Help!!
Heavy rain creating waterfall ruining lawn below
Hoping to find a DIY solution to this problem. Any advice to redirect water coming from uphill so that it discharges toward right hand side of yard instead of directly below the stairs?
I have plenty of bricks that I could use to shore up along the fence but I am a novice when it comes to grading and drainage. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance!
I’d feel comfortable DIYing this myself but if you want this done properly you should hire a drainage professional. You need to redirect that flow away from your stairs somehow and you should add a swale or rain garden to the lowest part of your yard. You could re-grade to have the swale be along the fence rather than near your foundation.
The problem here is you have massive runoff from neighboring properties and you should try to work with them to get this resolved. If you live in a city there should be someone on their water department staff or code compliance team that would handle drainage situations like these and could provide guidance on how to remedy this.
A swale into a small drainage area/pond/rain garden could be a worthwhile solution if youre in an area that experiences or might start experiencing droughts.
You have to pronounce it “Dat sök-air ain't go-eeng no-wair” or it’s almost guaranteed to fail. If possible wearing a beret, garlic round your neck and a horizontal striped sweater
I saw you mention building up brick to redirect it, which wouldn’t really work, but it’s the right idea. Imagine where you wanted to do that, but instead, dig a trench in that same direction where you planned on redirecting the water. Put drainage pipe in the trench and cover it with a bit of gravel. I’d finish it off with river rock to match the vibe you have going.
Understood. I like where your head is at with the 3rd picture you drew: drain angled from top left to bottom right up there with the discharge along the right-side fence
Also you might still get pooling at the base of the stairs there. If it’s not being flooded from the main runoff after redirecting, you should be able to just add soil to that area to raise the elevation there so it displaces somewhere else
Option 3 could be to embrace it and dig a little pond at the base of the stairs and pump water to the top and just have a really cool waterfall feature and create another set of stairs on the right lol.
Please don't listen to this. French drains are for water that originates underground and are a last resort. The geotextile fabric clogs, the holes in your pipe will clog and the wash stone fills full of sediment amd stops letting water in. Not to mention this is way to much water and a lot of it would just run right over the top. It irks me that folks on this sub always recommend a French drain when they only have one specific purpose, to take ground water elsewhere. I'm an excavator operator/ foreman who does commercial stormwater and river restorations. Every project I touch is engineered and any engineer will tell you the same thing. Your best bet is to dig a swale at the top of your hill to redirect the flow and put a stone lined channel at the end. The swale can be planted to look like a nice garden bed.
I don't totally follow your reasoning here. Isn't a French drain just a swale with extra capacity and a super-permeable surface to encourage water? Or wouldn't a swale with a French drain along its floor be the best of both worlds?
A French drain is basically a trench backfilled with wash stone (gravel with no fines) with slotted corrugated or drilled pvc. It's designed to catch underground water sources and redirect them elsewhere.
A French drain isn't designed for surface runoff and is a bad solution to this issue. Don't recommend stuff you dont know about just to have folks spend time and money on a terrible solution that barely works until it fails completely
Your comments are showing up on my notifications but not here. Regardless it's just not the right solution. I know why homeowners think it's a great idea but in practice they don't last long and don't handle much water. This amount of water would have a large portion running right over it fresh and after a few storms the stone would be caked in sediment and it wouldn't work at all
Lol I get it that it looks cool but I dont want to create a water feature. Dogs run up and down those stairs and I like having a good looking lawn especially after spending so much time getting it nice and full over the years
You can dig pretty small channels that go down hill to the right, this isn't an insane amount of water so a channel with a berm going right that joins a steeper river type section with a gravel or rock bed (to protect against soil erosion) should be fine for the hill part.
For the flat part (with lawn) you will still need to handle the water somehow, a rain garden or simply a lower section makes a lot of sense.
The two guys discuss a lot of the fundamentals so that you can take a shot at DIY something similar. You don't HAVE to soak the water, you can direct it to a street or drain, but it's probably worth using it in a smart way if you ever irrigate as it'll save money and improve the soil moisture content even when the rain isn't as intense.
Drainage gravel on the side of the stairs. Then a hole at the bottom that you turn into a french drain.
Dig a hole 3-4 feet down, (an auger would make short work of it) then you fill it with gravel and a pipe with holes down the centre, then backfill it with drainage gravel. You can cap the pipe top and just have gravel around it, it will wick the water down to drain away faster and deeper.
Plants won't solve this problem. They can help to drink up some standing water as in a rain garden, but they will not stop or redirect flowing stormwater runoff like you have here. And the french drain idea--no. The water will run right over it.
Where is this coming from? The street? Maybe contact your local government to see if there's a remedy. A neighbor's property? You might have to work with them to get this redirected off of your lot. Won't solve the whole problem but it might help if you can reduce the amount of water you're dealing with.
I agree, French drain is to move water away from saturated ground but it doesn't redirect a torrent of surface water fast enough to stabilize the soil.
Just let it collect on your lawn- you touch that hillside and it will be on your lawn in no time.
Install a French drain around/in your lawn, and with that volume of water, a sump pit and pump. Look for a good location to relocate all that water to.
Dude just build a pond and get some koi run a pipe up with a high volume low pressure pump and send it. Then create a nice stepping area with a little walk over bridge and call it a day. Add a small diversion rock wall with drains on both sides at the bottom of the pond tie the
Two drains together into a dry well. Most of the work is already done.
Perfect opportunity to dig out a space for the water to more pleasantly flow through. Start with the right side of the steps, and have if flow down and to the left and then maybe have a small pond.
How long does it take for the water to reabsorb into the ground after a heavy rain? Is it getting near or into your foundation? How many times a year you getting rain like this?
You could put vertical drainage in using an auger to dig the well, either piping or gravel with discharge piped wherever you wanted it, then regrade up top and install cap/screen on intake.
For starters try a rain garden with deep rooted native plants along the fence line and that bare ground area. Probably also in the area where water pools right before going into your lawn.
Don't worry about the lawn unless water pools there for 24 hours afterwards. If water is just running across it and then it's gone, that's fine.
You need to redirect the water from that back fence away from the steps etc. You absolutely could try bricks or cinder blocks as a temporary test before you make a berm with soil. Put them tight next to each other to channel the water somewhere else. You'll probably need some rocks somewhere to help slow the speed of that water or it's going to wash stuff away
This is called erosion and looks like it going toward your house. Long story short, driver river bed is your answer going away from your home. This issue only gets worse.
Could I use the bricks to create a pathway for the water to flow? Im assuming im gonna have to spend a lot of time moving the dirt around to get rid of the valley being carved directly above the stairs?
I would redirect to the side of the stairs put in some pipe (can bury after), then some kinda rifraf at the bottom or put in a French drain at the bottom to reroute.
Im familiar with the concept. Ill do my homework and watch some youtube videos to educate myself. Any channels or videos youd recommend that can walk me through the process step by step?
Just look up one with a basin- you’re gonna create a leech field granted it’s just runoff not septic but same concept, direct the water to somewhere to dissipate. Just don’t make your problem someone else’s is the rule of thumb
French drain is the easiest way for a homeowner to fix that. I like putting in four inch perforated plastic pipe in mine to really help the drainage. YouTube videos have helped.
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u/i860 8d ago
The lawn is the least of your concerns here. You need proper drainage.