Drain Line in the Grove - 2020 Upgrade

The Grove, June 2018

When I bought the Roediger House in 2003, there was only bare landscaping in place and most of the open ground was grassy (but not lush!). That was true of the part of the yard we call The Grove, on the left of the house, a jut of rectangular land bounded on three sides by the retaining wall and hemmed in by the driveway and parking area. In the center is a massive Bradford pear tree, and two of the four cherry trees that had been planted to frame it still remain.

The Grove, April 2018

I talk about building it up and planting shrubs and such in this blog post, from 2018. The other project I'd tackled in that area was putting in a drain line to help remediate the water and run-off issues that the build-up resulted in. Turns out I was definitely an amateur because it did not prove durable enough over the long term.

Connection to Existing Gutter Drain

One of the major "green slip" yard projects in the quarantine task jar was to completely redo that drain line to achieve a more functional slope, and to connect it to the front wall drain instead of emptying into the monkey grass. As a bonus, I was determined once I got into this project to find a way to also tie in the landlocked gutter and drainspout in the small kitchen herb garden that sits between the two sidewalks from the parking lot.

That task was drawn from the quarantine task jar on the final Monday of April and, even though I had already gotten started (a bit of an overachiever, perhaps!) on it before the slip was drawn, I still spent three more full days on it, taking advantage of some perfect weather days. Even more time after that has been spent on refilling the trenches and finishing it all off.

The yard does gently slope from back to front, and of course at the front retaining wall there's a dramatic drop to street level. I knew I would have to go with a much deeper trench for the line, and that meant I could not be kind to the cherry tree it needed to skirt alongside. I cut away some major roots.

The original driveway was right beside the house on the south side. When the parking area was put in, necessitating a higher and more extensive retaining wall, they basically covered over the old driveway wall after removing the carved granite wall caps on top, and they dumped a lot of debris in as fill.

I had to take the pickax to a section of that buried driveway wall to bring the Grove drainline over to connect with the buried front-of-house gutter lines, to then connect to the front wall drain.

Understandably, the demolition of the original driveway offered up a couple of other challenges as I worked on this trenching project. One of those was all the buried bricks and mortar and chunks of concrete that I kept striking and having to dislodge and remove.

I also hit a section of solid concrete that I had to bust up and chip out. Glad I had already added a hefty sledgehammer to my tool collection last summer.

It looks like the paving of the large parking area was initially bounded by landscape timbers that have long ago rotted away. I unearthed the knotted rotted remnants of some of them while I've been at work on this. It helps explain the gap between the pavement and the bricks of the sidewalk going to the side of the front porch (see the above picture), where I was constantly pulling weeds.

When I ordered long drainage trays, like those shown in the recent HVAC-area drain line project from a few weeks ago, I had in mind that one of them might be perfect for that gap. (Sizewise, it was a made-in-heaven match.) The photo above bears that out, although I did have to grab chisel and hand-held sledge hammer in order to get rid of the thick bed of concrete that occupied part of that space:

I can tell with the finished product that it's not quite perfect for catching run-off from the driveway but, over time, I think it will help with it. But I had another idea for how that gap-filling drain tray might be useful, and it has to do with resolving the landlocked gutter and downspout issue just on the other side of it.

This blog post from 2013 shows the undeveloped side yard between the front porch and the back door, which is where I now have kitchen herbs, irises, and an unwieldy oak leaf hydrangea. That old corrugated black plastic pipe has still been there all these years but is partially buried and hidden by the dwarf crepe myrtles and sage and monkey grass. I mostly haven't thought about it, except in winter when its output onto the driveway makes for a slippery situation when the temperatures are below freezing. I have fantasized about ways to direct the discharge, and that drain tray and sidewalk gap allowed me to figure out what I wanted to do about it: I could lay new drain lines from the downspout there, give it a good 90-degree turn when it hits the parking lot, and connect it to that drain tray to get it past that sidewalk...and then bring that water down to connect to the Grove drain line I was installing.

One hitch, though: that last effort at a Grove drain line had as its starting point the reclaimed brick pad I put in two summers ago, in front of the porch access door. That's lower ground there, given how I've built up the planting areas on either side of it, and I knew I would not be able to have a fully-buried continuous feed drain line...plus I needed to channel any water from that pad. So I decided for now I'll just let water run across it. It might be goofy, and it might lead to other problems, but for now it's how I'm going to go.

A last piece of this: the corner of the driveway closest to the front porch, just to the left of the outdoor movie screen frame, has been a trap for runoff and debris, since it slopes down slightly toward the monkey grass border I planted.

I took out some of that monkey grass, laid some brick and border, and put in a ground-level drain that ties into the drainage line. It is not all that elegant but I think it's going to be pretty functional. I'm still waiting for a good daytime downpour so I can get out and see what I have won and lost.

So: that's the quarantine task jar project that kept me busy for the final days of April.