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You are here: Home / Landscape / Installing a Catch Basin and Dry Well System

Installing a Catch Basin and Dry Well System

May 6, 2014 by SmartGirl 3 Comments

You know how inside your house when you go to fix one little thing it exposes another problem and then you’re up to your eyeballs in unexpected repairs?  Yeah, I do that outside too.  One thing always leads to another.  I told you 2 weeks ago that I moved a skip laurel bush around in my yard.  They are evergreen and I am loving how it blocks the view of all the crap behind my shed.  So much so that I decided to dig up our 3rd, and final, skip laurel and move it inline with the other two.  But alas, I was smart enough to have the hubby do the digging and moving this time.  OMG took him no time at all!  Damn my inferior muscles.  This was the plan. Plan for moving the 3rd skip laurelBut as you can see I wanted to put it smack in the middle of our dry rock river, or wibber as my son calls it.  Now this thing is not for decorative purposes at all.  It does an awesome job sucking the massive quantities of water that flood under my shed, coming from my neighbor’s property, during a heavy rain.  Feel free to check out this post, this post, and this post to see what I mean.  The bottom line is that I need something to handle the water that accumulates in the gravel area next to the skip laurels.  So what’s a girl to do?  I channel my inner Ahmed Hassan and install a drain and well system.

One of the eyesores behind my shed was a dry well (similar to this one) that we were going to use elsewhere and never did.  We also had corrugated drain pipe left over.  The correct choice for this project is SOLID corrugated pipe, which will move the water from the catch basin to the well, but will not take water out of the ground and away from the plants near by.  The purpose of this pipe is to move water, and for that you use solid piping.  Oops.  The only thing we had to buy for this project was a catch basin and grate.   I probably would have bought something bigger than 9″, but hubby’s the one who ran to Lowe’s.  He said he didn’t know I was going to hide it under the gravel.  I think the 9″ will be fine.

So after we moved a ton of the rocks (those things were in the front yard when we moved in and I’ve since moved them all over the place) and I replanted the skip laurel, it was time to decided where to put the well.  I pointed and hubby dug.  Yeah, I’m no dummy.  He’s a great hole digger.  Wait till next weekend when I milk Mother’s Day for all it’s worth!Rocks moved, skip laurel planted, hole dug - woohooView of newly transplanted skip laurel and hole for new drainage

The pipe will run this way.pipe will run this wayYes I grew up in NYC and now I own 3 wheelbarrows

Here it is with the well in the ground, without the top on it.  It’s wrapped in the landscape fabric to keep dirt from getting inside or clogging up the holes.  This well has holes to let the water seep out slowly back into the ground.  I’m all about landscape fabric for keeping dirt out of drainage systems, or between dirt and gravel, but I don’t use it as a weed block in case you were wondering.   The drain pipe is wearing a sock (similar to this) for the same reason, to keep dirt from getting in the holes.  In this case, the holes pull moisture into the drain, which we don’t want because it will be pulling it away from the plants, but I figure I can get away with it because the water is traveling such a short distance to the well, and then it can seep back out.  I guess time will tell.Fix standing water issues with a well, pipe, and catch basin

I double checked to makes sure the pipe was flowing downhill and that everything fit correctly.My little helper taking a break while mommy worksMake sure the pipe is always going down gradeMaking sure everything is in place

Once everything looked good, I wrapped the up the well and started to bury it.  kneeling on inground well to make sure landscape fabric is tucked around it

And here’s the nitty gritty of it.Fit the catch basin and drain to the corrugated drain pipeCover drain so nobody even knows it's thereBury drain pipe and cover grateTada!  Now I still have to find a place for all that rock!!  I also realized I have a ton of other different drainage fixes I’ve used around the yard and maybe one day I’ll get around to writing about those too.  Maybe.

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Filed Under: Landscape, Outdoor Projects Tagged With: Yard Crashing

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Julie at Being Home says

    May 8, 2014 at 5:23 am

    Well, I am exhausted after reading this post. So, what can you NOT do? lol H did something similar to this a couple of years ago. We really needed to get the water from the downspout away from the house so he used the corrugated pipe. I have never heard of a drain sleeve before though. Good to know.

    Reply
    • SmartGirl says

      May 12, 2014 at 9:10 am

      Hehe. You only need the drain sleeve if it’s perforated. Downspouts are apparently NOT supposed to be hooked up to perforated pipe, but mine are and they work perfectly! We dug a trench, lined it with landscape fabric, put in the sleeve covered pipe, and filled the trench with gravel. That was 4 years ago and we’ve never had any problems with it! Yay!

      Reply
  2. linda Prin says

    June 27, 2016 at 11:35 am

    Wow your yard looks so cute! I like that it offers a look of the outdoors and seems natural. I am in need of a drain basin, but the rock bed is so fun. Thanks for the ideas.

    Reply

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