today we are tackling a fun and very common project
installing a french drain do you have standing water in your yard that you
need to get rid of well stay tuned and we'll show you how
hey friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and today we are
here at the nursery and we have got a project that jerry is
going to tackle i would say we but i'm just going to be the observer and the
narrator of this little project installing a french drain what is a
french drain a french drain is a fantastic solution to get
rid of standing water in your yard or some sort of area obviously we're
down here at the nursery right in front of the shrub lot and this
area where you can see where the grass is tall it has a standing water issue
because of the shrub lot all of these shrubs are on drip irrigation and of
course because it is the hot summer it's august that drip irrigation has to
run really like twice a day right now and
because we've got to get those pots really
saturated with water obviously there will be some
runoff of that water this area is a low spot
so behind us is there's a slight uphill and then there is the
creek so the water gets trapped right here and
especially in the summertime i mean it's it's a goopy mess there's a real issue
because we have people come park right here and then they walk to
the shrub lot so it's not very appealing when you want to
go shopping for plants and you're trolling through mud so we need to get
rid of this so jerry is going to install this today we're going to walk you
through exactly how to do it with this french drain it is going to
have all its pipes are under the ground so you
don't even see it so what he's going to do is install this
french drain and then connect it to a pipe that is already in the ground
and then it will send it out under the grass we are going to go ahead
and let jerry he's going to start trenching the french drain
french drains are great because everything is underground and you do not
see anything so it's the whole process it's going to be muddy it's going to be
dirty but it's going to be very effective and it's going to get rid
of this standing water so first what we're going to do is
jenny's going to get rid of all this tall grass that's back here so i'm going
to go ahead and get weed eating and then jerry's going to get to playing in the mud
when you're weed eating because oh my goodness
um i have weedy before and shorts and a t-shirt
and it is not fun and can you tell i got some new um
a little bit new makeup going on here so i hit some mud
so you know i guess it'll be like a detox
mask for me i don't know creekside mud so
when you weed eat it make sure that you are wearing the proper
attire all right so now we're going to i guess Jerry's going to start trenching
jerry has got the trench dug and if you are not so fortunate to own a
nursery and a landscape company then you may not have the machine that
we had but good news is that you can go to a
rental place and rent them for a day a half a day
because doing this by hand obviously yes you can
do that but it is a lot of physical labor and so
we're all about working smarter not harder so don't think oh
well i don't own you know that equipment just go rent it
because before this we would always just go
and rent a ditch witch so we have the ditch is made so what jerry did is
he has that great little shovel he went out and took out any kind of excess dirt
that fell back into the trench when he was making it
because of course that's going to happen you want your trench to be as
somewhat as level as possible obviously we're not going to get the line level
out here and make sure it's all perfect you can if you want to we're just not
those kinds of people so relatively level the black
landscape fabric behind me is going to go into
the ditch next so it is actually going to line that ditch
that is going to help when we put the black perforated pipe in there
to keep it the pipe free of mud and debris
and sediment and those kinds of things because you want your pipe
to be as clogged free as possible the whole idea is that
we are creating a channel the water runs through
the ground hits that channel of some gravel
the pipe and then hits that pipe and then you can move it to wherever you
want that's the whole idea of a french drain
so the black landscape fabric will go down
it will line the ditch we will then come back with the black corrugated pipe
lay it down you will notice that it is has what they call like a sock or a
sleeve over it again that just helps to keep
the debris out there are little holes in that black pipe that the water can go
into lay that down and then we will come back with some number 67
gravel on top of that that acts like a filter
the water comes down hits that hits the pipe
out it goes so that's just what we're going to do
now is plastic tube gravel lots of good sweat
yes anything else you want to say no if anything i think just when you
when you're trenching whichever slope you're going on you
wouldn't want to try to you know just give it a slope downward
you know a grade downward every so many feet a gradual slope down
to where you're draining the water so what we're trying to do is is get
that to drain towards
the pipe we already have in the ground is put to another drainage system
so that's the idea so you're not really making and the reason i'm standing very
close is because i had the microphone on me so that way hopefully it picked jerry
up but again yeah doesn't need to be level
it needs to be a gradual downward slope gradual slope down a
gradual slope down see this is he's he is the brains and the brawn and i'm
just the pretty face in front of the camera
i'm teasing um so gradual slope down to wherever it is that you're
going want the water to go all right let's get to cracking
so whenever you have to connect the two pipes together if you don't have them
one you don't have a coupler you don't have one long massive piece
just slice the hole slit in one squeeze it together wiggle them together
this is where the strength comes in that's your sleeve and then if you'll
notice on here you'll see those little slits
right there that's where the water drains into in
the pipe and then it can just run down the pipe
to go where you want it to be
the next step on this french drain is and jerry's already started doing
this so we're going to take that landscape
fabric and he has folded it over almost like you're
folding a napkin so because the whole idea is
you do not want any of this great north carolina red
clay on top of your french drain so by having the pipe then a lot of that
great gravel then one layer two layers of
that landscape fabric is gonna keep the red
clay mud out of the drain because that's one of the greatest ways to clog up your
french drain is with that thick goopy red clay that
we are so infamous for here in north carolina now
what we're going to do is we're going to come back through
and the excess soil the dirt we're going to go ahead and scoop it up
jerry's already started doing that some with the machine we're going to come in
here those little ridges we are going to take that away because
you do not want to put that red clay back on top even though
it's the landscape fabric you don't want to put it on top of the landscape fabric
because eventually it will start to work its way
through and clog up your drain now we here are going to once we're all
cleaned up and said and done we're going to come back through and put
gravel on top of this spot because we're wanting to extend the
shrub lot just a little bit to make a pathway for our customers
to walk through and not have to worry about walking on grass but it'll be on
that great gravel it's a little cleaner we can control the
weeds better the pots will stay clean so forth and so on now if you want to
put grass on top of your french drain
jerry really recommends because he's the expert here
recommends putting not just your all your native
red clay back on there but if you will just go ahead and you can do a mixture
of like some sand and some native soil but again just not
all of that red clay back on top of the french drain
because it will just clog it so if you can mix in some sand
that'll loosen it up then you plant your grass on it and it will be fine so if
you can keep it soil free that's awesome but
certainly we understand that in you know some situations you can't
because last thing you want to do is to go all this work and then your french
drain gets clogged up and you're back where you started again so
we're going to keep working and see what happens
all right guys so this is how you install a french drain
we are basically all done there is just one more piece that we have to do um
we did not have the part but bless our sweet friend
josh who is actually our neighbor has that spare part so he is going to bring
it to us it is a tee so we as you saw we have that one
main line of pipe going down through here we already have a french drain
in the ground so jerry just needs that t-pipe
so that he can attach this pipe the new pipe with the existing french drain
and it can then take the water away from this parking lot
area so that is it in a nutshell of how you can
install a french drain to eliminate standing water at your house
i hope you have found this video helpful and
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y'all have a fantastic day and i think we just finished this in
time because it's starting to thunder and we're getting a little bit of rain
so we're gonna go get dry y'all have a great day bye
my