The Muskoxen

Ever since I moved into my house, my back yard  has had problems draining. Every time it rains, puddles form in the low point, and don't go away for about a week. I'd finally had enough and decided to put a drainage system back there.

It turned out to be a bit more work than expected.

The idea was to dig a big hole, install a Flo-Well system, then dig trenches feeding into it, tie in my sump pump, then back fill with gravel. Simple enough we thought.

Muskoxen Keith came down Friday night, and we got started about 9:00 Saturday morning with my buddy Glen. It had rained about four days before, so of course it was still muddy and there was still standing water in the yard.

 Day one got off to a pretty good start, and after getting going on the big hole (three-and-a-half feet deep and three feet in diameter), it was decided that I should go and get the first load of gravel. When I got back 30 minutes later, Keith and Glen had gotten through a good two feet. "Great," we thought, "We'll tear through this quickly."

 Then the cursing started. We hit the hardest clay we've ever come into contact with. Now, all soil around here is orange clay, but what we were working with at this point was a gray clay that was almost as hard as concrete (and when it dried, actually became as hard as concrete). So the going was pretty slow from then on until we decided it was best to go buy a pick and hack away at it. It was after lunch before we finished digging the hole and one of the main trenches.

We put some gravel in the bottom of the hole, placed the Flo-Well, and back filled with the rest of the gravel. At this point, it was almost 3:00 and we went to go get another load of gravel. No such luck as the gravel place closed at 2:00. We frantically called MSO Jess to try and find another local place that has gravel (and not Home Depot or Lowes because they only sell small bags for horrendous prices). She found a place just down the street from our house, Aqua Site Materials, where the guy said they were technically closed, but would help us out. We sped down there, and got loaded up. The guy was butt-nice because I didn't have any cash on me and he let me come back later and pay for the load. (I ended up going back twice on Monday afternoon, meeting a woman who was very nice, but I don't think was completely there upstairs.) After getting back with that truckload, we back filled the Flo-Well and got it up to where the pipes connect to it, then dug the two smaller trenches from the downspouts. This is what it looked like at the end of day one:

On Sunday, day two, we couldn't get any gravel, so we decided to concentrate on the digging and plumbing aspects. Of course, when we came outside, there was standing water in one of the trenches (no picture, unfortunately). We started digging the longest trench up from the Flo-Well to where the sump would tie in. This became difficult because of:

1. The Ricky's that lived here before had tried to mitigate the drainage problem by simply dumping a ton of gravel (and the wrong kind, to boot) on the ground, then putting topsoil and sod overtop. This made digging through it tough. You couldn't even get the shovel through the gravel.
2. Everything was saturated with water, so the mud was extremely heavy.
3. We were working in straight mud and slipping around and trying to push an overloaded wheelbarrow around to dump the soil.

But we persevered and got it done. By lunch time, we had our first sense of accomplishment, as we dug under the brick wall and laid a piece of 1 1/2" pipe that connected to the sump coming out of the house.

The rest of the afternoon would be spent connecting pipes and smoothing out the trenches to make sure we didn't have any pools of water in them.

Because we couldn't get any gravel on Sunday (everything was closed, of course), I took a 1/2 day on Monday to try to finish up. My motivation was nil zippy at this point, and being out there by myself, I found it hard to get it done. After two more loads of gravel, I got it all in and filled another trench, leaving only to put dirt back on top of the Flo-Well area and the main trench.

I called and begged Glen to come back on Tuesday after work to help me fill the top of the trench and Flo-Well. After a little prodding, he agreed, and we ended up knocking it out in a little more than an hour. It was just good to have another body there. At this point, my hands and arms hurt so much, I let Glen do most of the filling of the wheelbarrow and I tamped down the dirt.

So after four days, the project finally came to a close. Minus the topsoil and grass seed/sod. We'll see what the rain does to it and possibly put some more fill dirt where needed. For now, though, it's all done:

The full complement of drainage project photos can be found on Muskoxen Brendan's family site brenandjess.com.