If you have an unusually wet property, this time of year might be your least favourite.
Even though the sun is out and every day is a little warmer than the last, all you can think about is the saturation in your back yard and the moisture pushing in on the foundation of your home.
The soil on your property is like a sponge – it can only absorb so much water. When it hits the limit, the water does things you don’t want. Your basement floods, your landscape erodes – generally bad stuff happens.
But it doesn’t have to!
You can control the way water moves around your property. Ditch your dread of spring with a ditch (we did that on purpose) that acts like a gutter and downspout inside the soil in your yard.
Install a drainage trench in your yard that collects the excess water and transports it to the lowest part of your land, away from your home and expensive landscaping.
Thousands of gallons of water probably flow downslope in the soil toward and through your property. You need to collect and channel it just like a gutter collects snowmelt or rain.
All you need to build is a simple trench that can be anywhere from 2 feet to 10 feet deep.
The most important factor dictating the depth of your trench is:
The trench relies on gravity to move water, so you need enough fall (drop from the top of the trench to the bottom of the trench) to make sure the water flows through the trench to the lowest part of your property.
You need:
The trench should run in a line that protects your yard, your foundation and your basement. It’s a defensive substructure. An L or U-shape might work best, if your property slopes at multiple angles.
The trench should become level right at the lowest point on your property. It should look natural where it meets level ground.
Water always takes the path of least resistance.
After your trench is dug:
Since the stone is easier for water to get through than smaller, denser sand or clay particles, that’s where it’ll go.
The trench can be as thin as 6 inches and it’ll still do a great job.
Now you have a trench with a pipe and some drainage stone or peastone wrapped in fabric.
Take some of the material you excavated and cover the last inch or so of trench, then pack it down lightly with your hand tamper.
Don’t get too vigorous – it doesn’t happen often, but some homeowners crush their new drainage pipes by getting aggressive with the packing.
It’s a job you can complete in a single day and will help your family avoid thousands of dollars in repairs from a flooded basement or washed out landscape.
Grab the stone you need (we’ll help you figure out exactly how much you should get) from us today so you have all the supplies ready to get your trench done this weekend.
Call Grand River Natural Stone or stop by to talk to a member of our team. We’ll get you started off right.