My neighbor's property runs downhill to mine and I get some water running through the cracks in the stairs of my basement hatch. My father-in-law thought that the water running down that hill was pooling at the low spot in my backyard and thought a dry well would fix it. So we built a dry well about 7-8 feet from my house and connected my backyard gutter to it as well. He assumed that if we dug down about 3-4 feet we would hit sand that would absorb the water, well we didn't hit sand only clay, but he figured it would be fine anyway so we punched some holes in the sides of plastic bottomless lining and filled it over with dirt. I added a top drain to it to further drain the area. Well the problem is that whenever we get moderate to hard rain the well overflows rendering the back gutters useless (they overflow) and what's worse is that it hasn't alleviated the water coming through the cellar stair walls. It rained hard last night and it's about 14 hours later and the well is still pretty full. Should I just dig up the well and just connect a long gutter as I was doing before? Any ideas of what I can do to draw the water away from the cellar stairs? Would regrading the dirt around the house make a difference?
- posted
17 years ago