Repairing A French Drain Pipe

The house does not have gutters instead it was a french perimeter drain that surrounds the house and collects water draining off the roof and carries it way by gravity down a hill via a 4″ pitched plastic pipe. the best solution is for this pipe top drain to daylight far away from the house.

French drains are useful when the grade around your house doesn’t lead water away or there are areas that pond up. Excess water near your house perimeter can lead to damaging moisture coming into your house structure.

Repairing A French Drain Pipe

The problem here was that the landscaper crushed the pipes outlet hole with the mower and also allowed the pipe outlet to become overgrown by the grass. As a result this pipe stopped draining and backed up. It took a bit of time but the water backed up and then ended up finding it’s way into the basement.

When we unplugged this pipe it flowed like a fire hose!!!

My solution for repairing the French Drain pipe simple – Open up the pipe and keep it from becoming crushed or grown over!

To do this we removed the grass carefully so that we could re lay it. We then corrected the grade and cut the damaged section of pipe off. Then we bought some blue stone and cut it with a grinder and diamond blade.

the bottom blue stone was cut in the shape of a pie slice and the cutoffs were used for the sides. I was hoping that this design would stop the grass from growing over.

The dirt was added back so that it sloped away from the pipe outlet.

A plastic pipe outlet end cap was added to keep the varmints from nesting inside the pie and then we added a blue stone cap.

The entire assembly was then secured in place with the sod grass we removed earlier. 1/4″ stone was added to slow and disperse the flow of water exiting the pipe.

This is the view from uphill.  the french drain pipe is now protected from the lawn tractor and from the possibility of the grass over growing the pipe end.