hmbemis
Well-known member
There's a channel drain in front of my garage that needs a new grate, but I'm having trouble finding a replacement, hoping someone on the forum might have some ideas or experience w/ them.
The drain itself is actually in "great" shape except for the grate... it's a 4" PVC pipe that has a 1-2" channel sliced on the top and a cement "shelf" around it to support the grate.
When I first moved in a couple of years ago the grate was cemented in place, so it was impossible to clean the drain. The previous owners must have abandoned it and installed another channel drain about 6' further up the slope, but the 2nd drain doesn't really hack it, and so they ended up installing a third drain just inside the garage doors linked to a sump pump. I found that any time there was heavy rain the garage doors would leak and the sump pump was working hard to keep the garage dry.
I pulled up the grate and found that the 60% of the legs were rusted away, as well as 10% of the face, the drain channel was packed tight with bio material that had solidified, but once I cleared that out and snaked the line to day light it works amazingly well, no more issues w/ water in the garage and the sump pump hasn't run despite some doozy storms.
The drain/grate is likely original to the house (1989). The entire channel is about 18' long give or take, the face of the grate is 9" and the legs are 1.5" tall.
The shelf gives me a fair amount of leeway w/ a replacement, I could probably go all the way down to a 5-6" wide replacement grate as long as I was prepared to form up the edges to pour a bit of cement or whatever to fill the gaps.
Ideally though I'd love to minimize my work by just buying a pair of 9" x 1.5" x 96" stamped steel grates to drop in place and then clean up the edges and ends with some cement.
The drain itself is actually in "great" shape except for the grate... it's a 4" PVC pipe that has a 1-2" channel sliced on the top and a cement "shelf" around it to support the grate.
When I first moved in a couple of years ago the grate was cemented in place, so it was impossible to clean the drain. The previous owners must have abandoned it and installed another channel drain about 6' further up the slope, but the 2nd drain doesn't really hack it, and so they ended up installing a third drain just inside the garage doors linked to a sump pump. I found that any time there was heavy rain the garage doors would leak and the sump pump was working hard to keep the garage dry.
I pulled up the grate and found that the 60% of the legs were rusted away, as well as 10% of the face, the drain channel was packed tight with bio material that had solidified, but once I cleared that out and snaked the line to day light it works amazingly well, no more issues w/ water in the garage and the sump pump hasn't run despite some doozy storms.
The drain/grate is likely original to the house (1989). The entire channel is about 18' long give or take, the face of the grate is 9" and the legs are 1.5" tall.
The shelf gives me a fair amount of leeway w/ a replacement, I could probably go all the way down to a 5-6" wide replacement grate as long as I was prepared to form up the edges to pour a bit of cement or whatever to fill the gaps.
Ideally though I'd love to minimize my work by just buying a pair of 9" x 1.5" x 96" stamped steel grates to drop in place and then clean up the edges and ends with some cement.
