top of page

Erosion Solutions

Can I control the water??

I wish I could say "Yes" water can be controled, but in all reality you can not control nature. Nature ultimatly assumes control and will break down any diversion you set up. This doesn't mean that you can't fix some of your landscape drainage issues. You most certainly can. One of the great ways of doing this is with the use of "Pop Up Emitters," purchased at your local Lowes, or Home Depot. These gree popups take the water out into your yard from a corrogated pipe, or PVC pipe that is connected to your downspout or gutter. When the rain begins your gutters fill up and water begins to run down the downspout and into the drain pipe. Next the Pop Up Emitter begins to fill with water, because the pop up is an elbow and water cannot lift itself out of the pipe (see picture diagram). The water begins to fill up inside the pipe, as it fills it eventually begins to lift the pop up cap on the emitter. The water flows evenly out of the emitter and on to your yard. The water is successfully delivered away from the foundation of your home, and your landscape beds have been saved. No more mulch running out on your sidewalks.

This entire process takes a White Shove landscape crew a couple of hours to complete. It can also be done with those tough to get places like inside of a sidewalk area. We can easily go under your sidewalk with the pipe, and pop up in your yard.

Check out some of the picture examples below.

What's a French Drain??

All around the world people are complicating the term French Drain in their mind. Funny, I've never really ask myself why it's called a French drain. It's not real complicated. French drains are however very scientific, the process is anyways. 

So what would you use a French Drain for, you might ask?

The most common way to use a French Drain is to remove water from an area that is soggy. What you would do is to locate the lowest point in the soggy area. Most times I try to find the source of the water, if the water can be diverted before it gets to the area, this can completly solve your problem. You will find that your gutters are putting a lot of water into your yard, if the contractor didn't pipe your gutters out to a drainage ditch, you can pretty much count on having water problems in your small yard. So check this first before digging up your yard to install a French Drain.

So let's just say that this is no the problem, the next thing you want to find is a lower point or area where you can deliver the water too, or run the water too once you have pulled it from the soggy area.  There are always those times where you have to dig through roots, go under fences, cut through water lines, and a whole lot of other stuff to get the French Drain put through. However, you must find a low area, there are some tricks to this but were not going to go into that here.

So once you have located your area to dump the water into, then you dig a ditch, usually about 8 inch's wide, and a foot deep is the minimum. You then lay a layer of gravel, (if you'r not using the easy drain pipe) in the bottom of the trench. Then you place your corrogated pipe (this pipe will have small slits all over it to let the water in) in the bottom of the trench. Make sure your pipe has a sediment sock pulled over the entire pipe. After it's laid in there, you can begin to add gravel around the pipe until it completly covers the pipe, but still leaves room to add dirt on the top.

And that's it you're done, finish it off with dirt and grass seed, and before long the French drain will suck the water right out of the ground and into the pipe.

Keep in mind a Landscape Crew from White Shovel Landscapes can install this French drain for you usually in a single day.

Contact us 256-612-4439 or visit our contact us page.

bottom of page