driveway problem

My house is a ranch with a garage (under) and driveway with very little pitch to the street. Worse yet, there's a 2-3" "lip" where the driveway meets the street - resulting in very large puddles which cover about 1/2 of the driveway (at the street end) whenever we get heavy rain.

The driveway needs to be repaved, but I want to make sure that the water problem gets addressed. I can't pitch it sufficiently from the garage to street because of limited clearance at the garage end.

I've had 2 paving contractors and one DPW engineer from the town look the problem - all 3 suggest putting in a trench drain to a dry well. The 2 paving guys would put it near the street, but the DPW engineer suggested putting it at the garage end. He suggested creating a "hump" about 1/3 of the way from the street to create enough pitch to the street - the pitch back to the house would be caught by the trench drain. His thought was that this was better than putting the drain right where the puddle forms as this would also catch run-off from the street and likely not drain well enough. Seems to make sense - my only concern is allowing water to drain towards the garage.

Any thoughts and/or experience with trench drains??

Thanks in advance.

Reply to
Walsh
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I vote with the majority, of course I don't get to see the actual problem. I also don't like anything that moves water towards the house. If the drain clogs for any reason you have a bigger problem.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

How about 2 drains and no hump.

Reply to
Art

If you can't find a hill to run that water down it isn't going away. Do you have storm drains and can you drain your "trench" there? Otherwise it sounds like you are building a pool in front of your garage if that "drain" fails.

Reply to
Greg

"Walsh" wrote

I had a similar problem with my drive, same type of house. Water would run back towards the doors, but would seep down between the garage floor & drive. I have a sump pump with footer drains around the house, you could hear the water running into the drains when you would wash the car. Wasn't a bad problem until winter, the freeze/thaw would raise the garage floor, and the doors would go back up when using the door opener.

Had no less than 8 contractors look at the drive when I was ready to go from asphalt to concrete. Some never got back to me about correcting the problem. Some said they would put a grate across the front of drive with it draining into the sump. One fella stood out. He brought a tripod, rotary laser level and a pole. One guy held the pole at one end of drive, the other set up the tripod with the rotary laser, they did both sides. Come to find out, I had a 2" fall to street on one side, and a 6" fall on the other side. It's because there is a small hill out front. My drive was never put in correctly the first time, and was sloped towards the house, but to the eye it looked like it was sloped towards the street. Needless to say, this fella got the job of doing the concrete.

Unless potentials contractors or the engineer had the proper tools instead of eyeing it up, I would keep searching for the one contractor that stands out.

Reply to
Kirby

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