Drainage Engineer Needed to Redo Yard

[orngkat]

We have never had any drainage issues until a huge, new house went up on a corner about half a block away up from ours. The previous one car driveway at the front of the house was moved to the side where our street is and became a three car driveway. The city talks about impervioius cover limits but they are meaningless given the specifics that occured after that house went up. In a heavy downpour, rain cascades off that driveway and hits our house full stream. I am putting in a series of rain gardens along its path in our yard (depressions filled with rocks and plants) to try and slow it down for now.

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by thesonofgray

I'm not sure what the yard configuration looks like and what sort of penetrations in the curb you have (sidewalk, driveway, etc), but a nice landscape wall made out of bricks or limestone, grouted or glued together, would likely solve a storm water curb-jumping issue. I've seen them built right off the curb, about 2' tall. Obviously you don't want to raise the entire yard up 2', so you can make them like planting beds. Build a box with the bricks/blocks, fill it up with soil and voila: your new tomato garden.

A walkway/sidewalk penetration isn't hard to accommodate. Create at least two steps up and two steps down as it goes through the walled planting bed. A driveway penetration is really difficult. If the driveway doesn't dead end straight into your house/garage, I've seen driveways actually lowered to create increased hydraulic capacity and use it to convey storm water around the house/yard. But that requires a very specific house/driveway layout.

As someone said previously, the only way to truly fix the problem is to change the elevation of the road, but either a ditch or a wall may suffice until that happens. I'm a civil engineer but I don't do house drainage. But I'd be more than happy to redesign your road if you convince the city to hire my firm.

I have my own home drainage issues (cross-drainage, actually). But I'm mostly taking care of that using french-type drains. It's probably not nearly the volume of water you're facing.

Isn't all this rain fun?

Yes, I've thought of the wall too, and that would solve part of the problem. But prior to where the wall would prevent hopping the curb, water comes down the driveway first. I cut a 1ft span across the driveway in front of the garage with a metal grate. It drains out to the side into a swale I built that goes down the side yard. But, alas, in heavy rains it gets overwhelmed and doesn't prevent water from going into the garage and around up onto the front porch.

Steve

[Trainwreck20]

Also, make sure you know where that water is going to go instead, so you don't end up in a civil suit for flooding someone else's house :P

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Also, make sure you know where that water is going to go instead, so you don't end up in a civil suit for flooding someone else's house :P

We have a creek behind the house. It will go down into there, or just keep going straight down the street. My house is on the back side of an elbow in the road, so I get it worse. Though a few houses down floods also.

Steve

[thesonofgray]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

Yes, I've thought of the wall too, and that would solve part of the problem. But prior to where the wall would prevent hopping the curb, water comes down the driveway first. I cut a 1ft span across the driveway in front of the garage with a metal grate. It drains out to the side into a swale I built that goes down the side yard. But, alas, in heavy rains it gets overwhelmed and doesn't prevent water from going into the garage and around up onto the front porch.

Steve

Ah, well what you've already done sounds good. A ton of water will overwhelm anything, but a 1' wide trench drain should discharge quite a bit of water!

In the most basic terms: Q (discharge) = V (velocity) x A (area)

So you could increase velocity of the water in the trench drain by increasing the bottom slope (if you have sufficient elevation drop at the outlet). I assume the bottom of the trench drain is already concrete. Or you could increase the area of the trench drain by making it deeper or wider. They also have "high flow" grate covers - usually just large openings and angled along the direction of inflow.

[New_to_DFW]

You call Austin Drainage?