Water puddling in grassy area in my backyard

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bakerboy

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Dec 29, 2015
205
Chino/CA
I bought my current house about 1 year ago, the previous owners installed a sun room, there is one corner where the sun room meets grass on the outside and there is a sprinkler there that basically pools water after the sprinklers run. I've tried to "patch" it by adding grass seed/fertilizer to start the growth of grass, but because of my 2 dogs that use that exact spot for coming around that corner, it never grows. The sun really doesn't hit that "spot" if any at all. It gets even worse when it rains, I've tried lowering the minutes of that particular sprinkler run time, but then it affects other areas of the grass because it doesn't get watered enough. It sucks going around that corner because it's basically mud and sucks even worse if I'm in sandals/slippers.

So, I'm looking for ideas on what to do with that corner where the mud is at, I've thought about laying down rock, pavers, bricks......but am open to other ideas.





 
For starters, redirect that gutter down spout to a different location.

Is that area the lowest point in the yard? Can drainage (French drain) be added to redirect the water elsewhere?
 
The only other option would be to put in something like a dry well with a submersible pump to move the water somewhere else when the well fills up.

The home we purchased (and live in now) has a flat roof with scuppers in various locations for the water to drain off of. For whatever idiotic reasons, the builder managed to locate several of the scuppers at positions where the lowest points of the ground were OR in places right next to the services. Yes, one scupper was located DIRECTLY over the gas meter such that, every time it rained, the meter would be deluged with water. I guess it's better than it pouring all over the A/C compressor which is located not 2 feet away from it :crazy: :rant: :hammer:

So, needless to say, a year after moving in I paid to have all of the scuppers sawed off and header boxes and downspouts installed to redirect the water from the roof.
 
I am not sure how much property you have behinde you when you took the picture, but what I have done around my house to avoid flip up down sputs and such.
I buried solid 4 in plastic drain tile , an elbow up over downspout a few inches.Ran tile at an angle to lowest spot in yard, another PVC elbow at the end of that and attach a pop up drain that is buried.The compelte lid pops off for cleaning out.
no more moving anything when mowing.

National Diversified 422G Pop-Up Emitter with Elbow 4 at EssenntialHardware.com

Menards and Lowes have these also.
 
Sometimes the "solution" is worse than the problem. As others have pointed out, the best/correct way to fix it is to move the water somewhere else. But, that will involve trenching the yard to install 4" pipe to move the water somewhere lower than this spot. if this is indeed the lowest spot in the yard the the contractor who did the final grading when the house was built did a poor job.

If it were me, the first thing I would do redirect that gutter down spout, but yo may not get much rain in your area. Second I'd create some sort of landscape feature in that corner. If it's wet all the time, maybe a bed with water loving plants.
 

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The other way to look at this problem is to "look up". Can the water from that point in the roof line be redirected to another downspout somewhere else? This is what I did in my home as the contractor that built this house put scuppers off the roof in the most inane places (hello? right over the service panel and gas meter??). There were at least two spots where water would pour out of the scupper and land in areas near the house that were either very flat or low in elevation. In one area the water would pool and form a small lake sitting right up against the foundation. This led to a termite problem on that side of the house.

The solution - cut off all the scuppers, install header boxes where the scuppers were, and then run either down spots or lateral gutters to other header boxes and downspouts in locations where the elevations allowed water to flow away from the house. Since making that investment, I no longer have ugly muddy splash-back all over my exterior walls and there is no soggy ground anywhere near my foundation.

Can that downspout be moved or the water from that downspout redirected to another location on the roof line using a lateral channel? That could a lot easier than digging up the yard and installing drainage pipe. Contact a licensed roofing contractor to take a look, I bet they can figure something out.
 
Old thread but thought I'd chime in. We had a low spot at our last house. I dug a hole in that spot about 3' deep and 2' around. Filled it with stone and put landscape fabric on top of the stone. Then about 4 inches of dirt and finally grass. Never had issues in that spot again.

We did that with a downspout as well. Dug a hole and ran the downspout into the hole. Filled with rocks. Cover with fabric. Cover with dirt. Plant grass. Never 'heard' from that downspout again.
 
That's essentially the same concept as a French drain and dry well. If you do go with a dry well approach, then you'll want to line the hole with landscape fabric before adding the crushed stone and then cap it with fabric. The reason why you need to line the well is, if you do not, repeated filling and draining of the well will cause fine debris and soil to infiltrate and deposit in between the air spaces of the stones. Eventually the well will fill with mud and it will no longer function. The landscape fabric keeps that from happening.

There are actual plastic dry wells you can buy (think like a small septic tank) that you can bury with crushed stone around the outside of them and a plastic top with a popup valve to let excess water out if the well fills up enough. They also have ports you can open up on the sides of them that will accept different size drainage pipe in case the well fills up and you want to move the overflow water away from the area to a lower point.
 
bakerboy said:
Ok, so something like this:


24 in. Plastic Storm Water Leaching System-FWAS24 - The Home Depot
Click to expand...

Yep.

So you would dig a large hole near that gutter downspout and bury that plastic well in the ground. You need to dig the hole about 12" wider on each side, set the well and then backfill with stone. If you want to run French drains or channels, you would need to run a trencher from your well point to a location at lower elevation and then add perforated and/or solid drain pipe from one of the ports at the top of the well to a location where the water can runoff freely. My suggestion would be to use solid drain pipe near the well and by your foundation and then use perforated pipe further out so that the water flow can diffuse into the ground at a point away from the house.

You can find lots of YouTube videos on DIY French drain and dry well construction. It's not that complicated BUT it really helps if you have a pickup truck for hauling stone and/or renter a trencher. It can be done with shovels and strong backs, but I'd recommend having lots of IcyHot and motrin on hand for the inevitable backaches...
 
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