Hey folks,

Wife and I just bought a late 50's home (one story), so the yard/grade is already established. The previous owners removed the gutters, so I am need a plan of attack to control run off. Currently water is pooling and collecting around the house on two sides and not draining. At times during heavy rain water rises over the slab onto the brick veneer, luckily there are no weep holes so water has not breeched, yet! The lot is flat, not much grade, and if anything a slight negative grade back to the home.

Plan of attack: Have appropriately sized gutters installed with down spouts. I want to install catch basins and have down spouts directly flow into the basins, from there I will trench and run non-perforated thin walled irrigation pipe to the curb where I will bore and have the run off outflow into the street and to storm drain.

Here are my concerns: The catch basins I'm finding have outlets about 4-6'' from the top. I need to run pipe from the basin to the outlet in the curb, this is not a short distance. I need to measure, but I estimate at least a 50 foot run to the curb, assuming 1/4 per foot for slope I need about a foot of drop from the basin. Assuming the basin outlet is already about 6'' below grade I need ~18'' of drop from the basin. I really don't think I have that much distance in the grade for that kind of drop. What is the most appropriate way to run a drain over a long distance? Is there a device of piece I'm over looking? Im really not interested in any large scale under ground storage that slowly percolates back into the soil, but if that is the only way I'll consider. Also, we have a few large oaks that drop an insane amount of leaves, what is the best type of basin cover, I assume wide grate rather than a fine mesh like cover.

Any thoughts are welcome!

I had a similar issue, with almost perfectly flat lot and long distance to the street/drop off and drain.

a very wise poster on here once said, "solving drainage problems is an iterative process".

you need to follow that advice and not assume your first attempt will work.

Anyway, over a very labor intensive 4 month period i built a very nice combo dry stream/flagstone walking path that is working pretty well and looks really good.

I feel your pain but believe the iterative process advice is what you need to follow for best chance of a working solution.

also, if you have pics it might help get better ideas on here.

If you are open to the dry stream idea i can send pics or i may have posted in here a few years ago.

Good luck as it is hard to make water go where it does not want to go.

I'd love to see some pictures. Will probably be doing something similar myself.

We had similar draining problems at our past home. We installed gutters and backyard slope directed into drain basins and front yard we had cobble stone dry beds installed to break water flow and disperse.

Luckily we had a lot of slope to work with. However the parallel runs behind the house were tricky.

One thing I did learn was to shop somewhere other than blue/orange box store. Their catch basins are kind of a 1 size fits all approach. Landscape specific and plumbing stores have basins that have 4 different outlet levels. You just turn the square to accommodate where you are in the slope.

Another thing we did was put some concrete in the bottom of the basin, up to the drain outlet and kind of form a rough U in the middle. This prevents sediment build up/ stinky sludge and mosquito habitat. I'll post some pics here later.

Catch basin and sump pump with electrical run to it?

barnacle bob said:

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Also, we have a few large oaks that drop an insane amount of leaves, what is the best type of basin cover, I assume wide grate rather than a fine mesh like cover.

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You need to use bee-hive type covers if you expect a lot of debris. Something like this

If all you want to do is take the downspouts out, then why not just connect them straight to pipe and then discharge? If you want to get all the water off the area, and do it right, then inlets/catch basins to discharge into tank and pump. This is all assuming you have 12" to Street.

You also are not accounting for where you have to set the inlets/catch basins. They cannot be at grade. They have to be minimally 3" below current grade. Then, grade for flow into them.

I've seen several homes with 1K rainwater tanks on the back side of the home. The tanks were hidden by shrubbery. The whole structure was guttered to drain to the rear, where it dumped into the tanks. One had sump pumps in each tank, with a float switch set at 80% of height. The water was pumped into 6" pipe running to the ditch out front. The lines came out of the top so it had gravity assistance to drain. The remaining 80% was kept for landscape usage.
Assuming 2K ft sq of roof, that's 1200 gal for a 1" rain event.
Two 1K tanks would cover that plus some for landscape use during dry times.

Very good suggestions!

I want to do it right so it seems like I really need to figure out my max grade and go from there.

My main concern is getting the water off property. I had never considered a sump pump, so this seems like the most effective solution, provided I spec the system accordingly.

Acorns and a ton of leaves will be an issue for the system and I'm not interested standing watch at every rain to clear clogs. Looking into a sewage pump/ejector to handle larger solid matter than a sump (for example zoeller m267). These can handle 2" material. It's more up front cost, but if this (or similar) can handle my estimated volume without constant cycling, it seems like the way to go and not worry about clogging.

Shur-flo gutter guards work great.

Where are you located?

Houston, west side of town

If water is seriously stacking up against the bricks, above slab elevation, you to call an engineer like yesterday. And they are probably going to tell you to regrade the yard with positive drainage. And then you need to do what they say.

sellthefarm said:

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If water is seriously stacking up against the bricks, above slab elevation, you to call an engineer like yesterday. And they are probably going to tell you to regrade the yard with positive drainage. And then you need to do what they say.

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I don't think he ever said the grade level is above that level, he just said the water is stacking up there so as long as he takes care of that he's good. However if the grade level is up to that then yes it has to be lowered

There was previously a pool, but it was totally removed in the recent past. There is a slight crown to the yard with some negative grade, but not severe. I only get high water in heavy rain events, mainly due to unguttered roof line.

There is an existing (poorly designed) system in place on one side of the property. The more I look into it the more I think I can properly place catch basins and run drain lines to a sump and connect to existing outlet.

I was hesitant to use the existing system because the inlets are inadequate and it doesn't address my current problem area. But more importantly, I didn't have enough depth to properly grade from problem to existing outlet. With a sump I think I can make everything work! I had not consider that before, great suggestion!

Does anyone have insight into using submersable sewage pump for a sump system? This will allow for larger matter, that is bound to get in there, to be pumped out.

I'll post some pics this weekend.

We use liberty pumps sewage pump 4/10 hp or 3/4 hp

Just curious if you still intended to post pictures...