Digging Ditches

Long about two weeks ago, we had a severe thunderstorm roll through. During the first 20-30 minutes of the storm we experienced what could only be described as a deluge of rain. That may not be a strong enough term to describe it, but that's beside the point. The point is that one of the window wells outside our basement began to flood. We're talking 8 inches or so of water filling the window well here. Naturally, this began seeping through the window and into the basement.

Now, since the basement is unfinished and the seepage was relatively slow, this wasn't such a big deal. We cleared anything out of the way that might get damaged, and put down some towels to stop the spread of the water. Meanwhile, I spent 15 minutes outside in the pouring rain trying to bail out the window well. Fun.

The next day I discovered the source of the problem: water from the downspout had dug a small hole in the ground and tunneled its way down (and back toward the house) to come up under the well. Since the soil under the window well has a very high clay content, the easiest way for the water to go was up. Clearly, I have a drainage problem.

So I have been working off and on for the past couple weeks on a French drain. We have had a lot of rainy days since that storm, so I don't get to work on it very often. But this weekend I was able to dig the trench and drop some Corex pipe into it. I ran the trench from the downspout to the fence (only about 3 feet), and then from there all the way to the edge of our property and under the fence. In all, it's about 50 feet of trench. I happened to be outside the other day during a heavy rain and noticed that a lot of runoff was also coming down from the front yard and the downspout there. It happens to run right into the line of the trench I had already dug, so I just extended it a little further toward the front of the house to catch some of that runoff. Even though the drain isn't technically finished (haven't put in the gravel or fill dirt yet), I have been able to see that it works. Looks like we might be in for another storm this evening, so hopefully I'll get a more definitive test soon.

This is a pic of the work in progress.