Any ideas to fix this issue?

The yard slopes towards the flowerbed, which sets about 3 feet above the sidewalk you see on the far right. This one area floods and water sits until it evaporates if it rains, I water the yard, or I water the flower bed. The retaining wall does have pipes on the streetside for water to drain, and they do flow sometimes for several days after heavy rains when the yard itself appears otherwise normal. There's a lot of clay.

The yard sits a few feet higher than the sidewalk. The wall is a mortarered stacked stone with some PVC pipes placed in it for drainage. Then there's a small patch of grass (pipes open to the wall and the drainage seeps into this small patch b/w the wall and sidewall)>sidewalk>grass>curb>street.

Either lower entire flowerbed grade to flow over wall if there is slope. If not, then inlets and regrade that entire area of grass and solid pipe under/through/around retaining wall to a discharge point. Where are you located?

Small rock lined trenches to alleviate and possibly remove one of the stacked rocks at each trench to daylight?

Cue the "but I did stay at a HI Express last night", but the PVC pipes at bottom of retaining wall are likely in place to prevent an accumulation of water behind the retaining wall that would push the retaining wall out. Think of this as a pressure relief valve for the retaining wall going against the natural drainage pattern.\

Any reason not to cut swells in between the bushes planted that would potentially allow for directly flowing water from yard, through bushes and into retaining wall area?

I would take the approach that unless originally designed as part of the lots drainage plan, then any occurrence of a subsequently policy would indicate a bad plan for failed plan.

Frisco. Submitted a warranty request this AM to builder. Nearly 2 years in home but they've been known to do stuff 10 years afterwards so I figured it can't hurt to ask!

Consider putting a French drain in the low spot, and then teeing it off 5o an exit on the other side of the flower bed.

Incoming magnolia scold.

Why does everybody want to put a French drain to handle surface water. You want to wait for the water to soak through the grass, then enter the pipe, and then slowly flow out? There just so happens to be a way to dry up surface runoff right away and not have to wait 2 days after a big rain.

mAgnoliAg said:

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Why does everybody want to put a French drain to handle surface water. You want to wait for the water to soak through the grass, then enter the pipe, and then slowly flow out? There just so happens to be a way to dry up surface runoff right away and not have to wait 2 days after a big rain.

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I have a huge one on the side of my lot, and after a toad straggler, the standing water is gone in an hour or two.

Is it just a shallow slotted ADS pipe with gravel in the trench?

Magnolia, you think people actually know what a French drain is??

I personally think most people are visualizing the catch basin with PVC to the curb when saying French drain. Instead of the technical term of the ****ting corrugated porous pipe and rock to allow ground water to leak into. Just my opinion though.

mAgnoliAg said:

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Is it just a shallow slotted ADS pipe with gravel in the trench?

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Mine is about a 4 inch corrugated pipe covered in gravel, placed a couple of inches under the sod. It's not exposed gravel, but still drains pretty fast from what I can see. Now, if you want water to drain the second it hits a lot spot, I'm sure there are better options.

Cromagnum said:

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mAgnoliAg said:

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Is it just a shallow slotted ADS pipe with gravel in the trench?

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Mine is about a 4 inch corrugated pipe covered in gravel, placed a couple of inches under the sod. It's not exposed gravel, but still drains pretty fast from what I can see. Now, if you want water to drain the second it hits a lot spot, I'm sure there are better options.

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Yeah is it new? They have a fairly short lifespan because of silting and dirt movement causing corrugated pipe to flex and lose the slope it originally had.

Now to be fair we do put these types of drains in the ground but usually it is for seepage below a retaining wall footer on the bottom side and we use N12 slotted (smooth inside corrugated outside). And almost always we also put solid SDR pipe in the same trench with the inlets attached to that and backfill whole trench with gravel.

7-8 years old right now.

Builder's warranty guy stopped by today and said they'll fix it.

Not shown in the pic is behind me the bed slopes down in the corner of the yard (as does the retaining wall). He said they'll likely put a trap in the area and pipe it out to the corner.

Closing this loop. Irrigation company came by this AM. He looked at it for about 1 minute and said "this isn't a lot drainage issue - you have water flowing to this spot from somewhere".

Went and got his shovel - within 1 minute of poking it in the ground he found the pool overflow drain line and dug up the exit head. It had sunk down under the surface.

Problem 1 - need to get that raised.

Root cause/problem 2 - pool overflowing. I think the autofill valve/floatie is set so that it doesn't shut off water until after it has reached a height that is going into the overflow drain. My guess is that during the big freeze earlier this year it bent the arm of the flotation valve to the point it doesn't shut off soon enough.

Overall should be easy fixes. The irrigation guy said it probably only impacts teh water bill $10 - $20 a month so not noticeable, but that slow steady trickle is plenty to flood the area since it basically never ends.