Drainage Solutions

0:00 Which you can see, a little bit of moisture coming up, just ground moisture coming through the asphalt was actually pushing the dumpster clear out of the corral with the ice. And so you dug down to where the drain tile was, and there was no water there. You dug down another foot, foot and a half, and we hit water. So that's where we put our drain tile.

0:16 Especially if you want to spend a good investment on a quality drainage project, why not put in some points of access just to keep an eye on it?

0:28 So the problem was here is they had water seeping out all the cracks in the asphalt, which you can see a little bit of moisture coming up, just ground moisture coming through the asphalt.

0:35 But there's a lot of water just coming through here, and it was just coming out of the hill back in here.

0:43 So much so that the dumpster pad right there had so much water coming out of the hill that it would come out and freeze, and come out and freeze again, and it was actually pushing the dumpster clear out of the corral with the ice.

0:58 Back here, we had to take a lot of dirt out just so we could get our machine back here and get it to where we could put this trench in for drainage.

1:39 Okay, guys, we got our fabric in up to the dumpster, ready to lay our pipe in, or two pipes.

1:52 So, tomorrow we can just put gravel in, or put pipe in and gravel, and roll with it.

2:04 Bring it all the way up here. Fabric and then two tiles side by side, four inch.

2:12 Up here we will have copper over the tiles to protect it from any tree roots. Copper kills roots.

2:20 We'll end it about right in here.

2:23 It'll be French drain all the way to the surface. So we'll put fabric, our drainage, and rock all the way up. Fold our fabric over and then rock all the way to the surface, all the way up to the curb.

2:32 So, this will just be all rock that is high enough that you can run over it with a mower, but yet not too high to where you want to be catching stuff with a mower.

2:41 And so, all the water that they have trouble coming out from the hillside will just go right down into that drain, and you won't have water coming out over here because they have trouble with ice in the winter times.

2:57 So, we got our drain in here, and our gravel goes down and connects to a pipe that goes across the parking lot.

3:06 So, we got our gravel in, folded over like a burrito, and then we'll put more rock on top.

3:16 This is where our pipe comes out here.

3:19 We got copper on the outside to keep roots from growing.

3:23 So, got copper on that pipe. Good bit of it ready to hook up to this one and run.

3:31 Let's go all the way up to where the equipment is.

3:44 They had had another drain tile in there at one point, but it was just a few inches deep and it was, of course, the cheap black tile stuff.

3:53 And so you dug down to where the drain tile was, and there was no water there. You dug down another foot, foot and a half, and we hit water. So that's where we put our drain tile.

4:00 So that's where your water was flowing through, about two feet deep, and getting out here underneath the pavement.

4:07 So this is where you can walk this one back to where it goes. The French drains start here. So this spot, we had a lot of water getting out into the driveway.

4:32 And this whole area was so soft and wet they couldn't mow it. So, we've got two French drains. One's going along here. That's the open gravel French drain.

4:37 We have a second French drain that starts back there. It's all kind of lumpy right now because we did this here late in the fall, and so things are still settling. We'll probably come back in and do some touch-up work.

4:53 So you might see some areas where we got some fabric still showing, and we can always come back later and touch up with some rock, some soil, whatever we need to.

5:01 This is open stone. Really the primary reason that we leave it open is because any surface water that's coming down the hill, it can run across the top of the ground, but once it hits this stone, it's going straight down into the French drain.

5:17 One thing we did do here is we put in these risers here just for access. This is at the start of the French drain. So you can actually see, I'm going to sneak this off actually.

5:33 You can actually see down into the French drain right there. That's the start of it. Just this tile here. And it goes right down in there and then runs on through.

5:37 This fabric's completely encasing a bunch of stone, basically like you're seeing on the top there. And that's the start of the string.

5:46 We put these in because we want to be able to run cameras down in the future. So if we wanted to, I don't expect any issues with roots or anything, because this line here and some of the other sections of line we put copper sleeve around it, like copper netting.

6:09 That copper will help keep the roots away. But just in case, we'd rather have a couple lines of defense.

6:17 Especially if you want to spend a good investment on a quality drainage project, why not put in some points of access just to keep an eye on it?

6:26 So the two just gives you that much more surface area for water to get through. You do have all this stone for water to flow through, but if you have two side by side, it's that much more air flow through there.

6:34 Two things: it's going to move more water faster. Second thing is you've got more air, which is going to help what they would call air pruning the roots.

6:42 Tree roots get in there if it stays drier for longer because you've got two side by side. It just keeps the roots from getting in as much, rather than one pipe might hold the water in it a little bit longer and give more opportunity for the tree roots to get into it.

6:59 Popups up here, not to let water out because this is obviously the high point, but to have access for if someone ever wanted to put a sewer camera down there or anything.

7:07 You can just see the liquid sitting in there. It's water that just comes out of that hill.

7:19 And so they even had that dumpster pushed out from ice buildup once. And people were slipping. So just need to get it fixed.

7:30 There's two pipes in here. French drain, man.

7:35 We're putting V-wrap on all this slope, so it's pretty much ready for that next time we're here. Put fabric on the hill and so on.

7:49 Will you take a look at this guy? He just ate food right in front of me. And what time is it? I don't know. 9:57. So wrong. No, that's just right.

8:04 This was interesting. The guys had to dig this whole area out. This did have riprap in it before, but it was sloped straight down to the concrete and all the dirt was just shifting down to the dumpster.

8:20 Then the water was coming out. It was actually groundwater, probably still is, seeping out of the hill up here. And as it froze in the winter time, it was literally pushing the dumpster out of the dumpster corral.

8:36 So what we did is we dug this entirely out, hauled everything out, and then they ran the French drain all the way around through here, the double pipe we talked about.

8:43 Then got that covered up, and this is all new riprap installed through here. The guys did even better than I expected.

8:52 They carved out this bit of a swale through here so that any water that does come down here is forced to that French drain. So it's not going anywhere.

8:59 So one of the things we did before we started on this project is we had to figure out where to send the water to.

9:08 So we found a couple of storm drains over on this side, brought a plumbing company out, and they ran a sewer camera through it to make sure it was clear all the way over to this side of the parking lot.

9:16 Once we got that figured out, then we could green light designing up a drainage system for this.

9:23 And so it's just connected in, and it just ties into that.