Underground gutter drainage

[smalltown]

When my garage was built I needed gutters on one side to get the water away from the front of the garage. I buried 4" plastic pipe the kind that has ribs, and is purchased in rolls. The water just drains out to an open pipe into the back yard.

I'm having problems with water backing up in the winter months, and flowing onto the driveway, and freezing.
I have dug it up once, and tried to make sure it was sloped correctly, but still the problem persists.

I am now thinking maybe it's a fault of the "ribbed" pipe I used. I'm guessing that the ribbing holds water, and that starts the freezing. So I am thinking of digging it up yet again, and installing some sort of 4" smooth wall PVC.

Anybody had a similar problem ?

 

[77thor]

I used 4" PVC pipe for that purpose just to eliminate the problem.

 

[homebuilt burner]

I ran gutter heat tape in mine. Once it warms up a little the water starts flowing and it thaws itself during the day.

 

[Chris705]

Let's face it you live in Maine where the frost depth is how deep? Liken your problem to ice damming. In the right conditions you may get snow melt during the day even in sub freezing conditions because the sun heats the roof/gutters/downspouts, but the subgrade may still be freezing or if it did warm up during the day to above freezing as the falling temps make water turn back into ice you have your problems below grade. Ideally you'd want your drainage pipe to be below the frost depth. But that is really deep. Moving water will not freeze even in sub freezing conditions. One solution used is to run a heat trace wire down at the bottom of gutters, down the downspout and down/out your drainage pipe to daylight. That would keep water moving. You would still need a good bit of vertical distance between outlet pipe and grade below. We use this technique on our buildings at work. Somewhat expensive to run but slip/falls & broken pipes below grade are not fun.

 

[smalltown]

Good suggestions. Yes my frost depth is 4' I guess I'll check if the heat trace wire is available in long lengths. Maybe I should dig it up on top of that to increase the vertical drop. Slip/falls I know all about that: we have had so much ice this winter that I managed to fall on a different part of the driveway, and broke 4 ribs definitely not fun.

 

[lakeroadster]

Fighting Mother Nature is a never ending battle.

Can you increase the size of the gutter and pitch it such that all the water goes to the other end of the roof?

I ask this because even the heat trace won't work well if it is going into a downspout, or buried pipe, that exits at ground level where there is a significant amount of snow present.

 

[smalltown]

No I'm unable to pitch it toward the rear as I have a roof intersecting from the house. So I installed two sections of large size gutter one on ether side of the intersecting roof.

 

[lakeroadster]

Possible to pitch it back to the intersecting roof, and change the pitch on the house so everything goes the other way?

 

[Chris705]

Heat trace will work to point in a downspout. The intent is to keep a water path clear as small or as large as it may be. The backup started because of a total stoppage of water. That should not happen with trace along the full path.

 

[astroracer]

Pull out the corrugated tubing and make French drains where the tubing was. French drains are just shallow ditches to carry off the water. I have them on all 4 sides of my shop. They work all year round without freezing.
Mark

 

[smalltown]

astro I have French drains around my garage. I was checking out the roof heater cables. Is there a specific heater cable that is used when installing them inside the ground piping as you suggested ? The Home Depot cables seem to imply their use in roof eaves, and downspouts.

 

[Trey T]

make sure to use weed blocker fabric to prevent weed going into the perforated pipe, whether for smooth or corrugated.

 

[red]

For house drainage pipe, I never use the ribbed or pipe with holes because I don't want any water around my foundation. Always use smooth pipe. Also you may want to increase the size of the pipe from 4" to 6" IF you're digging it up.

An older timer told me that when putting piping above the frost line, they used to cover it with 2 or 3 inches of peat moss. It seems to stop or slow down the frost. Of course that wouldn't help with heave from frost.

 

[bzinsky]

Yeah I have a sump pump output that is about 50ft long

I didn't have a chance to bury it, so it was about 5ft of ribbed flexible hose and then 50ft of 2" pvc above ground.

It entire ribbed hose froze up solid and the pvc had no freezing issues.

Which is crazy because the flex hose actually had a pitch and the pvc was almost flat. And...the flex hose would receive the warmest water flowing through it since it was right off the house.

Lesson learned - ribbed drains are horrible for freezing temperatures and smooth plastic is great

 

[bzinsky]

Heat trace will work to point in a downspout. The intent is to keep a water path clear as small or as large as it may be. The backup started because of a total stoppage of water. That should not happen with trace along the full path.

this, yeah as long as there is some path you're fine

When I was trying to thaw my frozen pipe with boiling water it was near impossible until a path was created. I must have spent 2 hours pouring boiling water on it from the outside.

After it create a small path it was clear in minutes

 

[Trey T]

For house drainage pipe, I never use the ribbed or pipe with holes because I don't want any water around my foundation. Always use smooth pipe. Also you may want to increase the size of the pipe from 4" to 6" IF you're digging it up.

An older timer told me that when putting piping above the frost line, they used to cover it with 2 or 3 inches of peat moss. It seems to stop or slow down the frost. Of course that wouldn't help with heave from frost.

That's true, water ponding or washing off about the foundation isn't good for the slab.

For gutter drain, the pipe should NOT be perforated, there's not a good reason to use it unless there's a sloping issue. The primary criteria to any good water conveyance system is the slope and size of the pipe or channel.

perforated pipes tends to be very difficult to clean out over the years if dirt accumulate. I know I've tried it w/ proper tool.

 

[Chris705]

We use this...
http://www.chromalox.com/en/catalog/heat-trace/heat-trace-cables/self-regulating-heat-trace

 

[DCarr2]

Can we get a picture? We here at GJ love pictures

 

[PT Doc]

I would dig it out and use a channel drain system. You can pull the grates if needed and there will be sunlight that keeps things flowing. Our surveyor was really against buried drains since they are likely to freeze and or get clogged and you won't know until you have a problem.

 

[csp]

I have 60' of roof draining into a 3" smooth pipe. It gets very little sun and has never been frozen or backed up.

I assumed I'd be regretting not going with 4" or bigger, but it has carried off the water from some major downpours without a hitch.

 

[smalltown]

My French drain around the foundation is perforated pipe, but I installed the long continuous filter sock around it to hopefully stop dirt infiltration.

As far as the downspout drains I see two basic types of pipe: PVC schedule 40 that requires couplings to join sections together, and another called sewer drain that has one end "belled" out to slip one into the other. I'm guessing the schedule 40 with the couplers would be a better choice. 6" pipe is pricey, but the hardest part will be the digging.

 

[csp]

The sewer drain would work fine. Just be sure it's glue together and not the type with the rubber gaskets.

 

[theoldwizard1]

A smooth bore pipe will help, but you really need to bury it at least 2' below surface and run it into a drywell.

 

[smalltown]

Well I decided to go with the 6" smooth PVC pipe, add a cleanout at each downspout, and dig down as far as is practical to get a great slope. Lastly preorder lots of Ibuprofen.

Without actually being in the store my biggest issue is locating an adapter for the existing downspout to the 6" round pipe.