Tried that French drain trick my neighbor kept going on about

Honestly, my backyard was basically a swamp every time it rained hard. Water would pool right against the foundation of my house in Decatur. My neighbor Bob kept saying I needed a French drain but I thought it was overkill. Finally dug a 30 foot trench and filled it with gravel and pipe last weekend. Has anyone else tried doing a dry well at the end of their drain to stop water from just pooling somewhere else in the yard?

3 comments

3 Comments

fisher.charlie1d ago

I put a dry well at the end of my French drain about two years ago and it made a huge difference. Dug a hole about four feet deep and four feet wide, lined it with landscape fabric, and filled it with clean gravel I got from a landscaping place off Memorial Drive. The water just disappears into the ground now instead of making a muddy mess at the edge of my lawn. You'll want to make sure your soil drains okay before you commit to digging that big a hole. I tested mine by filling a small hole with water and timing how long it took to drain. If it takes longer than a day, the dry well might not work great where you are.

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evan_jenkins1d ago

Gotta disagree a little on the landscape fabric. If you line the whole hole with it, you're basically wrapping the gravel in a sock that can clog up over time with silt and fines from the surrounding soil. I made that mistake on my first dry well and had to dig it back up a couple years later because water was backing up again. Better to just use a layer of fabric on top to keep surface dirt out, and leave the sides open so the water can actually seep into the ground properly. That gravel from Memorial Drive sounds like a solid score though, clean stone makes all the difference.

morgan.mary1d ago

Wait, hold on, so you wrapped the whole thing in landscape fabric and it's still working fine after two years? That's wild because I tried that exact trick on my first dry well and it clogged up so fast I was standing in a puddle by month three. I swear the fabric just turns into a muddy sock that traps all the dirt from the soil around it. Maybe your dirt is way cleaner than mine, or maybe you just got lucky with the gravel from Memorial Drive being extra chunky. Either way, I'm on team "leave the sides open and only cover the top" now, because digging up that whole hole again was a nightmare I don't want to relive. The percolation test though, solid advice for sure, it's the only way to know if your ground is gonna cooperate or not.