Browse Forums Landscape & Garden Design 1 Jul 20, 2015 4:52 pm Hi all,
==============Skip this part if you don't want to read my boring story=================== I'm hoping to get some helpful answers and this has been a frustration of mine for months but I'm determined to fix it on my own(labor wise) hopefully by not making any further mistakes and listening to all the advice available To clarify alot of it probably looks d'odgy as and would have alot of landscapers shaking there head. I'm sorry in advance this has been all new to me and I've learnt alot from mistakes along the way so please don't criticise me too much. I moved into my house one year ago and the builder had left the yard a complete mess with the slope of the yard pointing towards the house. It was a thick clay soil and at one stage had a foot of water lining up the side of the house. My first priority was to get some 'landscaping' done so I could have grass for my dogs and myself to enjoy. I ended up having a very crap result with the landscaper(the guy who done my driveway), installing massive pits to 'direct' the water into and pipes to exit the yard. my yard pretty much slopes from west to east and i have a concrete footpath which dam's one side of they yard. Needless to say the drain pipes slopped back towards the yard, they were not dug deep enough and i have water trapped next to the pit with the pit becoming a bug haven. Needless to say it was also killing of my palmetto(so far its a mixed bag for wear n tear with the dogs in which I've later switch across to sir walter with much better results). He also did not slope my yard correctly and again my yard still sloped towards to house ==============Read from here =================== So I thought stuff this!!! I would research how to install drainage and go from there. I came across an American bloke on youtube discussing french drains and thought fantastic it seems easy enough so I went ahead and removed the pits, made a french drain and had to be careful enough with my landscaping so it could exit the yard with a positive slope away(the pipe probably was 180mm deep at best before it exited under the concrete footpath I installed). This was the result(at the time near the garage I had pup's so don't mind the bare patches and the d'odgy wire fencing lol. This was all across late nov-early jan when there was a break in weather. Originally My mistake however was only having one small(restricted by the pipe depth to allow positive flow) yard drain rather than several along the pipe as again my entire landscaping still was not the best and if we did have a heavy rain it needed to drain. Within 24 hours everything was dry as a bone again under moderate rain but still a big improvement compared to previous. I thought all good. Then come about mid march we had massive rains..... Failures that occured: Rear Side Because I had no proper open drains I thought again stuff this I need to trench in something else which does work....... Just it takes on a massive amount of run off which I will later expand on: Fix There is a second run of agpipe towards the front of the yard to deal with the drainage at the back Next step was finding out why I was getting so much 'rain' hitting my yard Found this behind my western fence and some other trenches Informed the neighbour about the issue and his had lanscaping done within a week. However I believe its just went from north to south with one socked agpipe without any plastic which still causes run off across my grass(big flow off a retaining wall straight into a lower agpipe that is most likely relatively straight). So to address my unused garden bed and some run off that was coming off the side of the house and from rear corner I dug out clay and put in a garden bed along with sort of a natural dug out drain along the fence(surrounded by clay) and I filled with blue metal which drains down to the bottom of my yard straight to a exit pipe Gardenbed Fix After some heavy rains this has worked really well. My next issue has been though the water run off that's happening at the western part of my yard. I Believe the rear neighbours landscaping has probably solved any of 'his yards' run off however that ag pipe off the retaining wall is still leaking straight into my yard. I based this on that fact that the further south I walk(further away from the agpipe source) the more stable the grass I do not want to put in another garden bed or a retaining block setup. My thought was to dig out a trench right along the fence and make a french drain of it to then go down the smaller side of my house(the south side on the photo) and end up draining straight into a garden bed at the front of my house. My question is whats the best way to make sure the run off soaks into the drain if I returf over the top. At the moment its just getting too much saturation and continues to keep that part of my yard boggy(as pictured). It is not like its a flowing river but I think the soil/grass is getting too overwhelmed and allows run off to happen so much easier compared to if it was just my own yard natural fall to deal with(hopefully I make sense). Here is how is currently stands: The second picture is with a wide enough french drain dug out filled with blue metal and a sandy loam with turf layed back over the top so my theory is it can take all of the rear 'run off' and the rest of my drainage can focus on whats naturally coming into my yard to deal with. If you have read this and can make sense of it and reply I would like to THANKYOU SO MUCH in advance . Thanks people Re: Sorting out yard overflow(drainage advice) 2Jul 21, 2015 1:52 pm Hi parralegend, I love a good drainage story but could you turn some of those pictures the right way up? It doesn't look like you're in Melbourne by the look of the mountain behind you. I can't offer you any advice but I thought I would bump this for you in case somebody who can reads it. Re: Sorting out yard overflow(drainage advice) 3Jul 21, 2015 2:21 pm Thanks Liliana it should hopefully be fixed now. This is 48 hours after any rain has touched the yard up-towards the top of my fence. Although it was taken at night and I haven't got the best of eyes I swear it looked like it was slightly flowing. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Sorting out yard overflow(drainage advice) 4Jul 21, 2015 4:12 pm Following this as I will be doing landscaping soon and this information will come in handy. Thanks for sharing! Re: Sorting out yard overflow(drainage advice) 5Jul 22, 2015 1:18 pm If i can offer any advice, it is research every aspect that can affect you. I just wanted a lawn to play with the dogs.... How wrong I was about the whole concept of rolling out turf and having a beer haha Much a do about nothing. You can see the fall heading to the actual drains. Stormwater ingress will be minimal and it's far better to have the top sitting flush rather… 12 6237 Thanks for that, the PVC pipe is still about 40cm below ground level and it sticks out of the sand with no end cap or anything on it just open pipe, is this the finished… 2 10459 can someone with more experience give me their insight? land is pretty much flat its pretty much at the top of a hill. left and right neighbours are flat in line with my… 0 7465 |