EZ-DRAIN From The Home Depot vs Stone French Drain Part 1 of 3

NDS EZ-Drain vs a Stone French DrainEZ-Drain versus an all stone French drain. I’m going to do a quick review on that so that people know what to expect out of the NDS EZ-Drain product. Now as you can see, this is bought by the way at The Home Depot.  So if you want to know where to get this product, have you have a use for it, it’s at The Home Depot and it’s $45. Here in Michigan, it was $45 plus tax for a 10-foot piece of this EZ-Drain from NDS.

I want to compare it to the stone drains that we built. Well, as you can see, I have some EZ-Drain at the bottom of this trench and if we cover that up with dirt and that’s the level I have to be at to get good drainage here. We covered that up with dirt. It’s not going to take in any water.

Now NDS does make basically it’s a bag of this styrofoam with no pipe for filler that you can lay on top. Now I already got $90 plus sales tax and a connector in this little stretch here. So by the time you buy all these sections, now let’s just get right down to it. What’s going to work better? What is gonna work better? The EZ-Drain? Or if we filled this up with all stone.

Well, let me start by saying I love NDS. I use a lot of their products. I wanna make sure I make that clear and I love what they do. So I’m not throwing them under the bus. I just, I’m having trouble understanding if you have the ability to dig this channel, if you have the ability to excavate and move all this dirt to do it right, then why do you not have the ability to put the stone in?

In the advertisement they show a guy carrying a bunch of these on his shoulder just walking on a job site, making it look like it’s really easy. Well wait a minute, isn’t the excavation 75 percent of the work? So if you’re, if you have the physical ability to pickax and dig a trench like this, or if you have the equipment to excavate a trench like this, then why don’t you have the ability to build a stone drain.

So I could see where in a courtyard in the middle of a high rise, where you were wheelbarrowing through a lobby.  If you could repurpose the dirt inside the courtyard, this stuff would have its place. I see where this material, again, I don’t want to throw NDS under the bus. I would use this in certain situations. But just for the general purpose, yard drains, stone versus EZ-Drain. The stone drain is gonna work much, much better.

Now, this connection is the biggest flaw in the product. So you fill this and dirt surrounds the connection. Well, now you’ve got a dam in the bottom of your trench. We shoot this with a laser level. So at the water flows out. How’s that gonna work with this product? NDS, you got something going on here? I’m, I’m not against it. I just see where it some improving. Let’s start with making a coupler connector that’s velcroed full of your styrofoam peanuts so the water keeps flowing and doesn’t get choked down and have to rise and backup in this trench to get up into the pipe. So that’s, that’s a big flaw right there.

I’d like to see the material that they make out of. It’s really soft. It’s really spongy. I don’t know if you can see that, but when you step on it now, sure, when we pack dirt around it, it won’t be able to push out like that as much. But most of my clients, that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to stiffen up the backyard. It’s too spongy. It’s too soft.

I guess in closing, there’s nothing that beats the real deal. A stone French drain will always win.

For more information on a French drain system installed right the first time, give us a call at 248-505-3065.