[Front yard
The front of my yard faces the main road, which is on a higher grade than my driveway. My driveway dips for the first approx. 5 feet, then dips back up towards my garage, this causes water to pool all along the front of my yard and driveway. Here with TS Colin going on, it made it quite apparent that a good hurricane and I will have some flooding issues. Does anyone have any idea as to what I could do to channel or get rid of the water? My thought was placing two dry wells, one for each side of the yard. On the side where the fire hydrant is "which is the largest part of the lawn" , I was thinking about running two drains to a dry well, as well as having a emergency overflow pipe running to the other side of my house which will allow the water to run downhill from my house.
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You will need to be very careful of (call dig-safe or equivalent) the existing services in your yard when digging. If this only happens in extreme rain events and there is a surface "low path" that leads around (not through) your house to the back, it may not be that much of a problem (if surface drainage will take care of it.) If not, your plan sounds generally good; or you could just dig out the lawn a little more to make a "swale" below the driveway level, and leading to the back as needed.– EcnerwalCommented Jun 7, 2016 at 12:59
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Have you ever had water in your basement? if not, and there's no risk of that driveway puddle freezing in whatever your winter is like, leave it be. Any attempt to drain will require a large enough system to drain the entire front lawn, as can be seen from the standing water in your lawn.– Carl WitthoftCommented Jun 7, 2016 at 17:21
1 Answer
A lot of the water is coming from the road. I would recommend raising the grade closer to the road so the water pools along the edge of the road instead of on your property. That is the road slopes to the side and continues sloping down on your property. You need to change it so the grade levels off on the side of the road and then slopes back up a small bit to catch the water from the road before it pools on your property.
Or just raise the grade at your driveway only requiring a new section of driveway be laid after you raise the grade and get the water to pool on either side of the driveway in the same locations it pools now, but at least get a clear driveway.
A common hidden draining solution used is something called a seepage bed; essentially a big hole, lined, filled with permeable material like round rock, and then covered on top. Then run drains as needed to the seepage bed.
The size (volume) of the seepage bed varies based on fill material, area to drain (including the road), percolation rate of the soil, and the amount of rain you get over a given time period based on the percolation rate of the soil.
It is commonly used under parking lots to drain water from the parking lot without taking up any more area on the lot.
