Baton Rouge Drainage Services: What to Know About Drainage Installation

Rain and plenty of it is as common to South Louisiana as crawfish are. As such, it can wreak havoc on lawns, landscaping, and your overall property. It’s also important to be aware that poor drainage can impact your home’s foundation, making adequate drainage a priority. If you notice places in your yard or around your home that collect and hold water after a storm, there are several options for alleviating this issue. Let’s take a closer look at how a landscaping and drainage specialist can help.

Drainage Options for Your Home’s Lawn

Depending on the location and scope of your drainage issues, there are several ways that standing water and puddles can be addressed. From small, simple applications to more robust solutions, the experts at Kyle’s Lawn and Landscape can help.

French Drains / Seepage Drains for Your Yard

A French drain (or seepage style drain) can often be an easy and effective solution for solving drainage problems. With a simple trench that features a perforated pipe that is covered with gravel, standing water can be filtered away from your home’s structure. This is especially important due to the expansive, clay-laden soil that our homes are built upon in south Louisiana. When too much water infiltrates the ground, the soil will swell, exerting pressure on your foundation. Likewise, when it dries out, it relaxes and contracts. It is this constant back and forth that cause serious foundation problems. Maintaining a consistent moisture level with appropriate drainage can prevent these issues.

Rock Drainage Ways

If your house foundation sits unusually low to the grade of either the lawn or the landscape, grading work may not be an option (as mentioned below) but something needs to be done to prevent water from entering the weepholes in brick walls or wrapping up and under siding. A rock way about 6-12 inches wide with either a lower graded soil base or a French drain under the rock way is a reliable way to mitigate water from intruding into your home during heavy rains via weepholes etc. These can either be open ended and allow excess water to move out to the lawn space or contained and moved out into a drain end lower in grade elsewhere on the property. This becomes a very necessary option when the foundation is low and there are no gutters installed to route roof wash into a dedicated system.

Grading and Dirt Removal for Your Lawn

For more significant ponding issues, grading services may be necessary. The grading around your home should channel the water away from it. If there are large collections of water, regrading these areas can solve this problem. On the other hand, there may be too much dirt and soil around your home. If this is the case, our drainage experts can identify that condition and strategically remove the dirt and sod back over to prevent areas of standing water and the formation of mud holes and bare areas.

Gutters

Often shunned in the world of home architecture, gutters can offer both functionality and designer accented looks as well as peace of mind your house will not see water from heavy rain fall via roof run off. With today’s gutter technology, gutters can be made to match the color of the house or roof shingles to help blend into the house and become less apparent then ever before. Copper gutters can be used for a more antique look down the line as they weather and patina down. The different styles offered these days can range from K-style (box) which hold a great amount of volume to half round styles that offer elegance and a more “old world” feel both with round style downspout to soften the look down a wall. Coupled with a well-designed drainage system, the downspouts can be routed over or into catch basins to allow for discharge to be routed out to the street or a common drainage point.

Sump Pump Systems

Water needs to go uphill to drain due to tree in the way? It’s easier than you think to defy the laws of physics and move water uphill! Sump pumps are heavy duty pumps that work off of a float switch and are stationed in a sump basin where drainage systems dump into. Once the reservoir housing the pump fills to a point, the float will activate a switch on the pump and the unit will then pump the water how ever it is piped through the property to a common drainage area whether that is uphill or level or even around multiple corners. We do try and save this as a last resort since we are introducing an electronic & mechanical means to move water and therefor a failure point (usually many years down the line) that can cause back up issues should the unit stop working.

Whether you need help with solving your home’s drainage issues, sprucing up your flowerbeds, mowing your yard, trimming tree limbs, or any other landscaping service, the pros at Kyle’s Lawn and Landscape are here to help.