How Do I Build a French Drain?

I had this question a few months ago. My front yard was filling up with water every time it would rain. So what do I do when my front yard is filling up with rain? Build a french drain, of course. There’s something kind of intimidating about getting started, admitted. I kind of had to work my way up to it so I started with the simple steps first. I found the parts of my yard that were filling up the most with water during the rain. For me, this was the low spots in the middle as well as the area that butted right up against my flower beds. It was kind of special to get to spend some time in my yard getting to know the topography of my soil. I did this so I could determine if I would need multiple entry points for the french drain and to see how long a distance I was going to need to prepare materials for.

Next, it was a jump, hop, and a skip over to Lowe’s. I found the staff friendly and helpful, as per usual. First, I went to get a couple shovels. I prefer pointed shovels for this kind of digging work, but I got a flat, square shovel as well just in case I needed to dig around any corners. Next I picked up some gravel from their outdoor section, put it in the back of my truck, grabbed some weed preventative liner, and a couple plastic filtered ends. This was about everything I needed from what I could gather, so I went back to my house and mentally prepared for the grueling task ahead of me the next day. I got a good nights sleep, had a healthy breakfast, and embarked on the journey ahead of me.

Little did I know all the work I was in for, but in full, the job simplified itself out to a few steps. First, Dig the trench. Second, realize that I forgot the most important part of the drain at Lowe’s: the channel drain. Third, go back to Lowe’s and get enough channel drain extensions to match the dimensions I had gotten the day before. These were difficult to choose. They had a few different option and this was one part of the process I was not super familiar with so I asked the experts. They pointed me to a couple and I eventually went with a chrome and plastic drain to fill my trenches with. Went home, arranged and assembled the channel drain, then poured my gravel over the top of it to seal and pack it in. This took a while and surprisingly a lot more shoveling than I had mentally prepared for.

There was a sense that I had gotten in over my head for a second, but I eventually fell back into rhythm and when I looked up, I was almost done! So I pulled up my bootstraps and finished shoveling the last little bit of gravel over the top of my channel drain. This was arguably the hardest, but most rewarding part of the process. After I was done pouring all the gravel, I’ve got to admit, I was pretty happy with how it turned out. The paths of cool, gray stones laid peacefully in between the grass and streamed from the flower bed in front of my house all the way to the curb. I would eventually go on to cover up the pretty gravel stones with soil and grass almost a a year later. I had planned for it to be sooner, but one thing got in the way of another and before I knew it – well – it had been a year. So, to be fair the biggest thing was finding a sod provider that had my type of grass and then I had to research the most effective way to cut the grass into the strips that I was needing, and before I knew it the season for planting was already over and by the time spring came around, I had lost all my notes, and basically had to start the whole project over again minus knowing where I wanted to get my sod from now.

So I went to the sod store, picked up some strips of bermuda (about 15) and a little bit of soil and went on my way. Almost a year later, I was ready to finish installing my french drain. I applied a thin layer of soil – You usually want to do this to see how it’s going to line up once you put the sod on top. I checked and once I put the sod on top of a grounded area, it was still a little beneath the level of the grass, which I was grateful for. Always better to dig the drain deeper than you think you do, versus not deep enough.

So I applied some more soil on top of the gravel throughout the entirety of the drain and began cutting up my strips of sod. This was a surprisingly grueling process, but pretty immediately worth it. I used a flat headed shovel over my driveway to cut the sod into perfect thin lines and placed those over the slots of gravel that, surprisingly at this point in the season, had yet to have weeds growing in their midst. The aesthetic sensation alone made the year-long wait worth it. I trailed the lines of gravel, sliding in the perfectly sized strips of grass right into place and smiled as I felt the sensation of my work being completed – a job well done. The drain works like a charm. I haven’t had any issues with it so far.

The sod took about 3 weeks to take to the soil underneath itself and about another month and a half to look evenly rooted and stemmed between the pieces I laid and the grass on either side of the drain. I am very pleased with the way my french drain turned out and I’m actually looking forward to doing more projects like this in the future.