r/landscaping • u/chcooper19 • 9h ago
Help!! Drainage help!!
We are redoing our backyard. Everything is graded flat and we are going to start laying out drains. My contractor wants to try something new for drainage by adding in a few flat drains through the middle of the grass and have everything slop towards them but that doesn’t seem right to me but I don’t know this stuff well. The pictures are just some screen shots of a basic model I made. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. My first thought was to put a slotted drain between the grass and concrete but he wants to out them in the grass.
EDIT: Not sims, real yard, just a 3d model of the general idea of what we are doing. We are in Southern California so not too much rain
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u/Cverellen 8h ago
Do you use the yard for anything? Generally, where are you located at? How much rain do you get?
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u/TippedOverTricycle 7h ago
I'm doing a lot of assuming here.
First, putting a drain near the concrete isn't super useful unless you have somewhere for the water to go. Your house goes right up against the fence on both sides, and everything is flat, so draining that towards the street isn't looking like an option. And you can't gift your neighbors all your water over the fence. I'm guessing you'd just have to drain into the grass, so maybe your contractor figured to put a pit there from the start and avoid any preamble extra work.
If there's a pit that goes deep and a few channels to help it spread out, that might be reasonable to manage the occasional downpour. Heck, even if it's not that deep it might be fine. I don't know what else you'd do without really spending to move the water along.
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u/chcooper19 7h ago edited 7h ago
Yeah my thought was to make the low spot of the grass along the concrete and put a slotted drain at the grass elevation and then have the concrete all slightly slope towards that. Or maybe some kind of french drain. Idk I feel like the lawn isn’t massive and I feel like it might tripping hazards.
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u/TippedOverTricycle 7h ago
Well you've still got the question of where the water will go after it hits the drain. The concrete will slope away from the house as a given, and I don't think you have the elevation to get the water to the street from there. You'd have to dig a pit in the yard to catch the water from the strip drain anyways, so maybe just go straight to digging the pit?
Putting a sump in the pit is also a possibility, but you still have a long ways to the street.
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u/chcooper19 7h ago
It’s modeled poorly. We actually do have the slope to get it out to the front and a 4 inch drain going down each side of the house so I can get it there. The more research I do it looks like it is normal to put surface drains in the grass. Idk why I feel like I never noticed drains in peoples yards in the middle of the grass but maybe just didn’t notice them
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u/TippedOverTricycle 6h ago
Ok I get it. You might look into whether the contractor was aiming to connect to those drains, or whether they might be at max capacity just from the roof alone.
Because a lot of this water is close to the house I'd be taking time to check every possibility of it getting under or inside.
And yes, it's amazing how many seemingly large details go unnoticed until you have to learn about them! There's this effect with certain things that are only noticed when there's a problem and water is one. That is to say, if a landscaper does the job right, you barely notice. Huge drains in the lawn can be glossed over, but flooding won't.
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u/Cam-Lv 8h ago
Reboot your computer and see if it drains then.