The Ultimate Drainage System for Extreme Yard Flooding — Complete Breakdown

Añadido: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]What's behind this gate?

[00:00:03]>> Nope.

[00:00:05]Not doing it.

[00:00:11]All right. This yard, we got a call that after every really good rain, this yard floods.

[00:00:20]Last night, we had 1 and a/4 inches of rainfall.

[00:00:25]It was a pretty good rain.

[00:00:30]We got up to a foot of water back here.

[00:00:32]This is going to be a good video. It's going to show you guys some of the many uses of our four-way connect catch basin. This is a prime example of a yard that floods [snorts] extremely bad. This is definitely in that category of extreme flooding. And we're going to show you a system that's big, bad, and going to handle it no problem.

[00:00:51]We're going to put a yard drain system in with a French drain system. We need a yard drain system to grab up all this bulk water.

[00:00:58]Yeah, we're we're a foot to 14 inches deep here.

[00:01:04]It's pretty crazy.

[00:01:09]People always want to fill in their backyard when it's like this. It's just instinct for most people to want to bring in truckloads and truckloads of dirt and fill this all in. The problem is you accomplish nothing because the water's going to be here regardless.

[00:01:26]you're going to move the water around.

[00:01:28]So, if you fill this in now, the water is going to be chased up towards the house. I see it all the time. People always want to bring dirt in to get rid of a water problem. And I admit, when I was a teenager and I was doing my first jobs where I was filling in low spots for people and they were asking me to and I was just doing what I was hired to do. They said, "Hey, we're going to order some dirt in. Can you fill in these low spots?" Then they call me after a rain and the water had moved.

[00:01:56]They still had water. So here I am a really young teenager, you know, 13, 14, learning about water.

[00:02:05]Never fill in low spots to get rid of water problem. You got to collect the water, move the water off the property, however you have to, whether you can gravity drain it or whether you have to put a pump system in. But just to chase the water around until you're blue in the face, that's not the answer. You're going to save more money if you just put in a drain system and not haul in all this expensive fill dirt. Then you got to redo your whole backyard, all your landscape, your sod, your grass. If you got a sprinkler system, you have to redo that. So much goes into hauling in fill dirt.

[00:02:42]One of the most misunderstood things I believe about low spots in backyards.

[00:02:52]This is a great collection area. This is right where I want the water. It's not up against the house. It's in the backyard. Run a drain system right in this low point. Have some catch basins in line on a solid pipe. And then have a perforated pipe surrounded by stone.

[00:03:07]We'll put two systems in this yard. One will be a yard drain system to collect the bulk water. The other will be a French drain system to keep the ground nice and tight and from getting spongy and saturated.

[00:03:21]Now, this gets worse, but this is what it looks like with an inch and a quarter of rainfall right here.

[00:03:27]We have a garage that's underwater here.

[00:03:30]There's water all around it. We're going to put in an open French drain and a sump pump system to get rid of this water.

[00:03:53]There's a there's a couple inches in here.

[00:04:04]Maybe three inches over on this side of the garage. Couple inches through here.

[00:04:13]Slab is a little higher up here by the door.

[00:04:24]Lot of water in this building.

[00:04:28]This building has been compromised. You can see the structure has settled. A lot of wood rot. This is what happens when you ignore This is what happens when you ignore water problems. Yeah, it's silent.

[00:04:49]It's quiet, but it's very destructive.

[00:05:13]Yeah, the water's definitely deeper on the outside of the garage here. The building has settled. It's rotted and it's actually fallen.

[00:05:22]You see where the structure is compromised and it's collapsed.

[00:05:27]Building's actually sinking. It looks like it's sinking, just rotting away.

[00:05:36]We'll collect all this water. We'll pull all this water.

[00:05:41]When you collect all the water off the concrete over here, the level can't rise and water end up in the garage.

[00:05:50]The water inside the garage is at the same level as the water outside of the garage. This confuses some people. Water seeks level. You don't have to worry about that.

[00:06:00]You know, you pour it in a bathtub. The top of the water is level.

[00:06:04]We're going to do a drain here. We're going to collect all the water as it falls. We're not going to let the water build up and find its way into the garage. We refer to that as back feeding. When the water builds up and then it back feeds into anywhere, remember the only water that goes uphill is flood water.

[00:06:25]If you prevent the flooding, it's not going to continue to climb, fill areas, make it to higher elevations.

[00:06:35]In the north, when you have water problems and you ignore them, what happens is the frost travels down much deeper in wet soil than it does dry soil. So, if you had a French drain, open French drain right here, not only would these posts not rot, but in the winter time, the frost wouldn't go so deep and find its way underneath the cement footing of the fence posts. These have been heaved.

[00:07:04]This here, this here has lifted about 5 in. It's pushed it up out of the ground and the whole fence is, you know, now this is up high, so it's on a an angle. When you see fence posts that are all, you know, the the fence top is not level and you're wondering why some posts are higher than the other. That's why right there, the water just travels down the saturated soil and pops the fence post. This one's rotted really bad. Now, termites love wet wood, so you're just inviting insects.

[00:07:43]So these were treated posts, but still, you know, years of this and that's what you end up with. So there's rotted posts, there's popped posts, all because this water problem has been ignored and for generations just passed on from homeowner to homeowner.

[00:08:01]If a good drainage system was in place, this fence would not see this heave and this rot.

[00:08:09]One more reason why we got to take care of our water problems.

[00:08:18]Now, we're getting kind of deep, and I'll show you why we're getting kind of deep. So, this started over here on this end. So, wherever you start, it's going to be shallow. So, the guys do have three pipes in here. They have three perforated pipes.

[00:08:34]This is going to be driven over by automobiles. So, we're using our extra heavyduty high octane armor pipe. We're using the small stone so that it packs around the pipe. Again, this is going to be driven over. They can park a boat right here, drive cars in and out of the garage. You don't want big stone when you're going to be driving over the pipe. Big stone. When a vehicle drives over big stone, you're going to have these pressure points. This big round rock is going to come in contact in a smaller area.

[00:09:06]You want a bunch of small stones so that when it's driven over the contact area of all that weight is going to be spread over the entire pipe. In this case, you want to have your perforated pipe tight to the footing of the garage. There's a 42-in cement footing under this garage.

[00:09:24]We want to be tight to it. When the car starts to run over the French drain system, the wheels going to come in contact with the cement, start taking some of the weight of it where if it was out here, the vehicle would roll over the entire French drain, applying all of its weight all the time. So, we're getting deeper and deeper. We're just doing an open French drain to grab that gutter water. You know, I wanted to say we normally don't do that because I don't like when water can splash and possibly leave mold and mildew. I didn't charge the homeowner for down spouts on this house. I did not. So, it wasn't in the quote. But, we're going to collect all the down spout water, incidentally, with our open French drains. And we do have a couple that we're just going to put catch basins under. The gutters are old and we don't want to really touch them and mess with them.

[00:10:20]On site today, we have our new four-way connect catch basin, our new 12 by 12 turf restrictor with a 6-in grate, and we also have our new, never seen before, in use in any of our videos. It's brand new, our new female adapter for 4-in pipe to PVC.

[00:10:47]I just want to mention that the four-way connect basin, we have in our online store a build your own four-way connect basin. I think it's awesome. You can pick whatever couplers you want out of all of our couplers, end caps. It don't matter. You can get the black or green 12x 12 or you can get the grate that's 4 in and the turf restrictor plate that's for 4 in. The four-way connect. Build your own four-way connect in our online store. Check it out. It's really cool.

[00:11:18]You can see that Valent's, you know, really, it's starting to get deep. You can see that as he worked his way around the garage, as he just took a reading to make sure that our trench bottom was where they want it to be.

[00:11:31]Going around the garage, everything's built level. All the ground around the garage is level. So, when you're putting slope on your trench, you're going to get deeper, continually deeper. Now that we're finally to the backyard, this slopes down. The only reason why the water floods all the way up here is because it's allowed to collect and fill like a lake, you know, like they say, at least in in this business, I remember when the old-timers told me this when I was younger, they said, "Hey, the only water that runs uphill is flood water."

[00:12:01]I absolutely love that because it's true. So, if you're not collecting the water and pumping it out of the yard and you're allowing it to just build up, of course, it's going to make it to higher ground. The water will never make it in areas that it was before in the video.

[00:12:18]So, we don't have to have catch basins collecting yard water up here. We don't.

[00:12:22]You put the catch basins in the lowest points. Water always finds the lowest point. Keep that in mind when you're designing your system. That maple tree is 5 ft in diameter. You can see how small the crew looks next to that tree.

[00:12:37]Well, when you have a tree that size, you're going to have roots out 50 ft.

[00:12:42]guaranteed.

[00:12:44]I do know this. When roots fill a big trench with a lot of stone, it's still going to move water. It just does. It doesn't matter that there's some wood in it. So, that's what we do. We put a lot of stone in a system like this. We're going to show you a couple of things that we do up near the tree as well.

[00:13:04]Stay tuned. All right. We call this the proving grounds where drainage parts should be made and designed. We're out in the field. I'm going to tell you guys what we got here. This is a male. This is PVC the corrugated and it's a male.

[00:13:18]Depending on the direction of your flow, whether you need a female or a male.

[00:13:23]Right here is the female. The female you have to have for dual wall pipe cuz dual wall pipe is smooth on the inside. It's not corrugated on the inside, so it can't grab a hold of the pipe on the inside. This is our new favorite coupler. So, this is thin wall PVC. And I'm going to show you how you can tell.

[00:13:40]See how there's a gap right here? If it was schedule 40, it would seat right in this first ring right here, but it's all the way inside this second ring cuz it's thin wall. The guys are building an extra large screaming demon. It's going to have 20 ft of chamber added to it.

[00:13:56]So, that's going to be a sight to see.

[00:13:59]That's a big system. If you're a homeowner or a contractor and you want things like that, just put in a request and we'll quote it for you. No problem.

[00:14:07]We're also using the solid extra heavy.

[00:14:10]So, this is the French drain man's high octane armor in the extra HD right here.

[00:14:16]That's the blue. We got vehicles driving over parts of this system. We got big lawnmowers running over a lot of this system. The yard is all top soil. We're not even getting into any clay.

[00:14:28]Years ago, this yard was just filled in with top soil. You can see all the organic material. All of it's top soil.

[00:14:34]What happens is when people got a yard that's flooding, they keep ordering more and more dirt. Let's bring more top soil in. They figure at some point they're going to chase the water somewhere else.

[00:14:43]So, we have the small stone because a lot of the systems being driven over.

[00:14:47]So, we have the small stone. There's a lot of sediment in this soil, too. So, I want the small stone. So, I got a good soil filter zone. We got the large stone so that we can top dress our open French drains with it. We also like the large stone around our sump system cuz we have big 1/2-in inlets. You can see all this dirt we're digging out of this yard.

[00:15:07]There's no clay here. Clay wasn't the problem. They've been hauling in top soil after owner trying to fix this problem. So, there's a lot of silt in this soil. Silt's going to be a problem.

[00:15:19]So, I want a good stone filter zone around my pipe as well as the nonwoven geoexile filter fabric. Now, because we have this 5 foot in diameter maple, there's nothing you can do. The roots are bad.

[00:15:32]We're going to fill the part of the trench that's right here with just stone. So, you can see how the men start out nice and shallow. It doesn't have to be deep. Then you just start gradually sloping out. That's what the men did.

[00:15:46]You can see how shallow they are. You can see Valente standing in that trench.

[00:15:50]Start of that trench can't be more than 10 in deep. We're just going to fill this part with stone. This is going to be stone. No pipe.

[00:16:00]The pipe this close to the tree is pointless. It's going to give the roots an opportunity to get in the pipe and just run through the entire system. This is the beginning of our system. And this actually worked out perfect to have this tree at the very beginning of our system. If it was in the middle of our system or at the end of our system, yeah. Then we'd have to do something more. We'd have to be putting in root barrier and going to great lengths.

[00:16:26]Maybe even running a solid pipe through there. and then just have the stone around it like you guys have seen us do.

[00:16:33]All right, Cal's lining the trench with our nonwoven geoteexile filter fabric that's been double bunched.

[00:16:39]You can see how deep we are. Kale hand dug under this walk. He did a really good job. Again, you can see how deep we are. Really deep. We put slope on this trench, worked our way all the way around the garage. Then we started to get fall right here.

[00:16:55]So, the trench actually started getting a little shallower because the drop off into the backyard was greater than our 1% slope. So, the men already have these assembled. In our online store, we have the four-way connect set up to where you can build your own. You can click however many female couplers you want.

[00:17:13]You can click however many male couplers you want. The blue represent our 4 in.

[00:17:19]This is the end cap. It also is the end cap for corrugated pipe. The men went ahead used the fasteners to connect this. They just took a razor knife and just cut this off. You can use a sawzaw.

[00:17:30]They did a really nice job. These are going to go tight to a fence. Some of them are going to go tight to the house.

[00:17:36]You'll see as the video progresses. But I love the build your own four-way connect because you pick the different couplers, how many of each that you want. There's a 3-in offset, a 3-in on center. There's two male 3-in, there's a female 3-in. So, there's a few more couplers to choose from besides these three. You build it the way you need it for the job that you're doing. 12x 12 top or our round with our 4-in grate or our 4-in solid cover or our 6-in grate with the 12x12. Guys, got it set up here. I just love the build your own four-way in our online store. I think it's really cool. The mosquitoes are so bad in this yard with all the vegetation. Unbelievable how bad the mosquitoes are. So, we're going to use knife cut in this system because the the PVC system holds water. And I just wanted to also elaborate on something.

[00:18:33]So, everybody says, "Oh, PVC lays flat.

[00:18:37]There's no belly." In a house where it's hanging by hangers and it's fixed to a wall, in a building that doesn't move, it doesn't have any bellies. out in your yard where the ground gets soft and that PVC pipe that weighs 20 times what an HDP corrugated pipe does and it sinks in this soft subs soil. You got bellies and you got a lot of bellies and you're breeding mosquitoes. So, we're going to use HDP. It's not going to settle.

[00:19:10]You're not going to end up with the bellies that you do with PVC because of the weight of PVC. And one better, we're going to use knife cut.

[00:19:17]So, after we move all this bulk water, we're not going to have any mosquitoes.

[00:19:23]So, the men are making a lot of progress. We're grabbing up all the water. Even though there's not going to be any pipe over here, and this is just going to be stone, we still want to fully encapsulate it with our nonwoven geoexile fabric that's been double punched.

[00:19:39]This filter fabric is going to keep that vein of stone from clogging. That's really important. I just want to point out the attention to detail cuz not many crews can pull this off.

[00:19:51]This has been dug out underneath a sidewalk. Now, we got to pull the fabric tight, but I just wanted to show you guys this because I got to brag on my crew. Most of the time when you have to go under the walk, there's like this belly. There's this guys have a hard time carving out underneath the walk and they end up with a big belly. This is nice and flat and the slope continues and just beautiful the work these guys do.

[00:20:36]Just made the connections.

[00:20:39]This is an external to external coupler.

[00:20:42]The virgin coupler. It's not recycled material. Is as strong as the pipe.

[00:21:00]Goes together quick, efficient.

[00:21:06]Got a cross tea down there. It's a four-way connect for corrugated pipe.

[00:21:11]When you have vegetation like I have right behind me, that is great habitat for mosquitoes. We're going to use knife cut for our yard drain pipe. That way, we won't have any water left in our pipe because it's not solid. It's knife cut.

[00:21:25]We're not going to be breeding mosquitoes adding to the problem.

[00:21:58]connects quick, easy, no tape needed. It's knife cut.

[00:22:05]The best holding coupler for 4 in to PVC right here.

[00:22:12]>> Quick, easy, super easy to connect. This goes together so easy. No struggles, no special tools needed.

[00:22:24]When it comes to assembling our systems, a DIYer has the easiest time.

[00:22:58]This finger, this finger, this finger just going to be stone. These are blind inlet.

[00:23:04]The tree roots are going to fill that stone. It's still permeable. It doesn't matter. I just don't want the roots to get inside the pipe and just like a raceway shoot through the system. Just start shallow.

[00:23:18]Two pipes with end caps so they don't fill full of stone. Slope it on down into the quad pack. We get deeper down here. There is no knife cut PVC pipe.

[00:23:29]only corrugated pipe. Comes in a fine cut or knife cut. That's what we're using to move the bulk water. It'll also work as a French drain system. It's considered a perforated pipe even though it's not saw cut. Most perforated pipes are saw cut and they have material removed. Knife cut, it's just sliced.

[00:23:52]Fine cut or knife cut, it's just a slice. This pipee's not going to hold any water either. This basin goes tight to the fence. Got our two female couplers. We're running dual pipes because of how much water we're dealing with. Two knife cuts over here. Notice how we have four female couplers. These do not need tape. The males do require tape. Well, because it's knife cut, we're not trying to tape it so that it doesn't lose water. So, we have the four females. It's the best hold. It's an incredible hold. Right here, we have two females, one underneath this one, two end caps. Beautiful system. Snaps together. Quick, easy. The easiest DIY yard drain French drain kit on the market.

[00:24:42]Always cut excess fabric off. You just need a couple inches of overlap. You don't want it to be all bunched up because you're not going to have a really good flow rate from the surface.

[00:24:56]We're trying to catch all the water that's coming off this slab. We don't want it to pond and pull and then back feet up into the garage.

[00:25:23]We use a nonwoven geoexile filter fabric so that no contaminants, no shingle gravel can get in our system.

[00:25:32]We went with a small stone right there because there will be shingle gravel.

[00:25:36]The small stone will act as a stone filter, so it'll prevent any sediment coming off the rooftop from clogging the fabric. When it rains and the yard's really muddy, worms come to the surface.

[00:25:48]They crawl and they just fall in. I know, and I speak from experience working in people's yards, taking care of their yards, doing maintenance around people's homes outdoors, that cleaning these is awful because the worms that fall in, it's rancid. So, by doing a turf restrictor plate, the grass won't grow over it, and we don't end up with a basin full of worms. Now, if your argument is, well, this is 12x 12 inlets, so we can take in more water.

[00:26:18]This basin was designed for a 4in pipe, a three or 4in pipe.

[00:26:24]This 6-in round can feed two 4-in pipes, and it does with our four-way connect basin.

[00:26:31]Technically, the numbers show this will overwhelm two 4-in pipes in a max flow test, but the two pipes for the most part can keep up with most rains. If it's a monsoon, it falls a little behind. It'll take it in pretty fast being on two 4-in pipes. But again, this always never made sense to me. Why? Why 12x 12 grate for a 3 or 4 in pipe? You want a turf restrictor. Keep the worms out. Keep the grass from growing over the inlet portion. You don't need anything more than a 6-in grade. So, it's easier to do a job in sections. We excavated half this job and then we plumbed it. Now, we're getting a stone in. It was going to be risky for us to leave this and come back tomorrow to finish. It was going to be risky because there's rain in the forecast. So, we want to button up all the trench that we have opened up.

[00:27:31]There's a nice cutaway. Look at all that stone.

[00:27:36]Water's just going to fall through that stone into those pipes uninterrupted.

[00:27:45]That's a lot of stone. When your contractor gives you that much stone, you know you're getting your money's worth.

[00:28:04]Make sure to pack the stone really good under the concrete so you don't create any voids under the concrete. It'll be a weak point. There'll be a point where the concrete will break later.

[00:28:21]>> That's for sure.

[00:28:37]So, we're putting a little stone in first for the open French drain portion. Then, we're putting this large cobble on top right here. This was a landscape bed.

[00:28:49]shrubbery had to be pulled out of there.

[00:28:52]With the flooding that this garage is seeing, we needed to go around it on three sides with a French drain system.

[00:29:00]The soil here has so much sediment in it because it's not clay. It's like a top soil. It's like an organic material just full of sediment.

[00:29:09]I want the small stone around our pipes so I have a good stone filter zone. So, we have the nonwoven geoexile filter fabric that's been double punched along with a smaller stone acting as a stone filter zone. Doing everything we can to combat the sediment that's in this soil.

[00:29:27]Nice contrast.

[00:29:30]Going to the beautiful cobble for decorative rock. I already informed the homeowner that planting bed is not the planet anymore.

[00:29:39]You know, you can do flower boxes or pots, garden art, but when you got a water problem that was this bad, I think everybody would be really happy to have a nice cobblestone bed area that took in the water.

[00:29:58]So, right here, we're three pipes deep.

[00:30:00]I just want to show this. So, we got eight slots underneath. We got two knife cut. We're three 4 in pipes deep. This was shot with a laser level. We got slope. We got pitch.

[00:30:14]There's going to be areas where we're really deep because there was areas that were really low. So, right where we went from open French drain to grass growing on it, went ahead and we got some sand that the men are spreading out. Now, the sand's going to help your infiltration rate. This is a fully encapsulated French drain. pipe and stone is wrapped as one is going to allow the system of taking water from the surface. Now, eventually the roots are going to grow through it and it works even better yet. But if you don't put sand down, you have to wait like a year for the roots to root into the fabric so the water travels down the root into the French drain system. So, this bridges that gap so that right away your system takes in water from the surface. That's a job well done right there. So from that catch basin to this catch basin, we got about 2 and 12 inches of drop. As it turns out, the guys always take as much slope as they can get. There's a point to where you can't dig 20 ft deep. It's just not practical for a yard drain. But we'll take advantage of whatever slope is given to us. Always hold down your pipe when pouring the stone in so that the stone doesn't go underneath the pipe and push the pipe up. Because they're knife cut or fine cut, they're never going to hold any water. We're not going to be breeding any mosquitoes in this French drain system, in this yard drain system with catch basins. That was a big problem with the other system. It was a PVC system. And you can't buy PVC and fine cut or knife cut. It's just not a reality. Our stone piles are together both in the yard and out in the street.

[00:31:52]So, there's some big stone that gets mixed in with our little stone. Not a big deal. It's not the end of the world.

[00:31:57]Well, this looks really nice. We got the large stone. Nice open French drain.

[00:32:02]We're going to catch all that water. We then go to the little stone so that you can drive vehicles over it. I'm sure this is really close to the water. So, I'm pretty sure this is putting a boat trailer on it. I'm not worried about vehicles driving over this pipe. We got the small stone.

[00:32:19]Large stone is not the right choice for when you're driving a vehicle over the pipe. small stone. The weight is going to be transferred over more area of the pipe. This came out really nice. So, that down spout is just going to dump right there. That's how we're doing it.

[00:32:36]Works great.

[00:32:39]I normally don't like leaving mold and mildew, water splashing on the house.

[00:32:44]But, I didn't charge for down spouts here, and I'm hired to take care of the water. And I know those down spouts are responsible for a lot of the water. So, as long as I'm grabbing it up and corelling that water, taking it out somewhere, in this case, it's going to be to an outdoor pump system that goes all the way down the side of the house out to the front yard and then we pump it to the ditch. Now, right now, the men are filling what's known as a blind inlet.

[00:33:13]What is a blind inlet? A blind inlet is a section of the French drain that's just stone, no pipe. We're going to grab up all the water that was collecting around this tree, but we're not going to allow the tree roots to get inside our pipe and just run havoc, ruining the drain. The roots will shoot down the pipe. It's like a raceway. Tree roots take the path of least resistance. So now the tree roots, they can grow in the stone. The blind inlet, no big deal. I don't care how many roots we get in that vein of stone, it's always going to be permeable. And the water that was collecting over here in the old spots, we had a puddle here, a puddle there. We had water lying in here. We're going to get all that water now. A blind inlet works great. Setting up for a pump. That way the guys can put a pump in. We're expecting rain. Drilled a bunch of holes in a bucket. Makes it easy. If we show up tomorrow and we got a flooded yard, guys. Got a lot of work done today. This job has a lot going on. No pipe here, here, just veins of stone.

[00:34:22]Our job sites are never shut down. We always have pumps on the truck. In this case, the guys are putting a 5gallon pail right after the blind inlet.

[00:34:37]People are always asking me, what do you do when it comes to an intersection in your trench? You just cut a piece of fabric to fit and overlap just a couple inches on each side. Guys are doing a really nice job right here where this trench you have two merging together.

[00:34:55]There's no way you're going to take the nonwoven geoteexile filter fabric that's in the trench and get it to overlap on the top to get it to where you can pin it with a couple inches of overlap on the top. It's real simple. Don't overthink it. Just cut an extra piece for that top portion. That's a really good sump. The guys are setting themselves up really nice in case we come back tomorrow and this yard's flooded out. We can pump it out quick and get back to work.

[00:35:21]Now, fully encapsulate this vein of stone just like you would if it had pipe in it and still put sand on top. All the same rules apply. People all the time say, "My fabric don't take in water."

[00:35:33]Well, if you just throw a bunch of sediment soil on it without adding sand, it it'll plug it. Then you got to be patient. You got to wait for the roots to grow through it. Then you'll have really good infiltration. Now that tree can do whatever that tree is going to do. It's not going to impact our system.

[00:35:51]All the branches off the main right here. They're just done in stone. No pipe. Beautiful example of a blind inlet. Now, a lot of this grass was not grass. We cut it off. A lot of dead grass, organic material now that was rotted under all that standing water.

[00:36:08]We'll be able to put that back on top and we're not going to plug our nonwoven geoteexile filter fabric that's been punched twice. It's going to have good infiltration.

[00:36:18]We're going to put grass seed down and some straw down. We'll get this growing grass in no time. Next year, it'll really take in water. Our systems work better and better for that very reason.

[00:36:28]The more grassroots you have growing through the fabric, the faster it'll take in water. This is just for a temp pump cuz we got rain coming. We'll just drop the pump in there. Guys did a great job with that. Temp it in. That way we can get the site workable tomorrow. Got a lot done today. We knew it was a big job and there was a lot of detail to it.

[00:36:47]Open French drain looks great. French drain under the sidewalk. Open French drain in the bed area. Open French drain right here where water was always trapped. And the sump pump just ran just tiredly in the crawl space because of how things were done. Here. We'll grab that down spout water. All that water that was running inside this garage is now going to fall right through that stone. We're going to take it in through this open French drain. Nothing takes in water faster than an open French drain.

[00:37:20]We did get rain last night. It was a really good thing that the men prepped the system with a sump pump. We just put a 5gallon bucket in. But I just wanted to show you something. You see all the sediment? We pumped out the yard so we can work today. You see that sediment?

[00:37:35]It's all organic material and silt and organic material. This yard just had so much of that. So, we just temp this in.

[00:37:43]This is just temporary just to pump that yard dry. We ran a generator and a pump so that we can basically get back to work and get back on this job. You always have to be thinking about that. And the men did a really smart thing by putting that 5gallon pail in yesterday when we were pulling out of here yesterday evening at the end of the day. Look at all that sediment. Look at all this silt and organic material. So, we pumped all that out of the backyard. The men were able to get back on the job. It's not pretty, but it's been hard getting on this job.

[00:38:17]It's been really hard getting on this job. We're finally on the job. I'm going to show you just how bad this sediment is in this organic material. There's no clay here to speak of. This is all organic material. When you have top soil, there's just so much organic material. We're running the electrical to the front pump right now. So, let me show you what we got. Look at that rich black dirt. All organic material. Lot of sediment.

[00:38:44]You know, we get a lot of questions about running our electric plugs. We put it in a rigid conduit and just pull the wire through. Our master electrician, Tom, does this for us. He's here right now.

[00:38:59]Beautiful work. Somebody goes to plant a bush or a tree, they can't cut through the electric. Nice rigid conduit. But again, just look at all this black dirt.

[00:39:10]No clay. This might have been a farm years ago and then people just started bringing in dirt because of the water problem. So, they just order top soil cuz that's what all the local landscape places have. But there's so much organic material and sediment in this soil.

[00:39:26]We needed a small stone to filter that out. We needed the nonwoven geoexile fabric to filter it out. We needed a sock on our knife cut so that we can prevent it from clogging the stone when we're catching water in the yard. A lot of this is going to be suspended in the water and that was one of my concerns.

[00:39:44]That's why we did sock.

[00:39:48]So right here, the men put a 5gallon pail with a bunch of holes drilled in it that's in our French drain system. They went ahead and just tempted a line that just goes out to the street.

[00:40:03]We got rain just like we thought we were going to get. And we didn't want to be rained off this job because we know how it fills up with water.

[00:40:30]We just ran with our generator an outdoor sump pump. Now the guys they covered until the grass seed is planted and the grass grows. The men took sock from the sock pipe, put it over the 6-in grate. They let water in. We got all the water, but see how it filtered out all that sediment. We don't want that sediment to get in our system. You want to wait until all your vegetation has grown back. You want to put seed down, straw, get a real nice thick turf. But this job's been so hard to get on because of the way this yard floods. And the men did a great job the way they tempted in that 5gallon bucket for just a sump pit. I'll show you what they've gotten done. So, we have two female 4-in couplers on this end. That catch basin just has two caps on that end. 12 by 12.

[00:41:19]So, the knife cut has sock on it. We know we're going to get some sediment even after the grass grows in. We seed this. We got a beautiful turf grass. We know we're going to end up with sediment washing through the system. So, we want the sock on the pipe so that we don't get sediment that organic material. We got organic material and sediment silt that's going to run through this knife cut. Well, the knife cut is not saw cut.

[00:41:46]It has just little slices in it. So, unlike a saw cut perforated, this is a saw cut perforated pipe right here. Now, you couldn't run that on catch basins.

[00:41:56]You're going to fill it full of debris and then your French drain's not going to work at all. We're running knife cut right here. This is known as fine cut or knife cut. There's a bunch of slices that go all around that pipe.

[00:42:12]Now, we just go ahead and slip a sock on this. That way, any sediment, fine sediment that tries to find its way through that knife cut or fine cut, and it will. This way, the sock will help contain that sediment and that silt from clogging the stone in this French drain system. So, you got to know the soil that you're working in, guys. If you got a lot of organic material and a lot of lot of silt and organic materials, real fine sediment, you're going to have to use all small stone like we're doing on this project. First line of fence is the nonwoven geoexile filter fabric that's been punched twice. Second line of defense is a small stone. So you're building a stone filter zone. Then instead of using a solid pipe to move the the bulk water, we're using knife cut because of the mosquitoes. We have vegetation in this yard. You can see all the vegetation and the mosquitoes are really bad. So I don't want to use a solid pipe. The solid PVC system that was in was breeding mosquitoes terribly. I came here and I took the lid off that 12 x 12 in the back. and just a cloud of mosquitoes came out. We got 80 ft of PVC pipe and it's got some bellies in it.

[00:43:24]People think that just because they use smooth wall pipe, there's no bellies.

[00:43:28]There's little areas where water can collect in smooth wall pipe. If you think you're going to lay 80 ft of pipe and the ground's not going to shift, move, settle, and you're not going to have some slight collection areas in the bottom of the pipe, then you're the naive one because I know better. So, here's a PVC system.

[00:43:52]See all the mosquitoes?

[00:43:55]You can just see all the mosquitoes that are flying in and out of that PVC.

[00:44:08]This is PVC pipe. This is a PVC system.

[00:44:11]Lots of mosquitoes. Lot of mosquitoes.

[00:44:14]the inlet basin that's catching all the surface water.

[00:44:18]We want to make sure that the pipes that are connected to that dry up completely. That's why we're using knife cut. So that explains the anatomy of this system, the the methodical thinking, why we're building the system the way we are.

[00:44:35]Guys are doing a great job when considering all the elements they're battling here.

[00:44:43]We got two knife cut, two eight slot right here. They got a couple of eight slot.

[00:44:52]They're doing an open French drain right here.

[00:44:55]They got an open French drain to grab up all the water that was ponding and pooling on the cement and it was causing flooding into the laundry room there.

[00:45:09]We're just going to let that down spout splash on our open French drain. The water is just going to fall through the stone into the perforated eight slot and is just going to run down through the rest of the system all the way out front to the sump pump system which then lifts the water and discharges it in the ditch out front.

[00:45:31]So, we're using a small stone to help filter out any sediment, any fine organic material or silt that finds its way through the fabric. And it does, and it will. So, we got a really good stone filter zone before you get to our pipe. I'm confident that our pipe will not and can't clog.

[00:45:58]We had rain last night. You can see how nice the stone cleaned up.

[00:46:02]I love this stone. It's beautiful. Look at all that color. This is natural round rock in Michigan. It comes dirty.

[00:46:10]There's nothing we can do. Just needs a good rain. It cleans it up. But where our open French drains are, we have small stone fully encapsulated in the fabric. And we have the large stone on top. Francisco's, he's trying to remove that old basin. He's trying to get it out of there. It's on PVC pipe. It's a failed system. We wouldn't be here if that PVC system didn't fail. The PVC system settled in a couple of spots as it always does because of the weight of the PVC. It formed bellies that were too big, too deep. The system no longer would flow water. It wouldn't drain. We see it all the time. It's a real hard message to get through to people. PVC is great for the house because you got hangers and it's fixed to the wall and the floor joisticers. But PVC is just not a good yard drain material. The product itself weighs so much that when the soil is saturated during the spring and fall, it settles. It literally sinks. HCP floats. I've proven it to you guys. I put our eight slot high octane in a pond and show the pipe just floating on top of the water. So, it doesn't sink. it it weighs so much less than PVC pipe that we don't have any issues like that. As long as our trench bottom is nice and level at the time of install, which it always is, our systems last forever. We give our clients more stone than any other contractors.

[00:47:40]We dig our trenches out wide. There's always room for two pipes. People always say to me, "Why is it such a big deal that you can get two pipes in the bottom of your trench?"

[00:47:49]hold the contractor to that tolerance and see how much stone you get. That's why a single pipe French drain by most contractors doesn't have enough stone in it. We've done a lot of single pipes when there's pipe shortages, material shortages, but then you see how wide the trenches and how much stone goes in. We never change that. When it comes to building French drains, our French drains are proven. 38 years. The first one is working as good as the last one that we installed. The drain looks like this right here because we just did a blind inlet. Our French drains through here. Our pipes through here, but we went ahead and we just dug into here.

[00:48:29]It's a low spot and we just wanted to grab that water in that low spot with a blind inlet. It's just stone wrapped in fabric.

[00:48:52]It might be muddy, but look how good that looks. That sod was cut off.

[00:48:59]It came out really nice.

[00:49:01]Open French drain.

[00:49:05]Beautiful open French drain.

[00:49:07]There's not a lot of water coming off of this laundry room, but our open French drain will take it in. Won't be any issues. This used to flood right here really bad. Water used to set on that cement. Used to find its way into that laundry room. Lot of flooding here. Water was finding its way into the structure, the home, the garage, many ways.

[00:49:32]We built a system to grab up all that water. So, we're not going to give it a chance to enter either one of those structures.

[00:49:42]So, as we put the sod down, even the areas that we cut out that were dead, we want to definitely put sand down.

[00:49:50]Always put sand down.

[00:49:52]We're going to put seed over top of this and straw.

[00:49:56]This is going to look great in a few weeks once all the new seed pops.

[00:50:01]And in about 6 weeks, we'll have a pretty decent turf grass. Right now, they're digging for that 20 ft chamber.

[00:50:08]This house does not have a backup generator, nor is there any plans for a backup generator. So, I want to make sure that if there's a power outage that we have a detention tank that can hold all this water between all the piping through this yard that will act as a detention tank. And it's a horizontal drywall.

[00:50:29]If we get a lot of rain and the yard's pretty dry, this system is going to leech water and it's going to load the water. It's going to load the subsurface soil until it's saturated. Once it becomes saturated and it can't take in any more water, it's completely loaded.

[00:50:48]Once we recharge all the the ground in this yard, then the water can start to collect in the pipes and make its way down to this chamber.

[00:50:58]I'm pretty confident that if we have a power outage, this system is going to be able to contain a lot of the water.

[00:51:04]Enough of the water to where there shouldn't be any water in the garage or the laundry room.

[00:51:25]Always put really big rock if you have really big inlets on your chamber like we do.

[00:51:33]Those are half inch inlets. So, we're going to put the big rock on the ends.

[00:51:40]We have inlets on both ends of the system.

[00:51:44]This is a really large system. Guys did a beautiful job. Really big chamber.

[00:51:48]We're going to have a half horse M98 in this. We're not going to short cycle it because we have such a big chamber. Now remember to put in the 4x4 for your electric. We're nice and deep right here. So the frost can't heed that post and pop it in the north. See, we got more inlet on this end. So we're going to put big stone around that. You don't have to cement it in. It ain't going anywhere. You're below the frost.

[00:52:13]>> When we dug a hole for the sump right here, we finally got into some blue clay. So that's why eventually the water no longer is absorbed. So that's why vertical drains only do so much.

[00:52:25]>> Eventually, you're going to hit clay.

[00:52:27]The trench was trying to collapse. The ground is really loaded with water. It's really saturated. So if we would have had a mini ditch witch here, turning and dumping in.

[00:52:38]This surely would have collapsed and caved in. This is experience.

[00:52:44]The way the men methodically go about an install. This is experience. Veterans, guys that do it every day. They know how to read the soil. They know how to read the trenches.

[00:53:07]Just take a 5-in hole saw because your corrugated pipe is 4 1/2 in outside diameter. We're going to be using our corrugated to corrugated external coupler. We don't use internal couplers no more for our connections because they obstruct the flow. These work really nice and these are made out of a virgin material. It's 100% HDPE.

[00:53:31]There's no recycled materials in this.

[00:53:34]So, it's the strongest coupler that we can possibly make. We have two knife cut that are on the catch basins.

[00:53:41]We got three eight slot. They got them ready to where we can just connect the pipe to them and run them through the sump system. Always use a coupler that grabs a pipe on the outside of the pipe like you see right here.

[00:53:56]You don't obstruct the flow. If you want to build a French drain that lasts forever, don't put any of the dirt back in. All the dirt away. The guys are digging this trench and they're going to fill it full of stone and pipe. That is it. The only dirt that goes back is the dirt that's holding the turf grass together. We leave enough dirt to be able to grow grass. A vein of stone lasts forever. It's permeable and it's going to move the water. We guarantee our systems for a lifetime. It's easy to do because we don't put any of the dirt back in. I can't stress that enough.

[00:54:31]Now, we've taken a lot of dirt out on a project like this. About 30 yards in all. The drain is going to work so much better because of that. Too many contractors do not have the means to haul the dirt away. They take on a project like this. They take the homeowner's money and they try to put the French drain in with a little bit of stone so they can put most of the dirt back on top of the pipe in a little bit of stone and then they wonder why the drain quits working in 2 years time.

[00:55:00]It's a shame because now they screwed up the budget. The people already spent the money for it once. When we come through to do it again, we see it all the time.

[00:55:10]We never have to revisit one of our jobs because we do it this way. We haul all the dirt away and we never put any of the dirt back in. You can see we're really deep here at the end of the drain. As we get close to the sump pump head pit, we have all this added chamber on our outdoor sump pump head so we don't short cycle the pump.

[00:55:31]Now, we always put a sump viewer on our systems. The reason why we put the sump viewer on our systems, we don't want people to have to take this lid off because we do screw it on for safety. So, children, animals, don't end up inside this. You don't want the covers left loose, laying off.

[00:55:49]I can't emphasize enough how much this helps just to look in and see that the water's pumped down. And to know that you got power to the system, the system's working properly. You see water up high in that system. Now, you know your pump's failed you in one way or another. They ran a fish tape through the conduit for the electrical. Went ahead and pulled a string through. Now Tom can tie his wires to that string.

[00:56:14]Pull all the wires through that electrical conduit. Tom's getting ready to pull the last wire through. Now we'll go ahead. We'll put seed and straw over here. You can see we're bringing up the mats. There's still grass, so it'll be fine. We got a little bit of cleanup to do. A lot of the jobs are this muddy.

[00:56:33]This comes with the territory. Now, if you're a DIYer and you don't have to work Monday through Friday or Monday through Saturday like contractors do, I encourage you to wait for the yard to dry out and the conditions to become decent. For us, we have to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I got guys that want to work Saturdays because of how wet everything is. This trench keeps collapsing on the guys. See all the water running down towards the sump system. Look at that. They built a dam to keep the water from flooding the area they're working. Everything keeps undermining. It's where you have dirt falling off underneath, forming a cliff.

[00:57:13]It's unsafe. They're going to get the fabric in right now. Get the pipe in.

[00:57:17]Get the stone in. Close this up. Look at the amount of water that's coming out from our system. Filling the chamber.

[00:57:24]Our chamber is going to hold a lot of water. A lot of water.

[00:57:29]>> Guys are moving fast. They're getting the fabric in the trench. We got to get pipe and stone in the trench. It keeps collapsing. They have to get in there and clean it out. We're so deep. We're taking 5T of fabric, putting it on each side. Make it easy, quick. Got to go fast. When you're working in a muddy trench that's collapsing, it's nice to have good, reliable couplers that connect quick. Can't imagine gluing and cutting and oh, forget about it.

[00:57:56]PVC doesn't go anything like this. Nice and fast, strong couplers, great connection system in. I get this question a lot. What do you do when your trench is super deep? You just put more pipe in. Just cap the ends so they don't fill up with stone. You got more void created with this eight slot pipe than you can create with stone. It would take 10in round stone, 10, 12, 14inch round stone to create that much void. So, three of our downspouts just pour into an open French drain.

[00:58:28]You guys know that I never do this. I always talk about catching the water and not letting it go. But you see how this is a vinyl gutter. It's very fragile.

[00:58:38]It's chipping. Got vinyl gutter straps.

[00:58:42]We don't want to touch them is what I'm trying to say. I don't want to be liable for anything that happens to these gutters and down spouts that are barely hanging on. So, we got three of them that just fall right into an open French drain. That'll be fine. That'll work.

[00:58:56]It's better than what they did have. And I'm not charging them for any roof runoff collection system. It's just we're getting the bulk water out of here and we're taking care of some things the right way. Now, we will put a basin under this one because this laundry room that's in the back of the house here in what's typically probably a little mud room, that's taking on water. So, I want to make sure I divert all the water away. So, the men ran one solid line right here to grab the down spouts. You don't want to put down spouts on knife cut. You don't want to put down spouts on eight slot. It's a terrible idea.

[00:59:31]Want to touch the down spouts. They're old. We don't even want to touch them.

[00:59:34]We didn't charge for this. But I'm here to fix a water problem. And we're going to at least grab the bulk water up.

[00:59:40]Thing that bothers me is you see all that green algae growing on the house, mold, mildew. There's a lot of moss.

[00:59:49]Well, this has been just dumping here and the water's just left to pour right along the foundation. We're going to grab the bulk water by doing this.

[00:59:56]Again, I didn't quote a roof or enough system. They're getting new gutters hopefully next year. That's the plan. If it's in the budget, they really could use it. Whole system's fully encapsulated. We even want all the water to be taken up right here, right over top of this outdoor sump pump system.

[01:00:13]We're going to grab up all the water that's in between these two homes.

[01:00:17]Always put stone underneath your catch basin. That way when it's done moving the bulk water, drill little tiny holes, real small holes, so you're not losing a lot of water during a big rain event near the house. On your down spout lines, you want to tape all the connections. This is the only place we had tile tape in the whole system. We used really good couplers that hold really well. The rest of the system was all permeable. It was meant to take in all the water. We have these 2x3 down spouts, so we got them tied into two 4-in pipes. They're not going to flow that much water. Not going to be an issue. We're using our new female coupler. The guys love it. Crazy strong coupler right there. The hold is just insane. We love it. It's the newest addition to our catalog and our line of parts.

[01:01:04]That's a 5-in hole saw. We're going to run a 4-in pipe underneath the down spout. Just catch the water that's falling. It's going to be routed right into this outdoor sump pump pit.

[01:01:18]All right, we had a gully washer last night about 2:30 in the morning. Just came out to see how we did. No water on this slab. That's fantastic. I'll try to get this system in action. It's not easy. This storm system was supposed to come in during daylight hours and as the week unfolded, it got here sooner and quicker than first expected. So, all right.

[01:01:42]Beautiful. Look at this. Look at this.

[01:01:45]No water on the concrete. No water on the concrete. So, it's only been a week, man. Look at this. The grass seeds already coming in. It's only been a week. Look at that. Literally one week.

[01:01:59]So, we put, you know, just a lot of annual rye in our seed, and that pops immediately. God, that came out great.

[01:02:07]Always put some sock over your your inlet basin. Now, we're going to grow a really nice turf grass here. And there's not going to be any problems with ridiculous amount of excess sediment.

[01:02:23]You can see the sock kept out. See how the sock kept out all this straw grass seed. Same over here. You can see that this was puddled. You can see some sediment right around the edge here because this is slightly domed. So, we're going to grow a pretty good turf grass here. And I know that this yard grows good turf grass because the soil has a lot of organic material in it.

[01:02:44]It's like a top it it's all top soil.

[01:02:46]Again, you can see how there was a bunch of water. The straw is on the outside of the do 6-in grate. Now, if you're in Florida and you can't grow a good turf and it's sandy, you don't want to use a 6-in round. Use 4in round because the vortex on a 6-in round is insane. It's just too powerful. and you're going to pull in too much sand into your pipe.

[01:03:11]I'm really shocked at how much seeds popped. That's fantastic. So, this is going to fill in really nice. There's our sump system. We do have a heater. We don't plug our heater in until December 1st here in Michigan. This is a pretty deep system. Now, normally we don't do that. I hate that because of the mold and mildew that gets up on the building.

[01:03:33]But until she gets her new gutters next year, waiting on new gutters. So hopefully next year the new gutters come and we can go ahead and put a leaf filter on this and connect this. I like catching the water at the down spout, not letting it go because you don't end up with mold, mildew, moss, algae on the side of the house, and you guys know that. But I had to do something. I'm here to fix a water problem. So we took the discharge line to the ditch here.

[01:03:59]Man, that's that's hilarious. So, the water's coming shooting out of a 4 in.

[01:04:04]We take our inch and a half to a 4 in.

[01:04:06]The water comes shooting out. You can see how the grass is just flattened right here and the water's hitting the ditch bank going left, going right.

[01:04:18]That is hilarious. This thing's got to be a sight. So, this thing, you could see that it had ran. And that's that's that's too funny. And you can see we got some of the green grate from us working the hole saw. We even got a little piece when they saw cut eight slot. They take out they take out material. This was a, you know, difficult job because there was so much mud. This job was so wet.

[01:04:49]We've had a wet year and we've had a really hard time getting on this job because it always has a bunch of standing water. But as you can see, last night's gully washer didn't hurt it one bit. Not one bit. We uh did a sump pump discharge line for the house, for the crawl space out to the ditch. This lot hasn't been this dry in decades.

[01:05:08]This home's finally getting the care that it needs. Now, this homeowner can start to restore this home, but I'm really happy with the results. Again, the rain was supposed to come through today in the afternoon. I was going to be able to get this for you guys, but unfortunately throughout the week, the system kind of got ahead of schedule. I just can't believe how dry everything is. I mean, it's just it came out really nice. If you found any of this information helpful, give us a thumbs up. It supports the channel.

[01:05:41]I'm your host, Robert Sherwood, and until the next