French drain exit

[stryped1]

I am installing a French drain between my driveway and house. The only plac e to exit the French drain is on top of the driveway. However, If the end o f the drain exits the driveway, this severely limits the depth of the Frenc h drain in order to ensure a slope toward the end if that makes sense.

My question is, I have seen pop up drain emitters. They basically look like a 4 inch 90 degree elbow with a top that pops up when water pressure is ex erted. Will a French drain product enough pressure to force the water out o f this type of emitter since water will have to travel "up hill" albeit for just the length of the elbow.

I appreciate any advice!

[trader_4]

ace to exit the French drain is on top of the driveway. However, If the end of the drain exits the driveway, this severely limits the depth of the Fre nch drain in order to ensure a slope toward the end if that makes sense.

ke a 4 inch 90 degree elbow with a top that pops up when water pressure is exerted. Will a French drain product enough pressure to force the water out of this type of emitter since water will have to travel "up hill" albeit f or just the length of the elbow.

If I understand this right, the answer is no. The governing principle here is that water has to flow from a higher place to a lower one. If you lower the French drain at the beginning of the run so that it's lower than the termination end at the driveway, then water isn't going to flow, regardless of what you put on the termination end to pop up. Addtionally, with any pop up thing like that, if it's subject to freezing, that's an issue too.

[Snuffy "Hub Cap" McKinney]

My question is, I have seen pop up drain emitters. They basically look like a 4 inch 90 degree elbow with a top that pops up when water pressure is exerted. Will a French drain product enough pressure to force the water out of this type of emitter since water will have to travel "up hill" albeit for just the length of the elbow.

I appreciate any advice!

------

Can you get one and lay it out on top of the ground with a length of pipe and test it? Gut SWAG feeling is that eventually the elbow could fill up with sediment instead of flowing out horizontally. Still might be worth a try if it's not hard to remove the pop-up and clean it out once in awhile. Completely guessing with all this.

[Moe DeLoughan]

Twenty years ago I installed French drains and set up the runs so they ran down my front slope right where the end would peek out at ground level. Then the city rebuilt the street and sewer, during which our front yards were torn up, then regraded and resodded. My outlets ended up 3-6 inches below the new grade.

I located the outlets, then ran a rototiller around them and dug out wide, gently sloped basins in the lawn to once again enable drainage. It was either that or dig up both runs and reinstall them. This was less work.

So, if you don't mind some unevenness in your lawn, you could dig out wide shallow-ish basins where your French drains will end. In normal rains, the lawn will absorb the water before the basin overflows. In heavy rains, the basin will overflow, so factor that when figuring how deep to dig the basin, and grade it so that the overflow drains away from the house. I saw photos of one guy's setup where he did this, but he made the basins into ponds, for permanent water landscape features.

[Snuffy "Hub Cap" McKinney]

A friend has a driveway that slopes down from the street and one side slightly slopes toward the house. There was an existing concrete ditch along the house that caught most of the water, but over time, it developed cracks. And also water was soaking into the ground higher up and getting around the ditch.

I helped install a French drain starting uphill from the concrete ditch and it worked very well.

Later he dug another shallow ditch about 6-inches or so deep around the edge of his yard and filled it with river rocks to look like a dry stream bed. Worked great diverting drainage out of the yard. After a few weeks of weathering, it was amazing how much it looked like a mountain stream when it rained.

[Moe DeLoughan]

I'm building a berm/ditch combo on the south side of my property to deal with the so-called "storm of the century" rain events that have now occurred four times in the past twenty-two years. The rainfall in these storms is so tremendous, a river of rainwater pours down my southerly (uphill) neighbor's hill, across my property, and smashes through a basement window, resulting in an indoor waterfall down my basement wall. The first time was an amazing fluke, I thought - but it's happened three more times now, twice in the past five years. The heck with it. The berm/ditch combo will keep the runoff from my foundation and divert it to my front (downhill) yard.