Drainage, Drainage, Drainage

We live in the rainiest city in Texas.

When it rains... it pours.

And when it pours like that, it takes a little while to drain off into the bayous and river.  When the water comes down like this, lots of folks have issues.  We were no different.

We removed the rain gutters and downspouts on our home.  They actually caused some roof issues and we decided to just stick with the wide roof over hangs and deal with the drainage on the ground, instead of off the roof.

So.  French drains.
In case you are wondering, we have done French drains before, quite successfully.  We bought a house in Tulsa that had standing water issues in the front, side and back yards.  We dug trenches with a DitchWitch, laid in gravel, and installed drilled PVC drain pipes.  Then we covered them up with gravel and hoped for the best.  Worked like a charm.

Here, it's a little swampier.  So we set off to the big box store with a plan, but an open mind.  We remembered the back breaking labor, filling all the trenches with gravel.  Then we discovered these.

They are perforated, flexible tubes that are wrapped in sleeves that are stuffed with packing pellets.  Expensive.  But by the time you add in the gravel and the PVC pipe, it worked out just slightly more expensive.  The kicker?  No heavy lifting.  No hauling wheelbarrow loads of gravel and dumping them.  You just dig a ditch and flop in these noodles, hook them up, and you're done.

I was sold.  No heavy lifting?  Perfect.  We broke the job into three parts.  The front, the side, and finally the back yards.  The front yard was first.  Our intention was to place these French drains all along the "drip line" of the overhanging roof.


We shot a line with string, measured and began digging.  The proximity to the house and landscaping precluded using a DitchWitch.  We dug by hand with shovels.

Since the product is flexible, we didn't need to worry about straight lines.  We used plastic cuffs to join noodles, and 90 degree corner pieces.

Once we laid in the noodles, we did the joins and ran drains out to the street.  Those were flexible tubing with no perforations.  We installed grates at the end of each exit line.

It worked very well.  It was easy to manipulate and we only had to cut a few of the noodles to shorten them, most we used full length.

Once the front was done, we covered the area with gravel and pavers to create a walkway around the house, behind the landscaping.  This had a couple of benefits, first, the ground was scraped here and the landscaping
already set back.  And second, we wanted to be able to walk around the house, so providing a walkway worked for us.

We reused pavers from the yard, purchased only the gravel.

The next part of the project was the side yard, around the dining room and out to the curb.

Then we started on the back yard.  This was the hardest part of the job.  There is a huge live oak that's roots were actually threatening to lift the cement patio.  In order to dig the trench around the patio, we had to cut through those roots using a chain saw.

Such. Hard. Work.

We finally got the trench dug and installed the noodles.  We dug the trench across the back of the house, down the side and to the curb.

We ran the pipes, connected them and then covered the trenches with dirt and sod.  When the first rain storm started, we grabbed our umbrellas and rushed out to see how the drains worked... because we did not want to to have to dig them up and fix anything!

They drained great.

We've had several frog-stranglers and each time, we survey the water flow to make sure the drains are working as expected.  So far, it's working just great.

My personal opinion is that these drain noodles (4 in. x 10 ft. NDS Prefabricated French Drain with pipe) are well worth the money.  Not having to deal with loads of gravel and the weight of throwing it--perfection.

We managed to do the whole project well within our budget.  Considering that our lowest contractor estimate was over $9,000, our modest expense of just under $2,000 was a steal.

Keeping the house protected is well worth the price and the hard work.  I'm glad to see the water flowing away from the foundation.

--  Sandee Wagner

Another Outside Improvement

 So the latest project in the remodeling saga is a pretty expensive one.  We replaced all the soffits around the whole house.  They were rotten in a bunch of places (Beaumont is WET!) and had been painted over.  My DH reached up and poked his fingers through some places.  The thick layer of paint was the only thing holding some of the boards together.

We had a company replace it all with engineered wood that is guaranteed for 50 years.  Which is way longer than I will ever care...

The guys worked industriously and the weather held.  They were able to get the old soffits down and the new boards up in just a couple of days.

Once the soffits were up, it was time to pick a paint color.  They could have matched the old orange paint, but where's the fun in that?

I wanted a color that would contrast with the bricks and stone flower beds, not blend into them like the current color did.  I picked a couple of grays and then the guys painted the whole house.

Probably, I went too dark.

 I like how the gray looks with the brick.

I even like how it looks with that blonde stonework on the front flower bed.

The turquoise door now makes a lot more sense.

Next project was replacing those old jalousie windows.  They were single pane and most of them were inoperable.

I tried to price having them fixed and the glass re-glazed but no one wants to do that any more.

The original beams that 'support' the roof arches had long since rotted away.  The previous owners had them wrapped in sheet metal and painted to match the house.

We had the guys peel off the metal and build beams from the engineered wood.  Then we painted them a slightly darker gray than the rest of the house.  I don't have a picture with the beams painted out, but suffice it to say, I went either too dark on the house, or too light on the beams or a little of both.  It's not quite the contrast I was hoping for.

The new windows are framed in white and have only two panes per window frame instead of the three horizontal panes per jalousie opening.

I don't have a good picture of the new windows, but I will add one when I take a few pictures.

The windows made a real improvement on the overall looks of this house.

We took down all the guttering around the house.  I don't think we are going to put up new gutters.  I think we are going to do a drip line drainage project and make some dry stream bed looking areas to get the water to flow away from the house.  But that's a project for another day.

--  Sandee Wagner