French Drains Built Right - Yard Drainage - Drainage Systems 

I’ve watched half a dozen or more french drain videos.. this is hands down the best one. Great job!

The main point to calling 811 is responsibility. If it's 10 feet off the mark the utility is responsible for the repair. If you don't call and hit something, you will find out the hard way why you call.

I have no intentions of installing a french drain. But, this video was a fun and educational listen. Great job!

Much respect for the care to discuss utility protection in your video. I spent 3 years as a utility locator, when it comes to lines between the house and the utility boxes there are three factors that lead to that situation. Fiber lines being non conductive have no way to be located and the utility company usually only buries them an inch deep so just pull them up. Next no locator besides gas and electric will mark inactive lines if there is a telephone service or cable service that is inactive the contractor won't mark it. And finally ownership. Locators are paid by the utility owner and the utility owner does not want us to incur the risk of marking something they don't own since as you have seen sometimes the marks are off and if you dug through it after I marked it in a different location I am responsible.

Outstanding work, thanks for taking the time to do it right!

I did a very similar system, I used 3/4" gravel because I felt it filled in around the pipe and compacted well while having plenty of void. I think 1-1.5" rock can damage pipe and relies on fabric to stretch into the air gap of fabric because dirt over time is going to try to push into the air voids near the fabric. The application you have probably won't see heavy traffic but my installation could. I also used 3M spray glue to seal cuts in fabric for utilities with small scrap to overlap cuts, seal to utility, and I spray glued the overlap on top. It is a million times faster than stitching and it will positively seal out the dirt from working its way in. I also would have ran your pipe to daylight, way better than an emitter that will not last as long as the rest of the system. My system runs to a drywell with pump to street because my whole property was lower than street but higher than my neighbors. My system is 10 years old, still clean as day I installed it and solved all my water issues as well as my neighbors issues. It would have saved me tons of research if this video was put out 8 years ago. I can attest that your theories will work and be reliable for the most part. Good work.

Best video I've seen on French drains. Very clear and to the point explaining how and why to do things. Good job thanks!

One of the best most detailed videos on this topic! Great info! Thanks!

Just wanted to say thank you! Thank you for using SDR35! I will never understand why more people don't use the proper materials.

1) Great job! 2) I need to watch this again!

You are a "natural" teacher who clearly loves his subject & takes pride in his work, with respect for his students/viewers. Thank you for the information so capably and methodically imparted. I've watched over 80 French Drain offerings on RU-vid, and yours rank for clarity and thoroughness. I was blown-away when I witnessed the stitching on your geo cloth - like a final consecration! Can you create a brief training video showing the stitching procedure, with the tools you use? You're an artist! Congratulations and thank you.

That is a first class job right there.

Just had a new drainage system put in at my home. We did 2 pipe systems all the way to the street so one drain cannot clog the other at any point. Also a catch basin just below the last segment of pipe to the street. Learned this from my contractor who had an incident where they repaved a street and paved over a customer's french drain exits to the street

The way he built out this system, is the exact system I needed on my property. Great job

First class operation. Thank you for making an educational video about it.

Thanks for all details provided, great job 👏

Thanks French Drain "Young" Man

Very nicely done and well explained. Thanks for a great video.

Pretty dope. About to buy my first house in Pittsburgh and drainage seems critical in most areas out there. The house I bid on in particular has two French drains so this video was awesome so see how the drain is employed correctly so that I can evaluate my own systems

Your a real natural instructor, the steps are very logical and informative, your application of from experience shows a smarter way of doing the job right. Mahalo, outstanding!

excelent video and thanks for the effort and shearing your knoledge

great video, wish you worked in palm beach county. whoever i hire to run a couple drains will watch this to make sure they’re doing it right.

You do a very thorough job, great video.

Definitely want to do it right! Rigid PVC is for downspouts and yard drains, corrugated is for French drains! I can't believe how many people just bury the black corrugated for downspout drains and call it a day. I used 3" PVC for the downspout lines and 4" for the main line on my system.

Finally found a great video on drainage. 😮

Nice and thorough install. Great job.

That was an incredible explanation!!!

I’m just here because I enjoy videos like this

Very informative. I'm looking forward to giving this a shot.

Just an idea for you that I’ve done before. When splicing the fabric together you can use a propane torch and give the fabric a quick and light shot of heat and push the fabric together it actually works pretty well. As long as the pieces of fabric are overlapping each other.

What an awesome video! Very informative! Thanks!

Excellent job! Best descriptive video!

Thank you so much!

Great explanations, TY!

👍great job good information.

Amazing video and info, thanks!

One of the best drain installations I’ve seen on RU-vid. I see a few people using basins in their systems for large amounts of water, what do you recommend about them?

Thanks for documenting this! Question, why didn't you want to continue the french drain further to the end of the house?

Great video, thanks.

Whoa whoa back up. How tf did you stitch the fabric? Staples?

Well done. Very informative video. You mentioned stitching fabric up a few times. It would have been very useful to demonstrate that. My guess is that you used hog ring pliers with stainless steel hog rings.

damn dude you hit the motherload of pipes/wires! Great video!

Bro, best videos on drains

Man, I lived in Florida for 10 years and seeing the sandy soil gives me PTSD haha Just another reason I'm glad I returned to the Midwest.

Nice job in such a confined area. Not worried about the open junction between the channel drain and drain pipe inlet?

Lots of great details in here. Love the attention to Y fittings instead of T. Also love that you're using good piping material and that your gutter drains and French drain are separate. Thats so key and so many people miss that! Only thing I disagree with is fabric. It gets plugged up with clay and organic matter and slows infiltration down considerably. Often the water ponds on top of the system and creates a water problem before it can percolate through the textile and into the system. The tiny pores of fabric clog up way quicker than the rock. Just been my experience!

Why use a perforated pipe at the beginning of the run?

Primo job !!! Dang, that's the way to do it right

Amazing job! great video

Дякую, дуже гарно показали французький дренаж.

Wow! Excellent! Thank you! so much. just one thing. I think those band clamps will rust away over time. I doubt they are all SS. Maybe Zip ties and silicone adhesive instead?

This is amazingly helpful. Thank you so much. New subscriber here. Happy to become a patron if you go that way!

Good & informative video 👍

Nice work on the job and the video! Was there any consideration on having grade go up beyond the brick near the back of the house? How was that handled?

Im glad i ran across this video. I have been trying to learn a good way of doing this, and this is one of the cleanest and best explained videos. I garden and wondered if there is a way to use this runoff to feed my plants, trees, etc. Can it be tied to an irrigation system or something of the sort? Water is expensive in VA....lol. thanks!

Add debris filter where downspout meets pvc and lose the pop up.

Nice work

Great job!!

Great videos

At a quick glance I thought your thumbnail said Bud light in front of the picture with gutters suggesting flushing it. I was like this man is right on

SDR has its pluses and minuses depending on the climate year round. You are referencing many of the French Drain Man tips / tricks and overall practices. Curious why you didn’t use the armour pipe for solid pipe AND why did you use a boot to connect SDR to corrugated and not the HDPE fitting for PVC to corrugated ?

nice job

Good Job ..All the connectors we use are sweep t's and elbows.

Hey man, love your videos. I’m in NC and have a serious drainage problem on my property. I’ve got to add Gutters to the house and then run probably 200 foot of hard pipe to a ditch behind behind our house. I’m also considering adding a French drain grid in our backyard to try to take some pressure off our septic system when we get heavy rains. Is this something that you’ve had to deal with before?

Good work Masther 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🌙🌙🌙🤝

Some snakes can be forced to go in the direction you want by rotation on their axis but that takes some skill. If you hire a company like Rooter they have training to make the turn but its important to know that wyes are self-cleaning whereas T's are self-barricading.

We find it most effective long term to just rock to the top and never dirt or grass on top

Doing it right is key. Do you have anyone in the Ft. Myers area you could recommend that would do this properly, like you showed? My neighbor and I have sitting water between our houses and could us the help.

Gooooood water.

How did your manual trenching not sever the cable in the trench? They must have a really sensitive touch when digging. (3:04)

Great video. Thank you! But I didn't understand. If you recommend putting the pipe on the tranch's bottom without any gravel underneath, doesn't that mean that roots CAN grow into the pipe from the bottom (even through geofabric)? Because there is no air space under the pipe in this case. Thanks.

Excellent Video! My trench will be about same size as yours. How do I calculate how much Gravel to use per 20 feet of French Drain? My drain is 100 feet so I can figure the amount of Gravel to buy. Thx

what brand filter fabric do u like best?

Definitely one of the best, if not the best, drainage system video. Question: what type of hard pipe would you recommend for a cold climate having to deal with a deep frost line? Thanks!

Curious... Why didn't you use cleanouts for debris at the bottom of the downspouts?

how high of a chance is it that the corrugated pipe will collapse? How much weight can these french drains generally hold?

I have a 12 feet of gap between the structure wall and the compound wall (concrete) do i need 2 system of these lines discharging water or is 1 system of 2 pipes as shown here is good enough?

What keeps the fabric from clogging up with dirt? There are so many opinions on this it's confusing..

would you be able to install this in vero beach/melbourne beach area near sebastian inlet

What is that staple gun you use for closing the fabric?

What did you use to stitch that fabric together

So for gutter run off you should use a solid line?

Quick question how deep do you normally go and does it make a difference from a hot to cold climate?

I can’t drain surface water with a Zoeller m-267. A 5 inch rain is hard to handle. Do you have any recommendations?

How does the pop-up emitter work? From what I have seen on french drain man's website, it has an open bottom for a sump? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a pop-up by letting the water flow down into the ground? Would the pop-up only actually actuate once the water holding capacity of the soil below is at maximum? Any explanation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

The french drain in this case should have been a perforated solid pipe, since it is just a straight run.

Novice question here, what determines when and where you use a solid PVC vs perforated pipe?

Question:Why do you use 360 degree perforations in the french drain pipe, instead of ONLY perforations 180 deg (top of pipe)? Would that not allow for better flow of water? Great video and I appreciate your attention to details on this install!

Great job! How much does it cost to install a french drain for 80 feet length connecting two down sprouts. How can I find a good contractor near my area in Maryland, DC, Virginia. Thanks.

How do you keep the dirt from clogging up the fabric?

good video, i'm not fluent in english and i do not understand where the water goes?

Any rain footage to prove the system works?

Those wires aren't buried, they're darn near at the surface. How is that even allowed??? I would be calling the utilities out to redo those!

sorry but ı didnt see the final discharge place. Did you move the water to mutual street water discharge? (sorry for not finding exact words for things because ım not native speaker :) )

Never installed one of these but I think it would make more sense to install a few more pop ups so the homeowner could do maintenance with a snake instead of calling someone out

Very helpful video. I am going to try to replicate this in an area of my backyard that floods, I only have to trench about 20 ft. What is the proper way to ensure the trench grades downward as you are digging? Just a level, or some other specific method or trick? Thank you!

I can't believe the internet or utility companies laid the cable directly underground without installing it within a heavy-duty conduit.

What are you using to stitch the geofabric cuts for passthrough wires or sprinkler pipes etc?

Where is the Pop-Up Emitter connected to at the end? where will the water go?

One guy says fabric another guy says no fabric. One guy says pea stone another guy says no pea stone . All this for a simple drain . Imagine building a house? It would be like a 3 stooges episode. 😂