#250 In which our hero imagines the prospect of a flood-free yard.

Since I last updated the yard situation, definite progress has been made. I was concerned about getting the grading right, since if the water didn’t run toward the newly-installed drain, then it’s not really going to help the flooding situation, y’know? Fortunately, Mother Nature helped out in this regard, by making this one of the rainiest summers this decade.

Seriously, the rain we’ve gotten is just stupid. Whenever I contemplated getting back there to rake, it would pour buckets, make the backyard an impassable quagmire. So I’d wait a couple days. Then, when it dried out a bit, I’d go back there and do what I could.

The problem is that there’s a lot of clay in my soil, so unless things were bone dry (which they haven’t been in about two months) it was like racking cookie dough.

But, the good news is that this constant rain give me plenty of opportunity to see if the water was moving like it should. And it wasn’t. So I shoveled and raked some more. Still got lots of standing water. Finally, The Scientist and I pretty much at the same time figured out that we weren’t going to get the water on the side of the house to drain all the way to the street. So we needed to add another drain.

Fortunately, since The Scientist was wise enough to insist on a clean-out near the downspout, I was able to simple cut that flush with the ground and add a drain cap to it. Instant drain! Works great, too.

Then, I realized that we were getting a lot of water that was getting stuck between the big drain in the back yard and the little drain up front. I made the command decision (against the wishes of The Scientist) to add yet another drain in this trouble spot.

Here’s the thing: I don’t ever want to screw around with this drainage bullshit ever again. And since the yard is torn up already, now’s the time to do something like add another drain. If I waited until the grass was restored, then I’d have to dig up turf and reseed and it would be an ever bigger pain in the ass. This is the argument I presented to my wife. She remained unconvinced.

Her fear was that since I was cutting into the professionally-laid pipe--and I am manifestly NOT a professional--I’d leave a gap that dirt and silt would get into and we’d have blocked pipes. A legitimate concern, I conceded.

So I carefully cut into the existing pipe, carefully added the drain pipe then, just for good measure, blasted the shit out of it with expanding waterproof insulation foam. I’m certain that it won’t leak.

And since I finished the second drain (we know have a total of five drains surrounding our house, in case you’re keeping count--and that doesn’t include the existing drains in the window wells, the French drains in the back and on the one side, nor all the perforated pipe now connecting everything together in the back yard) we haven’t had any real water problems!

There’s still some puddling, but I’m hopeful that will go away once I finish with the topsoil and actually get grass growing again.

Which brings you up to date.

There’s a truckload of topsoil sitting under a tarp on my driveway because, of course, about an hour after it was delivered it started raining and didn’t stop for two days.

But the forecast is for clear skies the next couple of days. My plan is to lay all that topsoil, then seed by the weekend, at the latest.

And hope it doesn’t all wash away before something, anything, takes root.

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