French Drain

2007 July 19

French Drain

A lot of houses in Kensington, especially in our area, get water in their crawl space during the winter. The French Drain was my attempt to fix that problem at our house.

The drain starts near the front door and runs around the front bedroom to the driveway we share with Page and Joe. A huge benefit of adding the French drain was the elimination of the gutter drain pipe that used to run diagonally along the side of the house.

One pipe is for the gutter drain and is not perforated. The other pipe is perforated and is in the trench just to provide more open space for the water to flow.

Another view of the drain at the corner of the front bedroom leading to the shared driveway.

Here the drain terminates at the driveway at the corner of the house. I discussed the two black pipes in a previous caption. The white pipe is existing and runs to a drain at the corner of the garage.

Not really sure why I've included this photo.

The trench has been backfilled with rock.

Another view of the backfilled trench.

To hold back the soil and mulch, I built a temporary wall out of concrete rubble.

Although I finished the French Drain in July of 2007, it wasn't until July of 2008 that I replaced the ugly 'broken-up-concrete' wall with this wall of stone.

Another view of the end of the French Drain at the shared driveway.