What Happens When You Dam a Stream

Dam in Stream causing Yard Drainage ProblemsI want to show you guys something for two reasons. One, the lowest sprinkler in your sprinkler system will run like this for a very, very long time until it empties all the pipe. So if you’re not a flat yard, so you’ve got to the walkout basement, you might have a wet spot because of your sprinkler system when it shuts off and it just runs until it empties out all the lines. You can actually have your sprinkler company come out and they could put a check valve on that so it keeps the lines full for you.

Now, I was called out on this job because this was all wet and saturated in through here. I’m gonna take you through this because I see this a lot and most people actually have a hard time believing it. This water came up from the ground and you’re going to see what looks to be almost like oil on water. You can see like a mirror and some rainbow colors. That tells me this wasn’t surface water. This water came up from the ground. And the homeowner is telling me this problem has been like this for years and it’s been moving around on him and he was just trying to nail down what it could be.

Now I’m walking this and you’re seeing it in real-time as I’m seeing it. I’m seeing this trench that the homeowner has been digging to try to get this water to this little creek. But when you look over here, you’re going to see why this water is coming up out of the ground. The brook is damned and no, I’m not saying cut the trees down and get rid of this little water feature, but he needs to put in a dry creek bed to keep it.

Anytime you live on a stream or a creek or a brook and then you go ahead and you throw a bunch of boulders and you dam it because you want to create this really nice sounding little water feature that’s naturally there, you end up with a yard drainage problem. I see it all the time. I get called out on these jobs and they are like, what could it be? What could it be? I mean, the whole yard, this water just keeps popping up everywhere. Anytime you dam a creek, brook, stream on your property, trust me, that water is going to pop up in that backyard somewhere and it’s going to be hard to mow the grass is can be really soft.

This was something that nature caused. As these trees got older and bigger, it just got worse and the gentleman had me out because he heard about me and he figured that I might be able to help him. It’s a problem he’s had for a couple of decades.

Until the next video.