Cottage Update: Installing A French Drain
When you first buy a new place, especially a fixer upper, the number of projects and how to prioritize them can make you feel dizzy! Maybe it’s just my ADHD, but my goals and big dreams at times have me spinning in circles as to which “thing” should be tackled first- luckily, my husband is just one of those guys that seems to know exactly what to do in a multitude of situations. Even before we moved to the cabin, Matthew had mentioned his gut feeling about possibly needing to install a French drain purely based on the amount of rain Kentucky gets in a given year. Our humble little cabin also sits slightly dug into a gentile hill side and even though it’s not drastically slopped enough for you to feel it as you walk around, it’s enough that all the rainwater comes flowing down against the house. French drains are designed to deter water away from your house and is a type of drainage system to remove standing water. They are typically ideal for landscape situations as well, sort of what you see on the sides of your fancier freeways and often times at parks. They look like a shallow ditch filled with either gravel or larger rocks.
a finished french drain (photo from pinterest)
HOW TO KNOW YOU NEED A FRENCH DRAIN
Noticing foundational issues in your home such as cracking, settling or leaning.
Moister issues under the home. This will require you to crawl under the house and look for standing water, mold, rot or excess moister and damp conditions.
If your home is located downhill or cut into a hillside, this could mean that damp soil is pressing against the home or foundation and will require further investigation into whether or not a french drain maybe needed
One of the many things that didn’t work when we moved in was a heat source! The buck-stoves vent pipe had corroded and fallen apart due to a leak in the roof jack that wasn’t disclosed to us before purchasing and the ducting under the house had been chewed through by feral cats and then rats. It was going to be much simpler and cost effective to fix the HVAC first, so under the house we went and discovered at that time there was definitely some moisture build up happening and even some rot in the floor joists along the edges where the dirt was level to them. We knew then that it was time to start planning financially to get the French drain done. There are various types of french drain installation. Some are shallow in depth for things like deterring water from gardens and walkways and then there are the more in depth and labor intensive ones for things like pulling water away from the foundation of your home. Mainly the labor comes from having to dig down to the footers. (The footer is a cement slab that is poured for the cinderblocks to be built upon).
After the tedious job of removing all the dirt, we took a grinder and cut out any damaged pieces of foundation removing the cracked mortar. After all the damage was removed, we repacked it with new fresh mortar. We created a lip where the footer meets the cinderblock to allow the water flow more in a more efficient manner. After all of that we then sealed it all with a rubberized roof asphalt, which you can see here as the black coating.
The ground soil needs to be compacted to prevent settling, and the pipes need to be gently sloped 1” to every 10’ of pipe to move water through and out. To do this, Matthew used a tamper bar to smash the soil over and over and over, adding soil and recompacting to create a slope. Honestly, it’s a great workout. To ensure that we were creating the popper degree of slope, Matthew took a 10’ 2x4 piece of wood and put a 1’ block on one side to create the 1’ drop angle. He placed a 6’ level on top the 2x4 and marked the bubble location. To check the slope IN the trench, he laid the 2x4(x10) on the ground and placed the 6’ level on top and checked the bubble location and adjusted the soils slope as needed to know that we were creating it just so.
Now that you’ve created your slope as perfectly as you could, it’s time to lay down your landscape fabric and add your gravel. We ordered drainage gravel from Lowes, but quickly realized that it was significantly cheaper to order from a gravel company and order in bulk. We are probably going to end up with a bunch extra since the amount we need falls in between the bulk poundage’s they have, but no biggie, our driveway could use some repairing! We spread about 1” - 2” (to be safe add 2”) and then began to lay our pipe. There are several different types of pipe you could probably use in this situation such as flexible corrugated pipe or solid pipe. We went with PVC which is listed as perforated piping (which means it has holes drilled on the bottom) and easily enough it’s sold in 10” sections. When you lay the pipe, the holes go face DOWN. You’ll see Matt made a booboo lol, and glued one section with holes facing up but he corrected this by drilling holes on the bottom of that section.
Matt added vertical piping to create a “clean out” to handle any kind of clogging that might happen eventually. It also gives us an option to connect y0ur down spouts from your roof gutters directly to them, or just have them hover above to dump right in.
This is where we are currently.
The only thing left to do now is line the side of the trench with fabric lining to prevent the soil from falling inside onto the gravel you’re laying and fill her on up. Once our gravel order comes in, I’ll through up another article on the finished project!
