property drainage issues

[beakie]

First time experiencing this time of year in our new house. We knew the basement had issues which I fixed last fall with great success.
However, I got home to the picture below yesterday, and also a good sized pool between the house and garage. The standing water is all surface as the ground is still frozen, BUT it's also wet areas even during the summer. Nothing of value in garage was left on floor, but wife and boys laughed @ the paint cans floating by as she loaded them into the car.

The garage was built @ grade, and I've shown the "pool" areas around it that can't drain as they are isolated slightly below grade before the driveway heads downhill.
Behind the garage and house is a swale about 5' higher, and slopes steeply towards the garage. So trying to regrade won't work, and there is a sidewalk between garage & house keeping me from grading to let that pool away.


Looking @ pics, top of pic = high side of property, home/garage all bout same grade, driveway 10* downhill to road/ditch, front of home is septic
My thoughts, as shown in pics;
red lines = french drain 2' deep, covered with stone, landscape fabric, and finish with soil/sod.
yellow lines = eaves trough downspouts... all poorly placed on high side of of house/garage. I'll tie them into french drain.
grey lines = swale and grade changes
red cylinder = underground soaker (can't go much/any further re:septic)


does anyone see any points to improve on? adding something here, advice, experience, no no's, etc
I will be getting at this as soon as the ground thaws. neighbour runs excavating company, used mini for basement, great guy surgeon with his machines.

garage, 2.5" in middle (drain plugged/frozen)



current water pools, behind garage is only dry after weeks of no rain


current plan (under sidewalk I'll push a pipe through to keep from digging under)


overall shot, as above rotated 90*, driveway runs downhill

 

[schmelpboy]

If a bunch of your drainage issues and fixes revolve around the sidewalk, remove it and regrade. Then replace. I think cement here is around 135 a square yard, so it wouldn't be expensive to replace. I think I put my front sidewalk in in less than a half hour once the forms were in place.
If it's the city's sidewalk, well, then you have all kinds of other issues to deal with.

 

[beakie]

If a bunch of your drainage issues and fixes revolve around the sidewalk, remove it and regrade. Then replace. I think cement here is around 135 a square yard, so it wouldn't be expensive to replace. I think I put my front sidewalk in in less than a half hour once the forms were in place.
If it's the city's sidewalk, well, then you have all kinds of other issues to deal with.

sidewalk does not interfere with the grade, nor would changing the grade at the sidewalk improve the standing water problems (other than at this specific time of year when ground is frozen).

grading is such, that if I improve it according to the garage, I will just make a new low spot 2-5' away from the garage that water will pool in. which would then pool deeper until it breached the garage.

hard to explain, but the property slopes down to house/garage, big swale cut behind/uphill of them, home/garage built on flat, then downhill again.
water is pooling on the uphill side of the garage/house... so in order to get rid of it, I can only see adding weeping tile to direct it from those low spots, around the buildings, and back downhill again.

perfect world the garage would have been built on a slab atleast 2-6" higher, and/or had 1-2 blocks added on that. I also don't imagine there is any weepers around the slab... which is what I will be adding.

I am rural, nothing and no-one to worry about out here, I can do as I please, providing I don't flood my neighbour.

 

[RunninOnEmpty]

I don't have a ton of input to give, but I will tell you one thing I've personally found to be very helpful with drainage: battery-backed sump pumps. I've seen multiple houses get flooded in the basement when power's gone out for several hours during a large rain storm or in the spring with melting snow. I've had it happen in my own house. I replaced the old sump pump in that house with a nice Zoeller M98 cast iron one and I added a Wayne ESP15 battery backed pump with a large AGM battery. I also added a battery backed sump pump to a relative's house and I used a Zoeller for that. I forget the part number for that one.

I have no advice to offer on the actual drains themselves that others here wouldn't have better advice about.

 

[The FIB]

You may be able to solve your problems with some corrugated drain pipe, or you can use the thin rigid pipe made for this purpose.
Rent a small ditch witch for the weekend and it will do most of the digging for you.
You wouldn't have to go very deep with it unless your going to drive on it.
The intake has to be just below the surface of the wet areas, you can do a french drain type of thing and bury the intake with large stones, or the home improvement stores sell drainage basin's that fit on the ends of the pipe. Some of the basins have in's and out's so you can daisy chain them together, this will allow you to drain multiple areas with one pipe.
Run the pipe with a quarter inch drop per foot, that will give you good drainage, with a trenching shovel you can even run it under a sidewalk.
The discharge end does not have to go all the way down hill, it just has to be lower than the intake and far enough away from the buildings so it doesn't saturate the soil around your foundations.

 

[Kaizen]

do a couple thousand gallon drywell or cistern behind the garage. funnel water through French drains a couple of feet deep. short term sump pump to the driest part of your land or a drain.

 

[jpinca]

do a couple thousand gallon drywell or cistern behind the garage. funnel water through French drains a couple of feet deep. short term sump pump to the driest part of your land or a drain.

Agree.

 

[Todd.Brock]

I don't have any useful suggestions other than drain pipe. You could be like my neighbor and just have a drain pipe running out the back of your yard into mine, like I'm dealing with. A nice stream when it rains because of my neighbors.

 

[RunninOnEmpty]

I don't have any useful suggestions other than drain pipe. You could be like my neighbor and just have a drain pipe running out the back of your yard into mine, like I'm dealing with. A nice stream when it rains because of my neighbors.

I have the best solution ever for you: Plug the pipe. Go! Do it now! You are the hero that GarageJournal needs!

 

[zkdiesel]

I don't have any useful suggestions other than drain pipe. You could be like my neighbor and just have a drain pipe running out the back of your yard into mine, like I'm dealing with. A nice stream when it rains because of my neighbors.

My house used to do this to my neighbors and it sucked for him. Once o built my shop and changed grade it made it worse, we worked together and found an old 6" farm tile running through my yard and his(damaged in two spots in his yard) that runs into a pond in the next neighbors yard
I connected my whole downspouts, sump and yard drainage into it and it completely bypasses my neighbors and helps keep the others pond full(it ha a overflow that drains to a creek that the tile originally went to before pond was dug)
I'm lucky the neighbor let me backhoe his yard in three spots to find damaged pipe and repair

 

[beakie]

I appreciate some of the feedback... but the drywell idea is NOT gonna happen.

drywell idea =
trenching 200' + for drain tile to cistern
buying 200' of weeper (big O) & landscaping fabric to cover stone
trenching 200' for sump line to ditch
buying 200' of flexible solid drainage line or burying PVC 4' deep below frost line
removing 5+ yards of material for cistern
buying 5+ yards of 3/4 stone for drainage tile
buying/pouring cistern

buying sump
burying with ability to access in future
running elec for sump


WAAAAAAAY more time/effort/$$/material/etc than I want to spend on this project.


300' of trench
5+ yards of 3/4 stone
300' of weeper & fabric


gravity is still pretty good out here, so as long as I keep a bit of slope going downhill... physics should still do the rest of the work.



as for Todd.Brock I know up here atleast, neighbours have the right to divert water from their property onto someone elses, providing they don't cause flooding of your buildings/living areas/etc.
and neighbours living downstream/downhill are not supposed to dam water which floods those living up stream

neighbours are encouraged to sort it out on their own if one solution only helps one party, but the local municipality/city/gov. can get involved if need be.

 

[Todd.Brock]

Well , I have been trying to figure out what to do. The property has overgrown honey suckle trees that are 20 years old. The old guy who lived there before me never cared. I do. I'm currently in negotiations to purchase some of my neighbors yards on the other side, so maybe I will be nice and just connect the pipe, and run it across the yard to s big culvert on the other side. What a pain in the ***. I wish I would have gone with my gut on this house. I learned a boat load on this place. The next house will be remote.

 

[jwhcars]

I had the same problem with a house. I ran a trench across the back where it woul pool and a trench down both sides, installed the drain tile and problem solved.
The house was on the side of a steep hill that was leveled for the house and then went down hill another 250 feet.

 

[kd3pc]

you need to be real careful and not push all that water towards your septic system, as it can back flow and push water in through your field lines and filling the tank, every few days. Not good.

We have several NEW homes in our area that are all suffering this. A drain pipe and sheet wall was dug to divert the water and it flows like a river, but the drain field is still pushing water the wrong way. The health dept and county are stumped, for a "cost effective" solution

 

[Bomber Frank]

Beakie, in Ontario, you do not have the right to drain your surface water to another property. I'm not sure where you found that information, but it is not correct.
I work in the municipal drainage world, and can tell you that under Common Law, this is simply not correct.
You can do it, as long as the property you are draining to, does not complain.
A tile system as described by others may be the best solution, if it was causing property damage, I would strongly consider this.

 

[beakie]

Beakie, in Ontario, you do not have the right to drain your surface water to another property. I'm not sure where you found that information, but it is not correct.
I work in the municipal drainage world, and can tell you that under Common Law, this is simply not correct.
You can do it, as long as the property you are draining to, does not complain.
A tile system as described by others may be the best solution, if it was causing property damage, I would strongly consider this.

admittedly I was interpreting what I read here, http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/landuse/drain-eref/surface.htm#7 , which may very well mean I'm way off.

as I understood it, one can divert water, providing you are not causing problems below you.
I also forgot to mention all of my collected water will be directed to the ditch, which is currently flowing nicely from the melting snow.



also mentioned, the septic system. the planned layout won't affect the septic system. it will be 30' away at it's closest, and running @ about 15* downhill.

IF there is flowing water (this time of year) it will have no restrictions atleast until the ditch, 100' away from septic.
otherwise, it's an outlet for rain/downspouts and saturated wet areas after heavy rains.



thanks the correction on my neighbour comment, and reminder about septic concerns... still have to hydro come and mark the buried cable as it may be near expected dig area.

 

[Kaizen]

beakie I thought you described your property in a bowl. by all means if you have a way for water to run using gravity dig a French drain with corrugated pipe. just make sure the pitch is constant. made the mistake on mine and ended up with a plugged pipe where it lost pitch.

 

[machsnell]

Water will flow over grade if you provide positive fall. Not pooling. If you can get positive grade then you need to catch in low area and put into french drain or catch basin drain and daylight to an are that provides you at least 1 percent grade drop. 2 percent safer for French drain with slotted pipe