If your yard holds water for days after a storm, it is rarely a mystery. The Valley is flat, the soil is heavy clay that drains slowly, and many lots were graded once at construction and never again. Add a fence line that blocks sheet flow and a downspout that dumps next to the foundation, and you have a pond.
Three common fixes
Regrading moves water by reshaping the ground so it falls away from the house and toward a safe outlet. A French drain collects subsurface water in a gravel trench with a perforated pipe and carries it away. Catch basins and channel drains capture surface water at low points and hardscape edges and pipe it out.
Most yards need a combination. The right answer depends on where the water comes from and where it can legally go.
Protect the investment
Drainage is the scope nobody sees and the one that protects everything else: foundations, concrete, turf and planting. On any new landscape, pool or hardscape project, drainage should be designed before the first truck shows up.
- Walk the yard during a storm and note where water enters and where it sits.
- Extend downspouts away from the foundation.
- Never pipe your water onto a neighbor.
Related capability
Drainage
