Inexpensive Drainage To Combat Other Drainage Obstacles by: JP
Two problems I encountered when dealing with a very similar drainage problem in northern Virginia.
1. The soil is heavy yellow clay. It does not absorb water very well. The rain water seeps into the clay soil and at several different levels in the ground, it glides/slides toward the patio at the back of the house and at the basement walls.
When we have a heavy rain storm, this clay cannot and will not absorb the water. Thus, the intensified streams of water sliding toward the house caused basement flooding through the walls and upward from underneath the basement floor where the floor meets the walls.
2. My back yard has 10 large oak trees, six of which are 70- to 80-feet tall. Tree roots run near the surface of the soil and the tops of some large roots stick out of the soil. I could not put in submerged drainage piping of any kind without destroying the roots, and eventually the large shade trees.
Storm rain water drained toward the house/patio from a 12-inch high at the back of the yard. This is a north-south direction. As a last resort, I dug drainage ditches laterally (in an east-west direction) a few feet out from the patio and the back of the house. I disguised the trenches by planting small root azaleas and other small plants around the patio and the back of the house on slightly raised beds that drain away from the patio and the house into the trenches. These ditches or trenches resemble the trenching gardeners do to separate flower/plant beds from grass to make mowing and trimming grass easier. I mulched the beds. The trenches look neat and a part of the formal landscaping.
The trenches are only 6- to 8-inches wide and two- to four-inches deep. They can be dug to go around large roots and other obstacles. The trenches must continually slope downward away from the high point where water first enters. The trenches run the water off to the sides of my house, down the front lawn and driveway, and out to the street gutter.
In a nutshell, the system works. We have several heavy rain storms each year. However, since I installed the trenches 7 years ago, I have not had any water leak into my basement.
Each early spring I take care to run through the trenches with garden tools to remove accumulated leaf and twig debris. At least once a month during the summer I make sure the trenches are clear. A little work, but just a part of the annual garden cleanup.
It is a lot cheaper than repeatedly dealing with a flooded basement. My neighbors have spent thousands of dollars to install basement water control systems,including pumps, to deal with the same problem.
