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