High capacity french drain Installed and shown in action

Check out part 2 of this project https://youtu.be/wC5c7xPal5k

I had a client years ago, where his house sat was in a swale where all of the neighborhoods uphill from him sent all of their storm water. He had asked the city to do something about the issue because every time it rained his entire back yard became a pond and it took weeks for the pond to drain and dry out. When I designed the addition to his house, I designed a massive french drain system for him. There were (15) 6" perforated lines running across his back yard into (2) 12" lines that ran to the storm water system underground. I worked with the contractor and the city to approve the permits to tie this system directly into their drain which they were NOT happy about and fought us tooth and nail the entire time because it was a significant volume of water they had been trying to avoid adding to their system for years; they tried to claim that their back yard was officially wetlands. We did the work during the summer when 4 months out of the year it was typically bone dry and we could claim that it wasn't wetlands because there wasn't currently a pond. The entire back yard was completely transformed and my clients now enjoy many games of cornhole out there for all of their cookouts.

Actually, this is the perfect situation where neighbors should cooperate and share the costs of solving their water issues for the long term.....

Tune in next time for when their neighbor installs a German drain, which directs water around the French drain!

I love how this guy basically gave himself two new jobs by damming up the neighbors' yards in the process of draining this yard.

Love that you followed up after install to show the results! Well done!

Ultimately this shows how poorly the development was graded to begin with because they should have dealt with the water runoff from the beginning. Nice job with your system though.

To me the best part, the absolute triumph of your work is when you go a revisit and show the final result IRL. Many videos here in YouTube or regular TV never show the product of their work in months or years later. You do. Thank you for that.

My upstream neighbor had something similiar put in between our houses, and it did a wonderful job keeping me from being flooded when it rained. He sold his house, and the new neighbor put a walkway and paver stones over the drains, and water would gush over the drain system and into my yard. I built a berm between our two yards, now "our problem" is "his problem". The water gushes under his house.

That back neighbor is going to be pissed!

These are so great, the after shots with actual rain flow once it’s done takes the videos from a boring how to that others may do, to quality YouTube content that has a satisfying conclusion

I truly thought, "I'm not gonna watch a video like this," and ended up watching every minute. I grew up in South Florida so I know about flooded yards. Great job, man!

You get a permit to redirect the natural flow of water? Advice to all: When you buy property... Buy on higher ground. And Never, ever be associated with an HOA.

You also created TWO more new customers! The neighbors! LOL! I'm sure they'll be calling you soon!!

Seeing the water fly outta the end of that pipe is sooo satisfying!

Two things I was hoping you'd do, show how effective your system is after it rained and explain why you don't use filter fabric. You did both. Great! Thank you for a great video. You put an awful lot of work into this.

The person who installed the drain is actually taking care of the neighbors issue as well.

The husband was worried about yall tearing up most of the yard the water already tore it up.

It's refreshing to see how nice of a job you did on the cleanup. I see too many contractors that do great work on the actual task yet fail to make the place better than they found it. Bravo.

I dug a French Drain for my daughter to resolve her drainage issues. By far one of the oldest but best methods of moving water off of property. Nothing is more detrimental to building materials than standing water. Concrete and cinder block will draw it up like a straw into the wood of your home, then the termites come to claim what the water didn't already destroy.