Temporarily drainage solution

[MoparMikeO]

First, I know I need a French drain, just need a temporary solution until the weather breaks.

Water pools 2 -3 " behind the carport when it rains heavily. Thinking a pump similar to this

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-0-33-HPThermoplastic-Submersible-Utility-Pump/1000668993

Placed in a bucket with holes in the bottom, lined with geotextile fabric to drain out the water after a heavy rain. About 10 full 16 gallon shop vac buckets gets the majority of the water out, but it is a time consuming chore, looking for a more efficient solution until the weather breaks and the ground dries out a bit, probably May.

Thanks in advance!

 

[BetterDays]

First, I know I need a French drain, just need a temporary solution until the weather breaks.

Water pools 2 -3 " behind the carport when it rains heavily. Thinking a pump similar to this

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-0-33-HPThermoplastic-Submersible-Utility-Pump/1000668993

Placed in a bucket with holes in the bottom, lined with geotextile fabric to drain out the water after a heavy rain. About 10 full 16 gallon shop vac buckets gets the majority of the water out, but it is a time consuming chore, looking for a more efficient solution until the weather breaks and the ground dries out a bit, probably May.

Thanks in advance!

Find a sump pump with some kind of float, or else you need to be out there and paying attention to it to turn it off and on.
With a float, let it stay powered during the storm and not play as much 'recovery'

 

[3rdgendslmech]

First, I know I need a French drain, just need a temporary solution until the weather breaks.

Water pools 2 -3 " behind the carport when it rains heavily. Thinking a pump similar to this

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-0-33-HPThermoplastic-Submersible-Utility-Pump/1000668993

Placed in a bucket with holes in the bottom, lined with geotextile fabric to drain out the water after a heavy rain. About 10 full 16 gallon shop vac buckets gets the majority of the water out, but it is a time consuming chore, looking for a more efficient solution until the weather breaks and the ground dries out a bit, probably May.

Thanks in advance!

You're gonna need more than that pump! I still deal with this in my yard 2-3 times a year and that little pump is gonna run non stop for a while. I used the same one to pump out the "puddles" and it took a while. It'd get yard debris in the screen and everything else. Plus you have to move it around and move the discharge hose with it.
Better Days is describing what I'm thinking about doing. I'm gonna make some small channels and direct the water somewhere closer to either my barn or house ( anwhere close to an outdoor receptacle). Dig a hole big enough to bury a 15 gallon plastic drum ( you might wanna put it somewhere that you arent going to run over it with anything heavy). Drill some holes around and on the top of the drum. Wrap it with some good filter fabric. For the suction line there's a few ways you can do this. I'm gonna buy a pipe adapter that threads into the cap of the barrel and run a 1" PVC pipe a few inches off the bottom

 

[3rdgendslmech]

Sorry I fat fingered something and it posted before I was finished.....FML...
Anyhow, Keep the bottom of your suction line off the bottom of the barrel by about 2 inches. I've got a small 1" pump that I got for cheap at a yard sale that I'm gonna try to find camlok fittings for. You can have it sticking up and exposed...,or flush with the ground.
Guy I work with did something very similar to this except he uses a shallow well pump in a shed that works off a float switch similar to a sump pump system. I'll have to wait till i see water pooling and fire my pump up and pump it into a ditch.

 

[PoorUB]

Get a cheap sump pump with a float switch, dig a hole for the bucket, Drill a zillion holes in the bucket, loosely wrap the outside of the bucket with window screen. Toss the pump in the bucket and plug it in, and ignore. You could snap a lid on the bucket to keep leaves and garbage out, jut cut a hole large enough for the hose. A brick on top to make sure it stays in place wouldn't hurt.

 

[DGersic]

First, I know I need a French drain, just need a temporary solution until the weather breaks.

Water pools 2 -3 " behind the carport when it rains heavily. Thinking a pump similar to this

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-0-33-HPThermoplastic-Submersible-Utility-Pump/1000668993

Placed in a bucket with holes in the bottom, lined with geotextile fabric to drain out the water after a heavy rain. About 10 full 16 gallon shop vac buckets gets the majority of the water out, but it is a time consuming chore, looking for a more efficient solution until the weather breaks and the ground dries out a bit, probably May.

Thanks in advance!

Your pump will short cycle, and will last about a month before burning up.

You need somewhere to pump the water to.

Flexible hose *****. It’ll do in an emergency, but smooth wall PVC flows better.

Best would be using gravity to direct the water somewhere else. If at all possible, you want grading and drainage.

If you must run a pump, you need something bigger than a bucket, and drain tile to feed in to it. Outside, you may need a ‘trash” pump or something better that can handle dirt and debris.

 

[Blk88GT]

Sump pump with a float switch, bucket with holes or a milk crate and some window screen. I had this setup in my back yard for years and it worked great.

 

[Hank11]

Gravity is your friend here - costs nothing and never fails. Use it to drain the area.

 

[PoorUB]

Gravity is your friend here - costs nothing and never fails. Use it to drain the area.

He is aware of that. Pretty much said it in his post.

 

[Hank11]

Won't a pump drain just freeze and stop working?
It is in PA which I am pretty sure has real winters.

A simple hand dug trench might get the water gone (when its not ice).

 

[kbs2244]

down spouts ??

 

[MoparMikeO]

Won't a pump drain just freeze and stop working?
It is in PA which I am pretty sure has real winters.

A simple hand dug trench might get the water gone (when its not ice).

Yes,,it will freeze when it gets cold, it would only be plugged in when necessary and above freezing. Water collects from runoff from the hill behind the garage, not roof runoff. A simple Trench would work if the end wasn't blocked by the dirt pile. We were fighting weather when we finished up, probably won't be able to get the pile moved before spring.

 

[FredWanaker]

dig a trench until you can finish it with a french drain.

 

[MerlinsBeard]

Presuming that most of your carport pooling is from roof runoff and it just drains onto your property. One solution that can help is you provide a dry well to deal with the rainwater surges. This can be necessary depending on the density of houses nearby. You can't always drain water away from your property and make it someone else's problem. The dry well provides more local rainwater storage that can seep out over time. If you're already roughly measure the volume of standing water, you can use that to estimate the size of dry well container you need (or consider multiple dry wells).

At my house, there is a PVC pipe that connects to your gutter with an inverted PVC Wye fitting above ground (if you ever need to break up debris), then underground you'll have an elbow and a tee where one branch goes to the dry well at least 10ft away from your foundation and the other branch goes to daylight towards whatever you have for stormwater management, pond, ditch, etc. The drywell is about 12" deep and is surrounded with gravel wrapped with landscape fabric. If the capacity overwhelms the drywell, that's when the overflow is redirected to daylight from the tee underground. The dry well typically has an inspection PVC port and cap. I have a dry well on both sides of the house long ways.

Over time, you may find that the soil can settle over the drywell, so I recently had to raise the soil level and I decided to also extend the PVC inspection port as well. The sunken area is about a 4x4' square, so the dry wells installed were fairly good sized since I'm in a 1/4 acre lot with a bunch of other 1/4 acre lots.

That's not really the stop gap you're looking for, but this is another potential fix to investigate. If you already plan to trench to daylight as part of your drainage solution, you can use that as a temporary solution to your carport flooding problems. Not very fun though if the ground is already frozen; you'll be reaching for that pick axe first thing instead of after 6" dug.

 

[PoorUB]

Guys, He wants something quick and simple, I think he knows what he needs to do in the spring.
His first post mentioned french drain.

 

[FredWanaker]

I dig a small trench, just enough to drain the water away. sometimes just a couple inches deep with a trenching shovel, like 4" or 2" etc. No need for a wide shovel or deep.

 

[JOsmund999]

Get a cheap sump pump with a float switch, dig a hole for the bucket, Drill a zillion holes in the bucket, loosely wrap the outside of the bucket with window screen. Toss the pump in the bucket and plug it in, and ignore. You could snap a lid on the bucket to keep leaves and garbage out, jut cut a hole large enough for the hose. A brick on top to make sure it stays in place wouldn't hurt.

There you go. Project solved!