0:00 Sam: I'm sitting here with Randy Metz. He's the owner of Universal Landscape Corporation, and I wanted to ask him some questions about drainage in the Pacific Northwest. We're in Snohomish County right now, the wet months are coming up fast, so we want to go over some of the questions homeowners are curious about. Randy, what's the worst drainage problem you've seen in your career?
0:24 Randy: Probably a driveway situation. The funny thing about it was the homeowner was a civil engineer. His whole engineering firm, that's all they do is plan out drains, but they always do everything on paper with a computer. I just thought it was funny that he asked me, "How are we going to get rid of all this water out on the driveway?" I'm thinking, you're the civil engineer! But anyway, we ended up having to put in a French drain system and tie it all into the storm drain system. He'd already had another contractor try to put in a couple of drains, and it still wasn't fixed. We were able to redirect the water under the driveway and hook it into the storm drain system, so now it's okay. He just needed some real-world experience applied to the drawing he had.
1:25 Randy: And his business partner, the other half of the civil engineering firm, ended up having me out to his house to build a drainage swale. He had another bad drainage problem, basically coming from the neighbor's side, almost like a creek that would swamp the whole corner of his property. He's like, "How do you think we should get rid of this?" Again, he's a civil engineer, but he wanted me to design it for him. So we got them both fixed up nice.
1:55 Sam: What kind of mistakes do you see people make with French drains? If a homeowner has done it, what assumptions do they trip on, if you had to pick one?
2:10 Randy: The biggest thing that people don't understand is that surface water is 95% of it. They're always thinking the water's coming from under the ground somewhere, or there's some kind of a spring, or "it's always wet here." Well, yeah, it's because it's a low spot. Literally, you can just displace the water by filling in that low spot, get it up high enough so the water can sheet drain, and you've solved the problem without even putting in any pipes or doing anything. It's just the way your yard is graded. A lot of times, that is the problem. Now, if there's absolutely no way to get positive slope away from that area, that's when you need either a catch basin or a French drain.
2:55 Randy: But as far as mistakes people make: they use that black corrugated pipe. It's absolute garbage. You can't clean it out, and you can't keep it flat, so it's going to go like this in the ground, and it's going to clog with pine needles and leaves and stuff. We always use the heavy-wall PVC pipe that stays rigid and smoothly carries the water away. So don't ever use the black pipe. If you hire someone that's using that stuff, then you know they're not doing it right.
3:26 Sam: That makes total sense. I've always wondered about that corrugated pipe.
3:33 Randy: Well, it's cheap. It's easy for homeowners to lift, it's lightweight, it's flexible, you roll it out. They buy like a hundred-foot roll for super cheap. But it's going like this in the ground, so every one of those little inconsistencies and dips is going to clog with leaves and pine needles and muck. And then if you hire someone to come clean out the pipe, that thing goes right through it. And because it's not very flat... it's just garbage. You're putting garbage in the ground, and you're going to have to fix it. It's worthless.
4:05 Randy: Also, what I was saying about French drains versus sheet draining: people will build a French drain and then bury it with a bunch of dirt, and the water won't even actually get to the French drain. So it's a waste, when they could have just graded out their yard and sheet-drained the water off without even having to put in the drain. Sometimes you don't really need the French drain.
4:35 Randy: That's where a catch basin might be better, because a catch basin is going to get that surface water straight into the catch basin and carry it away. It doesn't have to infiltrate into the French drain first and then be carried away.
4:45 Sam: So a catch basin has an open grate on top? You see it from above, and it's got a pipe at the bottom where you're taking it downhill?
4:58 Randy: Right. A catch basin is there to collect sediment, too. If you have a bunch of stuff buried in the ground, once it's buried everyone forgets that it's there. If it wasn't built properly, or just over time, sediment and stuff can leach into that pipe and clog it up, and once that happens, it's under the ground. You don't know. You can be standing on top of a French drain right now and not know it, or how to get to it, or where it starts or where it ends. People say, "I think there's an old French drain out here somewhere. It might be plugged, I don't know." So you should have access points on either end of it, so you can take off a lid, look down in there and say, oh, it's clogged with leaves and branches and mud.
5:38 Randy: With a catch basin, at least we can both see it. Take the lid off, look down in there: yeah, it's full of mud and leaves, that's why it's not working, clean it out. That's the point of a catch basin: it catches the sediment and the leaves and everything, they settle to the bottom, and the water goes out the pipe. Once that fills up to the level of the pipe, that mud and muck will start going into the pipe and clog it. That's why you need to service it, but at least you can get in there and service it.
6:09 Sam: So it sounds like you tend to go with a catch basin recommendation over the French drain, if it makes sense for the project?
6:17 Randy: Yeah. A French drain is like a last resort, or if they just really, really don't want to see a catch basin, or they're insistent that the water is coming from deep down. That's where a French drain really will shine, because sometimes there is water moving through the ground. But usually it's just surface water, and they're mistaking it: "This area has always been wet, I just know there's water coming, it's coming from my neighbor." They always think it's coming from their neighbor. It's like, no, it rains everywhere equally. You have water in your yard and a low spot here, and the water just collects in that low spot. So simply by regrading it, you can fix it.
6:58 Sam: I think that's all the questions I had. Do you have anything to add, in terms of what people need to look out for with drainage?
7:05 Randy: Just use good pipe, and start with the grade. Start with the grade.
7:12 Sam: Words of wisdom. Thanks, Randy.
