Monday, July 26th, 2010
Keeping Our Neighbors Happy For the past couple of years our neighbors have been experiencing a lot of water in their backyard. They've lost a tree and several bushes because of it. Their house is downhill from us and our entire street is on a watershed so it's natural for them to think that the water is coming from our yard to begin with. They said it seemed to start occurring around the same time the previous owners put the pool in. We've done a number of tests over the years on the pool and determined that it's not losing water. Another possible cause could be the irrigation system, but we don't use it and I have the main water valves turned off. The only other culprit that I could think of was the downspouts from the gutter system. Yet in the middle of a drought this summer, that's been rather hard to troubleshoot.

Last week they call us up to let us know about standing water in their yard in several places. We had just experienced a lot of rain the night before. I went out to check out the water in their yard and started looking around for the source. There is a long corrugated pipe that runs along the fence line between our lots. It's partially buried in places and has a white mesh material wrapped around it. Thinking back to my Drafting class days in high school, I remembered that they make perforated corrugated pipe that allows water to drain out slowly and consistently. Typically these pipes are wrapped in a mesh "sock" to prevent dirt from getting into the pipe, but still allow water to get in. I found a torn place in the mesh where I could see the drain pipe and sure enough it was perforated. After inspecting the entire pipe even more I found several junctions and fittings between piping that looked questionable. One of them happened to be right where most of the water in their yard was sitting. The drain pipe in question handles the water from two downspouts on our house, which is about a quarter of our roof. In addition, I have a sump pump in the crawlspace that pumps water into the drain line. That's a lot of water. I had a good feeling that I had found the problem.

One night last week, I ripped out all of the perforated pipe and replaced it with solid flex corrugated pipe. I ran several tests with a hose and the water seemed to be getting trapped in several spots along the fence. This put too much pressure on the fittings at the junction points and in several cases caused more leaks. The overall pipe didn't descend enough to properly drain the water to the back of the lot. Digging a trench between the fence and multiple large holly bushes wasn't ideal either. I went inside frustrated, tired and out of ideas.

I slept on it that night and woke up the next morning with a new idea. I felt the best way to go about it was to completely relocate the drain line and dig a deep trench to allow for at least a 1% gradient between the front and back of the lot. This would require an 1/8" drop for every foot. The total distance was close to 90 feet which came out to around 1 foot total drop from the front of the lot to the back. After doing some measuring and gauging the elevation (because I don't own a transom) I realized that in some places in the yard it was going to require up to a 30 inch deep trench. In addition, I decided to use PVC pipe instead of corrugated pipe because it was less flexible and sturdier, making it easier to place and fit together.

On Saturday I rented a trench digger. I went with a one-day rental, but since they were closed on Sunday it didn't have to be returned until this morning. We had friends in town over the weekend so I didn't plan to start digging until Sunday afternoon, when my brother Grant could come help. However, when Stephen and I returned from picking it up on Saturday morning it just looked like too much fun to pass up. Disregarding the 100F temperature and hot sun, we pulled the trench digger off the trailer and started maneuvering it over to where the trench would be. The machine weighed close to 600 lbs so having two people definitely helped. It also had no steering mechanism so moving it around required a lot of pushing and pulling.

I spray painted a line on the grass where I wanted the trench to be. We started up the machine and started digging. We quickly learned that the machine had a mind of it's own. The ground wasn't completely level so it took a lot of lifting, pulling, pushing and repositioning to keep it going in straight line. Within a couple hours we dug 90% of the trench and also managed to cut the irrigation lines in three places. The remaining 10% of the trench was in the garden area and the ground was way too soft. The machine continued to get stuck so we made an executive decision to back it out and put it back on the trailer. The rest would have to be done manually.

We woke up on Sunday morning a little bit sore, but motivated to get back in the trench. We had lunch plans and only about a half hour to dig, but we managed to get a 1 1/2 foot by 10 foot long trench dug in that time. Only 1 1/2 foot more to go. Thanks, Stephen! After lunch we said our goodbyes to Stephen and Selena. We had a really fun weekend with them! I plopped down on the couch for about an hour to catch up on Friday's Tour De France stage and waited on my brother to arrive.

At 1:30pm, my brother Grant showed up. He had a fresh set of arms and legs, which I did not. I walked him through what we had accomplished so far, what was left to do, and then we started digging the remaining 1 1/2 foot of dirt out of the trench. Once the trench was all carved out we took some measurements and inventoried what fittings we would need, then headed to Lowe's. At Lowe's we spent a lot of time on Aisle 18 looking at our options. We ended up with 100 foot of 4" PVC pipe, about 10 fittings and a big jar of PVC cement.

We returned home and started laying the pipe out next to the trench to see what would need to be cut. The idea was to dry fit as much as possible and then lay the complete pipe system down into the trench for testing. This is the point of the project where I started actually taking photos.


We connected the PVC pipe with the existing downspout and gutter system (far left photo below) as well as replaced the existing drain and pipe for the patio run off (middle photo below), then tied it into the main drain pipe. After getting about 90% of the pipe together, minus tying it into the existing drain line at the back of the lot, we decided to run some water through it to see if the gradient was steep enough and the water would flow on it's own. Score! It totally worked!! (far right photo below)


At this point we felt really good about the overall system. We only needed to disassemble it, glue all the pipe and fittings together, wait for the cement to dry and then connect it into the existing drain pipe at the back of the lot that runs down to a creek bed. We got going on the gluing, and waited a bit for it to dry. Grant needed to leave and get back to his family and I realized we needed one more fitting so I went back to Lowe's. When I returned from Lowe's, I finished up connecting the drain pipe into the existing drain pipe and then I heard thunder. I quickly started cleaning up and getting all the tool back into the garage. I could smell the rain coming, it wasn't far away. As soon as I finished cleaning up and closed the garage door the bottom dropped out and it began to pour. It rained for a good 10 minutes solid before it let up and eventually stopped. I went out to see how the new drain system worked and it appeared to work perfectly! No leaks and there was evidence that it channeled the water off the roof, down the drain pipes and to the back of the lot.


The next step is to fix the irrigation lines that I cut in the process of digging the trench. I decided to hire a professional to do that and they will be coming out tomorrow to repair them. It doesn't sound like the repairs will cost too much considering that I already have the trench dug and know where the cut lines are. I look forward to filling the trench back in and finishing the project up.

Time will tell but I feel certain I fixed the problem for good. I'm extremely sore today, and my hands are pretty beat up, but I'm happy to report that I saved us a bunch of money. Before deciding to take on the project myself I called around for some rough estimates and got quotes in the $2,500 range. I spent $160 on the trench digger, ~$120 on materials and got some wonderful free labor from friends and family. I may end up paying a couple hundred dollars to have the irrigation lines repaired but in the end the savings are still substantial! Plus, it was a lot of fun to figure it all out and implement, and I learned a lot.