Diverting rainwater away from pool

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Death Dream

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Jun 26, 2015
29
Iowa
Has anyone had any luck diverting rainwater away from their pool? I live at a bottom on a hill and when it rains REALLY hard, all the mud and dirt flies into my pool from up the hill. Worst part is, I completed my SLAM just two weeks ago and finally could swim in it again. Now its back to a swamp. :(

I want to catch the water somehow from the top of my hill and toss it to the other end of my yard. I live on a corner lot so the water would end up just going into the street.

My neighbors told me this happens once every two or three years as I just bought the place. Yet it has happened twice in two months. We are getting SO MUCH rain this season it is crazy. 7 inches both times.

I can post pictures of my backyard later when I get home, but wondering if anyone else has done something similar already.
 
A viable fix would be digging a trench around the pool area, burying a drain tile hose in the trench surrounded and covered by aggregate stone. Images of the pool and the position in relation to the hill would be helpful. Upload them to photobucket/dropbox/etc. and link them here if you want more suggestions.
 
Skitch said:
Sounds like you need some grading done to your yard. You want a swale behind the pool to divert the water away. I don't think a french drain as suggested by JVTrain is going to be enough.
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You're probably right! Pictures and even an estimate of grade/angle would help. You could even get a landscape contractor out and get their opinion. Usually that's free!
 
This is after my first SLAM when this happened last month: Before Storm

Video Explanation: Video Link

I figured a video would do a better job than a lot of photos with text. Let me know your thoughts or if I should go into more detail with anything.

Originally I thought about running a pip down the side of the fence but it would have to be pretty big pipe with the large amount of water flow we got. I wish I had a video of the storm and the water pattern, but I was to busy trying to drain the pool and do my best at keeping some of the dirt out.
 
The before pic makes it hurt even more :(

I am going to keep this post bookmarked and watch the video a couple of more time. THAT was a good idea to do the video.

Now that we have the video we can really tell what it what with your pool. I was seeing a HUGE hill that would just push the water into your pool/yard. BOY was I wrong! LOL

Thinking and will get back with you.

Kim
 
Obviously, you need to divert the water. Those railroad ties and the rock the previous owners put in was an attempt to do that.

It may have worked for a while but is silted in now and doesn't "absorb" the flow like it was intended.

Where is the source of the water? The video doesn't show that well at all.....I assume it is from your neighbors yard.

Do you have property behind the fence that is behind the RR ties?

It may be as simple as cleaning out that drain bed that was established. show some picture of the slope that carries the water into your yard.
 
What you are looking for is called a French Drain. If you youtube it, you should be able to find a number of great ideas. But basically, it's dig a trench put in some gravel put in some drain tile with a flexible pipe on the end. More gravel. Top with some soil and plants. Extend flexible to where you want the water to go.

Sorry about the double suggestion. I'm at work and sometimes not all of the posts come through.

Anyway, there is no reason this wouldn't work. Just need to figure out how wide to make it to be able to handle the volume of water you get.
 

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If the neighbor's yard drains into your yard, check into whether it's something they did to alter the grade on their property that is causing the issue. I don't know what the laws are like where you live, but most places I know about do not allow properties to be graded to drain into adjoining properties. If it's just the natural lay of the land that's one thing, but if they did something the cause the flow onto your property it doesn't seem right for you to bear the expense of fixing it.
 
I'm going to have to disagree on french drains...we just went through this route and it didn't work. French drains are good for removing standing water but not moving water. For the French drain to work you'll have to create a trough wherever the pipe is to hold the water. Otherwise the water just rolls right over on its way to the lowest point. We have a moderate hill but our problem is our front yard neighbors yard and both house downspouts feed into this hill. The amount of water and the velocity render a french drain useless.

So here's what we are doing. We routed both houses downspouts to underground pipes to back of property. We put a retaining wall with French drain at bottom of hill before pool but again there was so much water it began to follow wall and go around to side of pool. So here we instslled catch basins to pipes to back of property. Finally we are installing two sets of catch basins at top of hill to catch all runoff from front yards before it hits hill and gathers speed. It's a pain and we've had two mudslides into our new pool so I know what you're going through.
 
robertmee said:
So here's what we are doing.
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Exactly my issue Robertmee. I looked into a french drain and you are correct, that would only be good for standing water. There is no way it could keep up with the flow of water I got the past two HUGE rain storms we got. To give people an idea, it filled up two inches of my pool in two minutes causing it to over flow. My pump was even set to waste and it could not keep up with how fast it was coming in.

Do you have any pictures of what you are doing Robertmee? I defiantly need to build a higher wall than the ties that are in place now and route water else where.

duraleigh said:
Where is the source of the water? The video doesn't show that well at all.....I assume it is from your neighbors yard.
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The part where the ties and rock bed are, the source of the water comes from the neighbors on the other side of that fence. I don't believe they did anything that caused the water to flow like this, it was just how the homes were built. Its a good sized hill. Even if the neighbors did something, I have no idea. I just moved in a month ago.

duraleigh said:
Do you have property behind the fence that is behind the RR ties?
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No I do not, the fence was built on the property line.
duraleigh said:
It may be as simple as cleaning out that drain bed that was established. show some picture of the slope that carries the water into your yard.
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I'll get some better pictures when I get home tonight.

kimkats said:
The before pic makes it hurt even more :(
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Yeah, it hurts.
 
Death Dream said:
Exactly my issue Robertmee. I looked into a french drain and you are correct, that would only be good for standing water. There is no way it could keep up with the flow of water I got the past two HUGE rain storms we got. To give people an idea, it filled up two inches of my pool in two minutes causing it to over flow. My pump was even set to waste and it could not keep up with how fast it was coming in.
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Assuming about 600 square feet of pool surface area, that's about 375 gallons per minute into the pool. Is the flow when it rains more of a sheet flow, or is there a creek/river that forms?
 
sbcpool said:
Assuming about 600 square feet of pool surface area, that's about 375 gallons per minute into the pool. Is the flow when it rains more of a sheet flow, or is there a creek/river that forms?
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During a normal rain storm, it forms a creek and just goes down the concert. That is why there is a dirt path on the video. It will normally just go around the pool. However, these heavy storms last more than an hour long. The city actually got 7 inches of rain once it was all said and done. On this storm, it was more of a sheet flow, going over the railroad ties, around them, through the cracks, any way it could. Then it would sheet flow right into the pool.
 
If the rain was coming at 2" per hour for the two minutes you describe, that means an area of about 18,000 - 45,000 square feet (depending on the surface material) is draining into your yard. 7 inches of rain over 18,000 square feet is 78,000 gallons of water. You aren't going to hold that with any wall. You'd have to build something three times as big as your pool.

According to this paper, if you want to be able to handle a 100-year storm you need to design your solution with a capacity to drain up to 600 gallons per minute (assuming 18,000 square feet of drainage area). If it were me, I would build a retaining wall and drains capable of carrying that amount of water. That could be as little as two 4" pipes or as much as four depending on the slope of the drainage pipe and the coefficient of runoff (i.e., grass, concrete, etc.).
 
ouachita said:
Did you use a Realtor to purchase this home and if so was the a Property Disclosure?
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These are almost impossible to enforce. I had many problems with my last purchase and the seller maintained that they didn't know about any of the problems I discovered. Water pools 6 inches deep against the house when it rains? "I didn't notice that." Sprinklers don't work at all in some zones, other zones have broken pipes that flood the streets? "I didn't notice that." Pool plaster delaminating all over the place? "I didn't notice that."

The only way you win against that is to prove they did notice it and intentionally failed to disclose it. Do you know how hard it is to prove a person knew something when they claim they didn't?
 
Pm me your email address and I can send you pictures of what we've done to date...the two upper drains are going in tomorrow after a failed attempt at an upper french drain. And our retaining wall is being extended. But I can show you what we are planning.
 

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