We have an ongoing problem with water pooling in a pseudo gulley between my house and my neighbors house. We have water that drains from the backyards to this area, along with two gutter roof drainage pipes on each house draining to this little area. The distance from the top of the proposed drain pipe to the sidewalk is roughly 70 feet. The green dots on each house are the gutter points.
Every time we run the sprinkler system, or get a minute amount of rain, this area between the two homes turns into a lake. We cannot mow the yard for at least 3 days after because of the poor drainage and tearing up the grass. We want to route this water away and figured the best way to do so would be using a French drain system. The bulk of the collection/pooling area is in the box framed by the 4 green dots (the gutter spouts from the roofs of the homes). There really is not much of an issue with drainage in the area between the sidewalk and the front of the homes (the general area where the CATV box is).
When this lake system develops, our home (which is on a slab), starts getting moisture at the edges inside. In order to prevent mold, this really is a must-do.
I have the following layout of my house in my subdivision.
I am exploring the possibility of installing the prefabricated pipe with the styrofoam peanuts with the sock around it to basically do it all for me.
My main questions are:
If I were to run the pipe (the blue thing in the picture) the distance from the top edge of the houses to the sidewalk (~70ft), do I need to run this prefabricated stuff the whole way? This stuff runs like $45-50 per 10ft, so i would be looking at around 300-350 at least for just the pipe. Would it be possible to run it through the area that needs to have the water collected and then connect it to a standard pipe that runs the rest of the way to the sidewalk, where it can empty down to the storm drain?
I would [prefer] to have the gutter systems dump directly into the drain pipe. Is that doable? What would I need in order to do that?
I have heard of people using PVC pipe for this, is that really much better? I imagine the pipe inside is a lot smoother so it is easier for crud that builds up to get flushed out - but once again, not sure if the tradeoff is worth it.
I don't want to be a cheapskate on this, as i want to do it the right way. However, if I can save $200 by skipping running the prefab perforated tubing the entire run, I would like to!