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"This system works great." Your backyard, to scale, is only flooding like crazy while your pipe is emitting drops at a time, but hey, it *technically* works! No, this does not work great. It's slow and ineffective. No homeowner wants to invest so much effort just for a weak french drain system to emit what may as well be a gallon of water an hour. If anything this enforces the concept that is you don't want ANYTHING to impede the air voids created within the stone of a proper french drain system. You want as much air as possible to allow water to flow more quickly.

You dug a trench saturated with tree roots and throwing in regular black corrugated pipe back into the hole. That french drain is guaranteed to clog within a year's worth of rain due to the lack of protection from tree roots infiltrating the system and growing a MASS of roots inside of it. That's the whole point of using non-woven geotextile fabric, and in some particular cases, ensuring it's lined with copper as a deterrent for major root growth into the investment you worked hard to put together. If it doesn't fall apart, now you're forced to maintain a system that will constantly fail on you every year and subscribe to otherwise unnecessary pipe cleaning services when you could've done it properly with the fabric and large gravel stone and create a far more reliable system.

Sorry, but it looks terrible! It may perform well, but the poured concrete doesn't look nice and smooth!

Hey Chuck, I'm really appreciate your knowledge and share with us the solve water problems but how i know if I'm deep enough under the hard pan ?

All of my yard is clay. What can I use to dig to the hard pan? No matter what I use, shovel, post hole digger, etc. , I cannot get below 13 inches or so. That clay is like cement!

Terrible !!!

Sir, you definitely are a genius in my eyes! Unfortunately, I live in a subdivision and where I am experiencing a soggy area of my lawn is at the fence line with my next door neighbor. He likes to run his irrigation system way too long and it always floods one area of my yard. Unfortunately I can't dig too deep because there is a gas line. I would have to have a horizontal type of drainage system

So what if you have a downpour and it fills up? Still will have standing water just as before.

This 100% works... I'm in Wollongong, Australia, near a mountain and also near the sea - we get a lot of rain and the soil here is rubbish (lots of clay) with debris washed down from the mountain. My backyard was forever boggy, it would rain and then stay a bog for days which meant the kids couldn't really use it. I dug about 20 of these vertical drains 1m apart using a cordless digger (Ryobi) and hand shovel and did exactly the method chuck described with the fabric and gravel then grass on top - his videos are what inspired me to do this, and low and behold, next big rain fall, ground is wet but no longer boggy... the grass looks much healthier, there is no longer slippery muddy bits. The only thing I did different was I added new store-bought garden soil under the grass vs re-using the rubbish soil I had - so add another $10 for a few bags of garden soil. I also did this for where our gas hot water heater had its overflow onto the ground - it was going literally no where but onto the ground near the house so I bought a small drain pan with an outlet from ebay, piped it in to a re-purposed crate bought from a hardware shop and surrounded with gravel + fabric- again, works great, the water from the hot water flows into the pan, then into the pipe and then into the bigger soak-away down into the ground - we no longer have a bog next to our house! I've done AG (french drains) in our yard too and they work for areas you can pipe water "somewhere" but where you can't, this is great and totally recommended - just take your time with it, use the right tools and do it right the first time vs rushing to get it done "now".

I am in NC and will be having a French drain installed. I’ve watched your videos in depth and love them. You mentioned in this video that you used to NOT put fabric in the French drain and now use Sta-Green. My landscaper does not use fabric so will this be ok or should I insist on Non-Woven fabric to prevent future clogging?

I have clay and it has never been in the form of a powder! It's more like what you would make a pot out of. How would you even make a powder out of clay??

What about a vertical perferaded pipe and fill with gravel

Chuck in a truck your doing it again

I guess we need a video showing how to remove a drain line like that. It's not a straight line. 15 yrs seems like a short time.

Does this help during a heavy rain event?

Does the pipe have holds?

So it sits in the drain pipe and settles in the earth..? Just curious

😂😂😂😂😂

great video

BTDT. Especially on older yards with a bunch of roots 😊

Seems like a shovel would have cut it quicker.

Depending on the size of the cut and if there's any slack in the existing tubing, you can make one cut and fix it with one barb

If shovel can cut fast and right trough, why waste time with that scissor thing, just use a shovel!

Home Day Po . =)

No insulation? Yall in the south?

Why not put the crate in upside down then you won't need any gravel at all. The fabric on top and sides keep the dirt out just the same as if there were gravel inside. And the mesh pattern of the crate supports the fabric as well. YOu might want to put a small amount of gravel on the bottom to keep the crate elevated above the dirt.

Use dish soap.

That message at the end 👌

Always trench slowly!!!

Great video

I say it’s a good idea. Maybe go deeper on hole. This is good on sandy soil but if it’s clay it might not work

Instead of fabric and stones, can I replace with a vertical pvc pipe?

Great videos, you make sense when explaining.

Why not an overflow valve at the bottom? I would think it'd make it easier to clean in addition to lowering the water level putting one at the bottom. I don't have one, nor know anyone but the recent drought here in SW Virginia has me thinking about getting one. I walked around the house looking at downspout locations just yesterday.

Nice description of a problem that is very easy to fix. All designs are tradeoffs of something, and many features come with unexpected side effects. Good design does not stop with deployment. Continuous improvement is the way to get a better set of problems over time. The immediate solution here is just to install an overflow of some sort and route the excess elsewhere. It's not rocket science.

What about a 4" hole at the bottom where you pass the overflow through (sealed with some type of flange and epoxy or your sealant of choice) then elbow it 90° up and run the pipe vertically to about an inch or two below the lid. Then when the water gets that high it will just drain out through the overflow inside the barrel. This all hinges of course on how well you're able to seal the hole where the pipe goes through the wall of the barrel. If you mess up, you ruin your rain barrel.

Hi Chuck I installed 3 vertical drains, it looks like a winner. Thanks

I made sure my 75 gallon barrels had an outlet barb for an overflow discharge. Some I daisy chained and others I put a hose on it to drain away with some feeding my gravity irrigation tubing into the gardens.

What if your lawn has a high water table ?

what if you have a high water table ?

Good video but is that too much water fora French Drain?

Good video showing how to fix the problem 👍

Great Video!!!

Yes! FRENCH DRAIN SCIENCE IS a Apple Drains Company

Shows how well that coupling works!!

Would this be useful 2ft from a foundation or is that too close?

Great guy

I don't understand the double well point, it just puts more holes above the bottom of the well, if the water level gets low it will start sucking air sooner, and the pump can only handle so much water that one well point should be able to supply.

Great idea if you have the time