Is my French Drain working? water exiting under discharge pipe...
Hi there - I recently DIY installed a french drain- did a lot of research and tried to do it all by the book.
After a week of very heavy rain I am seeing a steady flow of water from the discharge end, but primarily from below the discharge pipe... not out of the pipe itself.
I only needed to drain about 25-30' along my house and then carry the water another 25' to the road, where it empties by a rain garden.
I connected 25' of high octane (8 hole perforated pipe) to the final 25' foot run of solid black corrugated pipe
Drain is about 16"-24" deep, (shallowest at the start) with a minimum 1" drop for every 6 feet from start to end.
After digging my trench I ran a hose for a while to ensure water would flow properly, and repeated once I laid gravel.
Process:
Trench,
Non-woven geotextile fabric,
A couple of inch bed of 57 gravel (maintaining negative slope)
Perforated pipe laid and covered with 57 gravel up to about 4" from the top of the trench,
Burrito-wrapped pipe and gravel in fabric, landscape-stapled it all closed and buried with the last bit of top soil.
Ground is very heavy clay soil.
At discharge pipe section I laid non-woven geotextile fabric lining the trench, laid a bit of gravel under the pipe as a bedding, and went ahead and went ahead and burrito wrapped and stapled this as well.
This section only used a bed of gravel, I didn’t fill the trench with gravel since it was just for discharge and the pipe was solid.
(I didn't cap the end of my pipe yet - I was waiting to make sure it was all working)
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It has been a very rainy couple of weeks, heavy rain all night, the drain is steadily discharging water, as shown in the photos, but it doesn't seem like the water is entering/exiting the discharge pipe, but probably draining from the gravel layer below...
Am I going to have issues here?
Basement has a sump pump but it barely kicked on the past week, so I thought the drain must be doing some heavy lifting. However, when I checked I didn’t see much water flow from French drain discharge end.
I am concerned that I made a mistake somewhere in the process.
After last nights rain the sump is kicking on frequently, and as you can see I am getting a fair bit of discharge, just not out of my pipe…