, where the water exits the
pipe. Do not put a strainer in that end.
If you do not have anywhere that you can drain the water to,
you still might be able to do something. But first consider
what is happening, and why the water is standing where it
is. Even if you have well drained soil, water can not soak
in fast enough during periods of heavy rain, and it runs
across the top of the ground and eventually finds the lowest
point, and either leaves the property, or gets trapped.
If you have well drained soil, the trapped water usually
soaks in. If you have heavy clay soil, the water lays there,
and the soil underneath becomes very compacted, and the
problem compounds itself. The more water that stands, the
worse the drainage gets.
What I have done in areas like this, where there is standing
water, but nowhere to drain it to, is to install a French
drain system that actually carries the water away from the
low area, and allows it to seep into the ground over a
larger distance, where the soil is not quite so compacted.
To install this French drain system you do everything
exactly as explained above, except instead of draining the
water to a lower area, you can send it in any direction you
like. Even in the direction from which it came, which is
uphill.
When installing this type of system, it’s a good idea to dig
a number of shorter trenches, all heading away from the area
where the water stands. Using the line level, make sure your
trenches fall away from their point of origin so once the
water enters the pipes it will flow away from the wet spot.
What is going to happen is that during times of heavy rain
the low area is still going to trap water, but much of that
water is going to seep into the drain pipes and eventually
leach into the soil under each trench.
Because this soil has not been compacted by the standing
water and the baking sun, it will accept the water. It won’t
happen near as fast as if you could just drain the water to
a ditch, but at least you will have a mechanism in place
that will eventually disperse the water back into the soil.
It’s a lot easier to leach 200 gallons of water into a
series of trenches that total 100 lineal feet, than it is to
expect that water to leach into a 10’ by 10’ area that is
hard and compact.
Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit
his most
interesting website,
www.freeplants.com and sign up for his excellent
gardening newsletter, and grab a FREE copy of his
E-book, "Easy Plant Propagation"
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>> Gardening Articles
by
Michael J. McGroarty
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