Rochester, Michigan French Drain Installation – Oakland County
We’re in Rochester, Michigan installing a French drain system. Homeowner called, said that he was having problems with his backyard, the water. His children couldn’t come out here and play. They would end up getting all wet, come in muddy. So we designed a French drain system.
The lots behind the street that we’re working on are all much higher. So, they’re taking their water as well, this is common –to take on water from your neighbors. Whether it’s this side or whether it’s behind your lot.
Now the reason why I’m making this video, somebody else had already put in a French drain. Sadly, they didn’t used any stone – very little. We’re going to cut this pipe out because it ain’t doing anything. They wrapped fabric around it and poured a little pea stone on it. We came across it in two spots, didn’t even know it was here. There it is again, just some small pea stone around a pipe.
That actually is the wrong fabric anyways, wrapped around it. Completely just setup to fail, to be honest, from day one. You have to remove more dirt than that. You have to add a lot of stone. We use a 6A, it’s a courser rock. We will remove a lot of top soil. Dump truck loads of heavy clay and fill it all in with drainage stones. The more stone, the better the drain. It’s that simple.
Now we are running parallel drains in this yard the reason for that. A french drain will absorb water from 3′ on either side of the drain. So we’re 3′ off the retaining wall and we measured between trenches, We’re going to dry this yard up with two pipes.
This is a gravity system, we did not have to do a pump system. We have the fall, that’s what’s nice. We’re going to gravity feed this right out to the street. And we are going to bury a couple of down spouts. And we’re just going to put in the pop ups since we don’t want to tie them into the French drain. We want this to be a contained system. We don’t want shingle gravel in it, we don’t want leaves in it. And this trench is going to continue out to this basin. There is a good 18 inches of drop, I mean we have enough slope, we’re going to be able to grab and drain all of that water out of here.
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So for a French drain that last decades — after 30 years of building this I don’t have an expiration on our French drains. They last, they are built to last. Please give us a call at 248-505-3065. Thank you.