Read the title and thought you'd be correcting another contractor's installation. Good on you for highlighting the issues you encounter rather than pretending that every job is a great success with 100% customer satisfaction.
I think a lot of people sometimes have unreal expectations that don't align with reality. They wish something so hard that they don't really hear anything said that might negatively interfere with what they want to happen. I think you did the best you could with what you had to work with.
Thank you for making this video, highlighting the jobs that don’t work out is more instructive for people watching along, than showcasing the ones that do. I run into this routinely doing tree work in rural areas. A guy with 20 acres and a tractor thinks it’s going to be no big deal to cut up two massive oak trees. So they pay me just to get them to the ground and not do any cleanup. Halfway through the job, they see the astonishing magnitue of the mess and… you can guess the rest. (Trees visibly quadruple in size and volume when they hit the ground.) Describing the result of your work in explicit detail never truly prepares them for seeing it actually occur. Which is precisely what happened here.
I think the "problem water, was moved to a MUCH less of a problem area that where it was originally. Not even sure what the issue was, especially after extending the outfall. I say it was a great solution. There is not always a 100% solution. But, there is most often choosing to divert to a lesser of the two problem areas.... Great content Shawn! And great to see Ronald out there!!!!
I guess the lesson learned here is that you stick to your rules! Let another company deal with the issue instead of you. Thanks for making the video so we can learn these lessons! 1) Identify the problem water 2) Get that problem water into a pipe 3) Remove the problem water
For tricky jobs like this I would recommend writing any potential issues into the contract that the customer signs. It's one thing to tell them verbally over and over again, but if it's written right in the contract then I feel they would spend more time considering it.
That is a tough situation. I thought maybe diverting the outflow into a couple of smaller pipes and fanout the discharge but that's nothing more than an experiment rather than an iron clad solution. I think trying to please the customer is the hardest part of the job. Being able to maintain a good customer relationship is a honed skill. I watched the original job when you posted it.
Keep making videos like this. Well really i hope you don't have more jobs like this. You were correct on everything that you cautioned the homeowner about. Solution would have been to turn the job down unless they agree to concessions that would make it a successful job.
You did the best... Given the past work etc, no hard feelings is good, I would just be sure to note it all within the paperwork etc etc that its a one for the other (im sure you have it all in fine print anyway ) Still looks great I dont recall the Original However that client must be in the upper scale of areas w all that fancy landscaping around & the rock walls of the house. And Yes for the content - This goes to show the complexity of after effects and previous work as well
As others have commented, my thought would be a dry-well/storage pond sized to handle most storms and let them soak in over time, and let it disperse over a wider area when it does overflow in a big storm.
not that this is feasible, but would it have been physically possible to have the back gutter merge with the gutters in front by running a pipe along the side of the house to dump into the front pipe? I'm not sure i'd have done it aesthetically, just curious about the frontn pipe's carrying capacity
It's a shame more people don't take the time to go look at property during and after a huge rain event before they invest in it to see how the land disperses water. If you have no good place to send the water (and you live in a state that doesn't prevent your neighbors from sending their water into your yard), then you're going to have to settle with moving the discharge further from the house/foundation. I think the solution at which you arrived is the best one.
Sean, I think an option you may consider for something like this in the future could be a 'dry pond bed'. Instead of making a stream bed of river rock, dig out a little depression line 'pond' with river rock and surround it with more flower beds. Gives you some volume to store, and then absorb by the plantings. Still the volume can overfill the pond, but could give you some area to saturate and hope to contain the stream flow.
That’s what I did at my house. My city doesn’t allow us to put gutter water out to the street. My house is up on the side of a hill, so I ended up digging a series dry ponds to catch the gutter water as it worked down the hill.
I looks pretty sunny in there. I think id just shorten it a bit but still away from the house and put more shrubs and grass in the area to soak it up more quickly and keep the dirt from washing out
I have seen a dry well (length of 12, 14, 16 inch diameter perforated pipe) as a destination for 55+ gallons of water) used to park water ( with overflow pop up drain). Even larger one of 300+ temporary storage. Seems like a perfect end to this gutter drain. Water just soaks into ground .
I'd be tempted to make a 'rain garden ' or some underground system with amended soils in that wood area. It looked eroded away already before you did anything. No grass is there. Those trees might not make it but they can turn it into a flowerbed, pollinator garden to soak up water.
When addressing the problem by shifting it,… wouldn’t it have been better to have a underground or at least under surface well-like water area with the stones deeper where the water has a place to go and saturate and slow down most importantly
@@GCFD The sooner they can get some ground cover on the bare soil, the better. Grass or even just mulch will help slow down erosion until they can get everything planted.
@@michaelwilburn5727 With underground or subsurface drainage systems, you should check for the seasonal high water table when considering that type of system. In the rainy season when you need the water storage it may not be available.
That job seemed to have a lot of other distractions and maybe took you off your game. It seemed like you got into oh this is such an easy one and it bit you. We all do that take a job as being simple and it becomes our nightmare. Great on you for making all efforts to do it right and make good on it. Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas Shawn. What did the customer expect? Either the water to sit next to their home or away into the property! A possible alternative solution could have been taking the water to the street. It may be a little uphill but the pressure from the downpipe should be enough to take the water away. You don’t always need fall to take water away.
I'd have definitely suggested putting a catch basin in, caught the downpipe that's on the slab and pumped it all out to the road. That downpipe on the slab already seems to be causing cracks on the slab.
I think a dry well would of worked well in this situation. You dig a 8' wide, 15' long and 4'-6' deep hole. Fill the hole with 50 gallon Flo-Wells which can be daisy chained. The Flo-Wells come with a removable top for clean out. I just cleaned mine for the first time in 10 years. My dry well takes 4500 gallons before it starts to bubble up, but after a few hours it drains back into the Flo Well (Dry Well).
Trees often prevent grass from growing and the back part was full of trees. Probably why they did not have grass growing there in the beginning. Maybe get some shade tolerant vines, but that would require someone who specializes in lawn and gardens, not someone who specializes in drainage systems. And since he so rarely has to deal with that sort of problem it would not be economical for him to have people who do specialize in lawns and gardens on the payroll.
I wonder if you could plant some wetland plants in sand to help feather out the flow. I forget what plants they use for graywater systems...maybes rushes? The area is so wide that the solution would have to be spreading things out even more...easier said than done though. Thanks for sharing.
Could backfill and cover the pipe with jagged drainfield rocks + a geotextile wrapper to serve dual purpose to add value and you would effectively have a french drain conduit channel in order to divert & move any accumulating ground water, as the pipe is only for above-ground roof runoff water.
Would some sort of drywell or retention feature in those trees been a different solution or more of the "solved problem A but introduced problem D"? Thanks for sharing the missteps, always good to see!
Sometimes, the solution that 100% solves the problem would be prohibitively expensive. Maybe you could've cut the driveway up and or pumped water out to the street or something, I'm sure - but does that actually make sense for the amount of hassle they're dealing with? I'm putting myself in the homeowner's shoes here - I would think they're happy that the problem water was moved out to the natural area but maybe looking for what else can be done to mitigate further. I would say, you 100% solved the problem of the soggy lawn and part of that was trading it for a soggy natural area. I'd prefer that. I assume you were as good communicating with the homeowner that you are with us - fair is fair, if I knew that solving one problem would create this other problem, then any future steps to mitigate would be on my dime. Don't let perfection be the enemy of genuine improvement. I think seeing videos like this will help people manage their own expectations when it comes to solving drainage problems in their own yards. I'm glad you made it.
How do you feel about the underground leech-field systems? Either systems similar to septic leech fields or large holes dug into the ground, lined with geofabric, filled with stone, and then covered up?
Wondered this too. Seems like an obvious solution. Ie create a lot of space for the water to sit until it can infiltrate! I guess the risk is it would fill up. But you could input a popup drain above it so you can see if it stops taking water.
This is a good video, because it shows, sometimes there is no good solution. I did notice that the ground was slightly higher at the end of the river rock, so water would pool among the rocks. it might have a nightmare, but a dry well say 6 feet by 6 feet, 4 feet deep. Or a trench 3 feet wide, 3 feet deep, then drill in a line of 6-inch hole down 4 feet all filled with gravel landscape tarp on topwith 6 inches of topsoil and grass seed??
You highlighted the major problem right in the beginning of the video. I think your job was fine but I would have encouraged HO to add another 2 downspouts instead of capturing the water in that really long gutter run. You then could have added piping to them.
i think it was your videos that taught us to use smooth rock to maintain flow, and riprap to slow water down. could you have used riprap, or would that not blend in with the rest of the landscaping?
Looking at the previous video and the overheads for this one, could you wrap the PVC around the corner, run the pipe alond the top of the fieldstone and then drop it down onto the driveway beside the other two outlets? Obviously we can't go underground due to all the meter boxes being ther, but maybe above them and around.
After all the rain and hurricanes, that was all that was washed out after the rock bed??? That was close to nothing. Come on man, you did a nice job with exactly what they wanted.
It sounds like you did what the home owner asked you to do. It was a tough location and you explained that to them. Perhaps they can add some plants to form a kind of rain garden.
I'm facing this kind of decision in my own backyard: do I want problem water near my patio or problem water near my shed? Looks like it will either be one or the other. But what this video made me realize is that problem water near my shed will be coming out of the pipe with greater speed.
You could have caught that by understanding the tree roots are exposed b/c they are sitting on top of a compaction-layer caused by standing-water. On a job like that in hurricane territory I would install a 6-8 inch pipe from the lowest possible point on that front ditch & to low-slope it up to a common-spot near the home where I could then tap everything possible to it. The goal being to lower the ground-water-table & to get those trees some well-drained-soil.
@@GCFD I have 0 to 15 inch groundwater tables on the very flat less than 2% slope part of my State so I never incorporate infiltration b/c we don't have any of it after the rain has started.
@@GCFD I notice today checking that the Soil Web Survey has added a min & max rating to the Depth To Water Table data they are sharing, & it looks like they are documenting more than just December tables now. Yep those deeper than 200 cm ground water tables around you are rare around me.
I see how you had little choice and this is just a question. Was there a consideration to take the pipe the other way? Can't really see what's on that side of the house but it looks like you use enough pipe to do so. One more question. What about adding more drop spouts to that run and dividing and directing the water to two other places away from the house? Just wondering.
We talked about both of those options. Pumping the water toward the front would have cost more with a pump, basin, and wiring. Adding downspouts is always a great idea but the homeowners didn't think they would look good. We settled on this solution.
@@GCFD Thank you. I think I would have gone with the down downspouts. Is the back of the house, how it looks would have been the least concern. Then again I'm not the client. Great Job specially around those cables.
Water flows, if it gushes out of a gutter on hard rain, you better get rid of the water rather than trying to disperse it a little bit farther away. If you disperse the water, it will backflow rather sooner than later, Atlantic coast storms are no jokes.
Would a deep dry well basin surrounded by gravel at the end of the run helped dispersing the water or is the ground too much clay and not permeable enough?
@@SlackerUI don't think that area looked like that for the life of those trees. It's probably been slowly eroding away and collecting water for a long time but the homeowner never paid any attention to it.
That's a great idea Rob, but our subsoils around here are clay. A dry well can't absorb fast enough to keep up with concentrated rainfall. I've tried these before with disastrous results.
How about a large sump pump basin in the back yard and send the water to the drainage ditch in the front yard? Maybe that's too expensive, but it would remove the problem water
Hahah I've got a few more, but it's hard to detail the whole situation. I hope you can read between the lines on this video and see what really happened.
There was/is a solution for this. Take the water to the street. However, that would be very expensive as it would require going under the driveway. Then again, I noticed the driveway in front of the garage was all cracked so perhaps it would have been worth it. You could have picked up that other pipe too in front of the house that is draining on to the driveway. I suppose you could have left the pipe above ground and had it drain on the driveway, but from here it is impossible to tell if the driveway slopes in the correct direction.
Long gutter runs doesn’t always equate to an over capacity down spout since time of concentration is also a variable. That’s some civil/hydraulics engineering for you in a real life example.
The only real solution is remove the downspout from the eavestrough and 90 degree around the corner above the garage doors to the front hugging the soffat all the way to the downspout in the front or the shrub just before the garage doors to discharge on concrete as you did in the front.. Either downspout it beside or Y-pipe it to a larger 6 inch to handle volume. My 2 cents...lol
I think the pipe was the right solution because letting it damage the house is 10's of thousands in property damage vs negligible damage to the natural area.
Previous job: th-cam.com/video/vLoMFtDS9Hk/w-d-xo.html
Oh yea I forgot to post that! How'd you manage to find it!
@@mbarrett99 good find, I looked but couldn't work it out. Thank you.
Read the title and thought you'd be correcting another contractor's installation. Good on you for highlighting the issues you encounter rather than pretending that every job is a great success with 100% customer satisfaction.
Haha I've done this before with no problems, but this one turned into a problem.
Can't win em all. I am personally glad you made the video.
Thank you! These homeowners were worrying over this all summer. 👍
I think a lot of people sometimes have unreal expectations that don't align with reality. They wish something so hard that they don't really hear anything said that might negatively interfere with what they want to happen. I think you did the best you could with what you had to work with.
Thank you! I tried to get this one figured out. We certainly went back and forth with lots of ideas.
Thank you for making this video, highlighting the jobs that don’t work out is more instructive for people watching along, than showcasing the ones that do.
I run into this routinely doing tree work in rural areas. A guy with 20 acres and a tractor thinks it’s going to be no big deal to cut up two massive oak trees. So they pay me just to get them to the ground and not do any cleanup. Halfway through the job, they see the astonishing magnitue of the mess and… you can guess the rest. (Trees visibly quadruple in size and volume when they hit the ground.)
Describing the result of your work in explicit detail never truly prepares them for seeing it actually occur. Which is precisely what happened here.
Great comment WAF! Thanks for sharing another example with is. 👍
When Ron made the comment on wanting to take over the world I laughed out loud. Loved that cartoon.
👍👍
Show things like this, you and viewers can learn from this and help improve in the future.
I hope these videos help lots of people and properties 👍
Hard to find honest people who perform honest jobs! Great info and insight👊🏾
Shawn, and all the other guys and gals on the crew WTG great job.
Thank you!
Haven’t watched a video of yours for awhile, great to see how you have evolved and continue to endeavor to persevere 👍
Great video! Seems like a good situation to use a sump pump
A pump would have worked well but costs more. 👍
I think the "problem water, was moved to a MUCH less of a problem area that where it was originally. Not even sure what the issue was, especially after extending the outfall. I say it was a great solution. There is not always a 100% solution. But, there is most often choosing to divert to a lesser of the two problem areas....
Great content Shawn! And great to see Ronald out there!!!!
Hey Sean, I’ve been watching you, Odell, and Andrew Camarata for years now. Love the work you do.
Every situation is perfect....until nature gets in the way. Cheers from cold, icy and snowy Edmonton Alberta.
Good to also share the jobs which did not go perfect, we all can learn from our mistakes.
This one did work, but it really points out that customer expectations can vary. I haven't heard anything back since I added the rock.
Beautiful landscaping -
Keep all the videos coming
Thank you John!
I always like your videos!! Thank you for putting them up: good / bad / ugly are all worthy! Merry Christmas!! ⛪🎅🎄❄
Definitely liked the video as well as the full walkthrough and explanation.
Did the best you could do with that situation.....I really appreciate you replying back to so many comments and questions....
I guess the lesson learned here is that you stick to your rules! Let another company deal with the issue instead of you. Thanks for making the video so we can learn these lessons!
1) Identify the problem water
2) Get that problem water into a pipe
3) Remove the problem water
For tricky jobs like this I would recommend writing any potential issues into the contract that the customer signs. It's one thing to tell them verbally over and over again, but if it's written right in the contract then I feel they would spend more time considering it.
Excellent video and perfect explanation,
Thank you! 👍
That is a tough situation. I thought maybe diverting the outflow into a couple of smaller pipes and fanout the discharge but that's nothing more than an experiment rather than an iron clad solution. I think trying to please the customer is the hardest part of the job. Being able to maintain a good customer relationship is a honed skill. I watched the original job when you posted it.
I was thinking the same about fanning it out, but like you wrote, it could end up being an experiment requiring several trips to tweak it.
OG Ronald back
Even though the solution is not ideal, I would still prefer the problem water to be away from the house foundation.
Keep making videos like this. Well really i hope you don't have more jobs like this. You were correct on everything that you cautioned the homeowner about. Solution would have been to turn the job down unless they agree to concessions that would make it a successful job.
Looks good , I like your Rock system
Thank you Terry! The extra rock did the trick on this one.
glad you made the video now i know what not to do.
I’m glad you made this video Shawn! Merry Christmas!
thanks for making the video, from Manchester UK
Glad you are so honest. We are a dying breed
You did the best... Given the past work etc, no hard feelings is good, I would just be sure to note it all within the paperwork etc etc that its a one for the other (im sure you have it all in fine print anyway ) Still looks great I dont recall the Original However that client must be in the upper scale of areas w all that fancy landscaping around & the rock walls of the house. And Yes for the content - This goes to show the complexity of after effects and previous work as well
As others have commented, my thought would be a dry-well/storage pond sized to handle most storms and let them soak in over time, and let it disperse over a wider area when it does overflow in a big storm.
1st Super Thanks.🙂
Thank you Walter!
not that this is feasible, but would it have been physically possible to have the back gutter merge with the gutters in front by running a pipe along the side of the house to dump into the front pipe? I'm not sure i'd have done it aesthetically, just curious about the frontn pipe's carrying capacity
The homeowners and landscaper were supposed to do some plants and rocks around the outfall but never did! Thanks for the super thanks John! - Shawn
Great work Shawn, another great video.
It's a shame more people don't take the time to go look at property during and after a huge rain event before they invest in it to see how the land disperses water. If you have no good place to send the water (and you live in a state that doesn't prevent your neighbors from sending their water into your yard), then you're going to have to settle with moving the discharge further from the house/foundation. I think the solution at which you arrived is the best one.
Really great pacing in this video! Happy Holidays
Would love to see all the content you can provide
Thank you Rick!
@ after work I rewatch your videos more times than I want to admit. Haha
Awesome job
Love the video mate, in future where theres no option, youll just have to use the last od the last sump pump option
Another great job!!!! HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!! 🎄🎄🎄🎄🪅🎊🎉🎇🎆👍❤️📹😃
Sean, I think an option you may consider for something like this in the future could be a 'dry pond bed'. Instead of making a stream bed of river rock, dig out a little depression line 'pond' with river rock and surround it with more flower beds. Gives you some volume to store, and then absorb by the plantings. Still the volume can overfill the pond, but could give you some area to saturate and hope to contain the stream flow.
Well said this is what I would do.
The landscaper and HO were going to do something very similar to that, but they never did. Then they started calling me back...
That’s what I did at my house. My city doesn’t allow us to put gutter water out to the street. My house is up on the side of a hill, so I ended up digging a series dry ponds to catch the gutter water as it worked down the hill.
Shawn, Ronald and Jeremy - the three amigos are back on our screens - great project Shawn 👍
Another great video
Nice houses in that area.
This is one of the wealthiest areas around
Merry Christmas 🎄
Nice job!
I looks pretty sunny in there. I think id just shorten it a bit but still away from the house and put more shrubs and grass in the area to soak it up more quickly and keep the dirt from washing out
I have seen a dry well (length of 12, 14, 16 inch diameter perforated pipe) as a destination for 55+ gallons of water) used to park water ( with overflow pop up drain).
Even larger one of 300+ temporary storage.
Seems like a perfect end to this gutter drain.
Water just soaks into ground .
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you maga! 👍
I don’t care I just watch and chill for video.
Pinkie and the Brain reference!! ❤
👍👍
Thank you for sharing!
I'd work for you and your crew any day of the week.
God bless. Merry Xmas to all
I'd be tempted to make a 'rain garden ' or some underground system with amended soils in that wood area. It looked eroded away already before you did anything. No grass is there. Those trees might not make it but they can turn it into a flowerbed, pollinator garden to soak up water.
When addressing the problem by shifting it,… wouldn’t it have been better to have a underground or at least under surface well-like water area with the stones deeper where the water has a place to go and saturate and slow down most importantly
The landscaper and homeowner were actually going to do something like that. Instead, they worried about the erosion that started ocurring.
@@GCFD The sooner they can get some ground cover on the bare soil, the better. Grass or even just mulch will help slow down erosion until they can get everything planted.
@@michaelwilburn5727 With underground or subsurface drainage systems, you should check for the seasonal high water table when considering that type of system. In the rainy season when you need the water storage it may not be available.
That job seemed to have a lot of other distractions and maybe took you off your game. It seemed like you got into oh this is such an easy one and it bit you. We all do that take a job as being simple and it becomes our nightmare. Great on you for making all efforts to do it right and make good on it. Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas Shawn. What did the customer expect? Either the water to sit next to their home or away into the property!
A possible alternative solution could have been taking the water to the street. It may be a little uphill but the pressure from the downpipe should be enough to take the water away. You don’t always need fall to take water away.
They expected the job to be completed on the expectation he sold them, it’s pretty simple
Ddaannggg 3 years. I remember this episode
The video quality has come a long way that's for sure!
I'd have definitely suggested putting a catch basin in, caught the downpipe that's on the slab and pumped it all out to the road.
That downpipe on the slab already seems to be causing cracks on the slab.
We talked about it but the extra cost of pumping didn't fly. 👍
A Pinky and the Brain reference, best video ever!
I think a dry well would of worked well in this situation. You dig a 8' wide, 15' long and 4'-6' deep hole. Fill the hole with 50 gallon Flo-Wells which can be daisy chained. The Flo-Wells come with a removable top for clean out. I just cleaned mine for the first time in 10 years. My dry well takes 4500 gallons before it starts to bubble up, but after a few hours it drains back into the Flo Well (Dry Well).
Sodding around the rock field might help to disburse the water rather than having open ground?
Trees often prevent grass from growing and the back part was full of trees. Probably why they did not have grass growing there in the beginning. Maybe get some shade tolerant vines, but that would require someone who specializes in lawn and gardens, not someone who specializes in drainage systems. And since he so rarely has to deal with that sort of problem it would not be economical for him to have people who do specialize in lawns and gardens on the payroll.
I wonder if you could plant some wetland plants in sand to help feather out the flow. I forget what plants they use for graywater systems...maybes rushes? The area is so wide that the solution would have to be spreading things out even more...easier said than done though. Thanks for sharing.
Could backfill and cover the pipe with jagged drainfield rocks + a geotextile wrapper to serve dual purpose to add value and you would effectively have a french drain conduit channel in order to divert & move any accumulating ground water, as the pipe is only for above-ground roof runoff water.
I would of dug a hole about 4' deep and wide at the end of the run filled with rock also.
Great idea!
the Pinky and the Brain reference had me rolling!
👍 Haha
Would some sort of drywell or retention feature in those trees been a different solution or more of the "solved problem A but introduced problem D"? Thanks for sharing the missteps, always good to see!
2:19 Maybe create a huge dry well in that natural area?
Sometimes, the solution that 100% solves the problem would be prohibitively expensive. Maybe you could've cut the driveway up and or pumped water out to the street or something, I'm sure - but does that actually make sense for the amount of hassle they're dealing with?
I'm putting myself in the homeowner's shoes here - I would think they're happy that the problem water was moved out to the natural area but maybe looking for what else can be done to mitigate further. I would say, you 100% solved the problem of the soggy lawn and part of that was trading it for a soggy natural area. I'd prefer that. I assume you were as good communicating with the homeowner that you are with us - fair is fair, if I knew that solving one problem would create this other problem, then any future steps to mitigate would be on my dime.
Don't let perfection be the enemy of genuine improvement. I think seeing videos like this will help people manage their own expectations when it comes to solving drainage problems in their own yards. I'm glad you made it.
How do you feel about the underground leech-field systems? Either systems similar to septic leech fields or large holes dug into the ground, lined with geofabric, filled with stone, and then covered up?
Would you ever consider putting in a leach field in the future for a problem like this?
Wondered this too. Seems like an obvious solution. Ie create a lot of space for the water to sit until it can infiltrate!
I guess the risk is it would fill up. But you could input a popup drain above it so you can see if it stops taking water.
That would not work in that spot, the exposed tree roots show the soil is very compacted from the ponded water.
@@SlackerU that just means it would infiltrate very slowly. But at least the water would have somewhere to go
@@fredrikg120 In hurricane territory if it is full of water then it isn't infiltrating it's flooding.
A leach field won't work for rainfall in our area. The reason is we have clay subsoils that can't absorb quickly enough to keep up.
This is a good video, because it shows, sometimes there is no good solution. I did notice that the ground was slightly higher at the end of the river rock, so water would pool among the rocks. it might have a nightmare, but a dry well say 6 feet by 6 feet, 4 feet deep. Or a trench 3 feet wide, 3 feet deep, then drill in a line of 6-inch hole down 4 feet all filled with gravel landscape tarp on topwith 6 inches of topsoil and grass seed??
You highlighted the major problem right in the beginning of the video. I think your job was fine but I would have encouraged HO to add another 2 downspouts instead of capturing the water in that really long gutter run. You then could have added piping to them.
The HO didn't want to add downspouts due to their appearance. I warned that was a very long run.
i think it was your videos that taught us to use smooth rock to maintain flow, and riprap to slow water down. could you have used riprap, or would that not blend in with the rest of the landscaping?
Looking at the previous video and the overheads for this one, could you wrap the PVC around the corner, run the pipe alond the top of the fieldstone and then drop it down onto the driveway beside the other two outlets?
Obviously we can't go underground due to all the meter boxes being ther, but maybe above them and around.
Would a dry well be an option in this situation?
After all the rain and hurricanes, that was all that was washed out after the rock bed??? That was close to nothing. Come on man, you did a nice job with exactly what they wanted.
I would much rather have a water problem in my yard vs basement/crawlspace..
Same. I often talk about water management in those terms. 👍
the area between the trees would be a great spot for a wadi
👍
It sounds like you did what the home owner asked you to do. It was a tough location and you explained that to them. Perhaps they can add some plants to form a kind of rain garden.
I'm facing this kind of decision in my own backyard: do I want problem water near my patio or problem water near my shed? Looks like it will either be one or the other. But what this video made me realize is that problem water near my shed will be coming out of the pipe with greater speed.
Put in a sump-pump and pump it to the street drain.
The longer the run of pipe the faster the water will be flowing. You can absorb some of that energy with rock like we did here.
@@GCFD Thanks for the response. I think that's what I need to do.
How come you didn’t offer to pump the water out to the street? I’ve seen you do that before!
We always try to send the water to a place where it is no longer a problem. Here, the street was further away, plus the cost of a pump and wiring.
You could have caught that by understanding the tree roots are exposed b/c they are sitting on top of a compaction-layer caused by standing-water. On a job like that in hurricane territory I would install a 6-8 inch pipe from the lowest possible point on that front ditch & to low-slope it up to a common-spot near the home where I could then tap everything possible to it. The goal being to lower the ground-water-table & to get those trees some well-drained-soil.
Our water table is something like 50' feet deep around here with clay subsoils. We really don't have much for subsurface water or infiltration here.
@@GCFD I have 0 to 15 inch groundwater tables on the very flat less than 2% slope part of my State so I never incorporate infiltration b/c we don't have any of it after the rain has started.
@@GCFD I notice today checking that the Soil Web Survey has added a min & max rating to the Depth To Water Table data they are sharing, & it looks like they are documenting more than just December tables now. Yep those deeper than 200 cm ground water tables around you are rare around me.
I see how you had little choice and this is just a question. Was there a consideration to take the pipe the other way? Can't really see what's on that side of the house but it looks like you use enough pipe to do so. One more question. What about adding more drop spouts to that run and dividing and directing the water to two other places away from the house? Just wondering.
We talked about both of those options. Pumping the water toward the front would have cost more with a pump, basin, and wiring. Adding downspouts is always a great idea but the homeowners didn't think they would look good. We settled on this solution.
@@GCFD Thank you. I think I would have gone with the down downspouts. Is the back of the house, how it looks would have been the least concern. Then again I'm not the client. Great Job specially around those cables.
Water flows, if it gushes out of a gutter on hard rain, you better get rid of the water rather than trying to disperse it a little bit farther away. If you disperse the water, it will backflow rather sooner than later, Atlantic coast storms are no jokes.
Would a deep dry well basin surrounded by gravel at the end of the run helped dispersing the water or is the ground too much clay and not permeable enough?
Seems strange to not even try this. At minimum it would create more space for the water to sit and infiltrate.
I was thinking the same thing.
It's so compacted that the tree roots are sitting on top of the soil. That area was always standing water, basically a dry-pond-bottom.
@@SlackerUI don't think that area looked like that for the life of those trees. It's probably been slowly eroding away and collecting water for a long time but the homeowner never paid any attention to it.
It would not work in our area because we have clay subsoils. They don't absorb water nearly fast enough to keep up with rainfall.
Hi
You should put water on drive way like last job in this house.
The driveway was much higher than this area so we would have to pump it. 👍
I would like to see video of the problem.
Clearly it’s still and issue that’s why he didn’t show the after water flow like normal
Could you install a drywell to let the water perculate in to the ground?
That's a great idea Rob, but our subsoils around here are clay. A dry well can't absorb fast enough to keep up with concentrated rainfall. I've tried these before with disastrous results.
How about a large sump pump basin in the back yard and send the water to the drainage ditch in the front yard?
Maybe that's too expensive, but it would remove the problem water
Would better ground cover have helped the situation? Wouldn’t hurt to put something to stop the erosion.
They were supposed to do something there with the landscaper. It never happened.
The video world needs more "How not to" videos.
Hahah I've got a few more, but it's hard to detail the whole situation. I hope you can read between the lines on this video and see what really happened.
There was/is a solution for this. Take the water to the street. However, that would be very expensive as it would require going under the driveway. Then again, I noticed the driveway in front of the garage was all cracked so perhaps it would have been worth it. You could have picked up that other pipe too in front of the house that is draining on to the driveway. I suppose you could have left the pipe above ground and had it drain on the driveway, but from here it is impossible to tell if the driveway slopes in the correct direction.
Long gutter runs doesn’t always equate to an over capacity down spout since time of concentration is also a variable. That’s some civil/hydraulics engineering for you in a real life example.
Was the back of the house, part of the earlier job? The gutter outlet hanging so high on the house does not look like your work.
No we only did pipe on the front gutters in the first job. 👍
send to a dry well? option? Or make a Water feature, A small pond? lol ~ lots of area over there to get creative, its only money...
The only real solution is remove the downspout from the eavestrough and 90 degree around the corner above the garage doors to the front hugging the soffat all the way to the downspout in the front or the shrub just before the garage doors to discharge on concrete as you did in the front.. Either downspout it beside or Y-pipe it to a larger 6 inch to handle volume. My 2 cents...lol
That's a great way of thinking Dave!!
I think the pipe was the right solution because letting it damage the house is 10's of thousands in property damage vs negligible damage to the natural area.