If you’re not careful, a waterlogged lawn can make your backyard look like a swamp or a pond. I definitely did not enjoy this look during the rainy season. So, I started to look into how to drain a waterlogged lawn to get my lawn back on track.
If you’re looking for a soggy lawn fix, then here are a couple of ideas that could help you figure out how to drain your lawn and keep it in good shape.
What is a Waterlogged Lawn? (The Quick Answer)
Waterlogging is when surface water cannot drain from an area faster than the incoming water. For example, you are experiencing waterlogging when a heavy downpour creates a puddle on your lawn. Depending on how bad your waterlogging is, these puddles or your soggy lawn can last for hours and sometimes days.
Why a Waterlogged Lawn Needs to Be Drained ASAP
One of the problems a waterlogged lawn can cause is suffocating your lawn’s roots. Grass roots need a constant supply of oxygen to absorb water and nutrients in order to grow efficiently. This is a basic explanation, but I’m sure you get the idea.
In other words, the grass is drowning. One of the side effects of root suffocation is that it causes the root system to decay and rot. So, if your lawn is repeatedly waterlogged, its health will decline, and eventually, your grass will die.
Understanding Why Your Lawn is Waterlogged
I often see people looking for a solution for waterlogging before they work out the actual cause. The problem with this method is that you could use the wrong soggy lawn solution. To best solve the issue of your soggy lawn, it’s best to look at waterlogging in two different ways.
First, surface water is not able to drain down through the soil. Second, surface water is sitting on top of the water table. So, you can resolve surface water that can’t drain through the soil at its location. On the other hand, water that sits on top of a water table needs to be diverted to a different site.
Understanding how high your area’s water table sits and the type of soil you have can help when picking the right waterlogging solutions.
How to Drain a Waterlogged Lawn (Step-By-Step Guide)
There are hundreds of different methods, components, and designs that deal with surface water. For example, storm drains, mechanical pumps, divert ditches, and dry wells all help resolve drainage issues. But unless you want to hire a crew of drainage specialists and heavy equipment, you want to look for a simple solution to handle yourself with some basic tools over a dry weekend.
So let’s take a look at a couple of options.
Dealing with Waterlogging due to Bad Soil Drainage
Soil with poor drainage properties, like clay or soil that is extremely compacted or baked solid in the heat, can stop water from being able to drain from your lawn as quickly as you would hope. These soil conditions act as a barrier that water can’t penetrate. So, grabbing your tools to break this barrier might be all you need to do.
What You’ll Need to Drain a Waterlogged Lawn (Equipment List)
- Coring Aerator or Garden Fork
Steps to Resolve Bad Soil Drainage – Soil Aeration
To aerate your lawn, grab a garden fork or a large core aerator and press it down into the soil. You’ll want to push the fork as deep as possible to improve the drainage. I’d aim to get the fork at least 6 to 10 inches into the soil. Then, remove your tool, take a step backward, and repeat the process so that there is a 6-inch gap between your first holes and your next set.
Now repeat this process over the entire lawn. If you want to increase the size of the holes, you can rock the fork back and forth while it’s in the ground.
Dealing with Waterlogging Due to a High Water Table
A high water table means that the surface water has nowhere to go. So if you try to use the same solution as before, you’ll quickly discover it doesn’t work. All you’ll be doing is just adding water to water. It’s like trying to fill a 5-gallon bucket with 6 gallons of water.
Flooding is inevitable. So, you’ll need to divert the water to a different location or store it so it can slowly percolate into the soil. For this, you can use either an enclosed french drain or an open french drain.
What You’ll Need to Drain a Waterlogged Lawn (Equipment List)
- Garden Shovel
- Prefabricated French Drainage Pipe
- Prefabricated French Drainage Pipe Couplings
- Prefabricated French Drainage Pipe End Caps
Steps to Resolve Waterlogging with a High Water Table – French Drain
More and more people are looking to install french drains themselves and save the cost of hiring professional contractors. Because of this, stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s stock all the tools and materials you’ll need to install a french drain by yourself.
On top of this, companies like EZ Drain manufacture prefabricated french drains that simply need to be connected and buried in the ground. Packaged systems like this are great because they eliminate the need to buy separate materials like perforated pipes, rocks, and drainage membranes.
Now, prefabricated french drains cost a little more than if you purchased the items separately, but they definitely save a lot of time and don’t require extensive knowledge of drainage products. So, if an EZ drainage product from Home Depot could work for you, here are the steps you’ll need to follow.
Calculate the Drainage Area
Before you do anything in your yard, you’ll want to calculate the size of the french drain you’ll need to install. So, calculate the surface area and the 25-year rainfall estimation to determine the drainage storage requirement.
If doing math makes you want to throw in the towel already, then companies like NDS have a free drainage calculator that does all the math for you and tells you how much pipe you’ll need.
Installing any drain pipe length will help, but getting a correctly calculated solution will fix the waterlogged grass for good.
Here are a few rough examples.
Florida Lawn 50 feet x 50 feet
- Drainage Area – 2500 ft2
- 25-Year Rainfall – 3 inches per hour
- Gallons to be stored – 810 gallons
- Length of French Drain – 710 feet
- 10-Foot Pipe Required – 71
California Lawn 50 feet x 50 feet
- Drainage Area – 2500 ft2
- 25-Year Rainfall – 0.75 inches per hour
- Gallons to be Stored – 202 gallons
- Length of French Drain – 180 feet
- 10-Foot Pipe Required – 18
Remove the Grass
Now that you have figured out how long your drain pipe needs to be, you can remove the grass to dig the trench. You’ll want to remove the grass 8 inches wide along the entire length of the trench. A shovel or a garden spade should work just fine for this. If you are installing a very long drain, then you might want to think about using a sod cutter to speed things up a bit.
Digging the Trench
Next, you’ll have to dig out the trench. The trench needs to be 8 inches wide by 14 inches deep. Now, if you are using an enclosed french drain, then you don’t need to worry about a slope, but if you intend to discharge the water out of the drain to a lower point in your yard, you’ll need to allow for a 1% slope.
Laying the Prefabricated French Drain Pipe
As you will be using a prefabricated french drain, all you need to do is connect the pipes. You can join them by using a push-on coupling. No special tools are required. So, connect the pipe lengths, then drop them into the trench.
Capping the Pipes
If you are using an enclosed system, then you’ll need to make sure that you install two end caps. End caps prevent dirt from getting into the pipe when you bury it. If you are planning an open system, cap the buried end and leave the exposed end open.
Back Fill the Trench
Once you have the pipe installed, you need to backfill the trench. For this, use the same soil you removed while digging the trench. Now, there will be some excess soil as the pipe will be taking up some of the room in the trench, so you’ll need somewhere to get rid of the excess.
Lay the Grass
Finally, lay the grass over the top of the trench and give it plenty of water. You’ll need to treat the grass like it’s newly laid sod. So, you’ll probably need to water it a few times a week to allow it to settle back in.
2 Other Soggy Lawn Solutions That May Help
As previously mentioned, there are many different ways to get rid of a waterlogged lawn. Here are a few extra ideas that might work better for your yard.
Dry Wells
A dry well is basically a hole in the ground that stores the surface water and then slowly drains it away. Dry wells are a great solution for areas that don’t have a high water table. It works the same as aerating with a garden fork but on a much higher level.
Lawn Drain
A lawn drain works the same way as a drain that you might see in a parking lot. It takes the water from the low point in the area and then carries it through a solid pipe to a discharge location. These are ideal if you have a second lower area in your lawn where you can discharge the water.
Also, a solid 4-inch drainage pipe might cost about $15 a length, whereas a prefabricated french drainage pipe will be about $80 a length. So, lawn drains are definitely much cheaper to install.
Things to Watch Out For
Before you start digging in your yard, you want to be aware that most of the services to your home run under the soil. For example, your incoming water main, irrigation lines, brown water pipes, and electrical lines run underground. So, take your time digging, or conduct a service survey first.
Avoiding Waterlogged Grass in the Future
When figuring out how to drain a waterlogged lawn, it is always a good idea to find out where the water is coming from in the first place. You might find it is easier to deal with the water at the source than with the waterlogged lawn.
For example, if your soggy grass is due to the runoff from your home’s roof, additional gutters could be the easiest solution and might save you from digging up your lawn. Also, I’ve seen downspouts on gutters that don’t go anywhere. You guys in Florida know what I’m talking about.
The gutters catch the water, which then travels down the gutters and discharges onto the ground. Adding extensions to these downspouts and taking the water to a specific location other than the lawn will help stop waterlogged grass.
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