bought a house, property gets really wet drain it all to pond?

[xekon]

We bought a house and when it rains a lot, a lot of the land gets covered with water, probably 40% of the land. However there is a BIG pond on the property. and I have been reading about french drains (4'deep trench with perforated 4" pipe in the bottom covered with 1" fill gravel)

I was wondering how well I could keep my land dry if I ran some of these french drains and had them dump out to the pond? Long as the pond is deep enough this would lower the water table on my land and keep things dry right?

[Bearfootfarm]

It couldn't hurt with the drainage, but it probably wont change the water table

You could accomplish the same thing by grading the property so it slopes towards the pond

[Alice In TX/MO]

I highly recommend you have professional drainage people do an evaluation and recommend a plan.

Messing up drainage is expensive.

[fishhead]

How long does the water sit on the surface? If it's just a few days and isn't getting into the house I wouldn't worry about it. I live on pure sand and after heavy rains the water will stand in places for a few hours. In the spring before the ground fully thaws it can stand for a couple of weeks.

[rambler]

On my small farm I'd need to restore it and get fined if I did such a thing without permits. These are fedral laws that the state must draw up which the county enforces, so yes anywhere in the USA you are subject to these rules; how they affect you in your location today depends on your local county & state, but the rules are there. Most states are starting to attach county funding dependent upon the county actually enforcing these rules.....

How you proceed from here is up to you.

4 or 5 inch tile can useually handle up to 10-15 acres of land, 6 or 8 inch tile can handle up around 40 acres, depends on the slope of the tile to the pond, and the soil type.

--->Paul

[xekon]

yeah i know theres laws for how much fill dirt i can bring in. thats why i was thinking it would be best to try and drain the ground to the pond thats on the property. The water can sit for days sometimes and we are wanting to build a shop and have a little more parking that isnt water logged.

[RiverPines]

I dont know where you are but watch for laws too. The water has to go somewhere and you can get into trouble in some areas if your water run off is cause for some other problem.

We live in wet lands here and our local laws do not allow changing the grade or anything. It may be our land and our swamps but we cant alter it. Lucky for us we love living in the river bottoms. We do well as river rats.

I had friends that changed the grade on their land and flooded the neighbors. They got sued and got citations for doing it. They had to undo it all and pay the neighbors for flood damage.

Just be careful incase you flood something, even sending your water to a road can cause issues from authorities. So its not just neighbor land you have to worry about.

I would call a professional so they can figure out where this water can safely and legally go.

[Cabin Fever]

What you have incorrectly described a French drain. You have more-or-less described an agricultural subsurface drainage system. These systems are intended to lower the watertable. Such a system will only slowly drain ponded water (at a rate based on the soil's permeability) unless surface inlets are included in the design.

A French drain is actually a trench with perforated pipe in the bottom and then backfilled with gravel to the surface of the soil. With this design, ponded water is quickly drained from the surface.

[motdaugrnds]

I know what I would do if the situation were here.

First I would talk with the local authorities as to what is lawful to do.
Second I would "consult" with professionals about getting done what is lawful to do.
Third, I would do it myself.

[ronbre]

we didn't pay any attention to the "laws"..we just did what we needed done

we had very very wet land and after our housefire when we put in the new house with a raised drainfield (4' above grade) we had the contractor dig out the lowest spot on the property and use the soil for fill around our drainfield to give us a gentle slope, and backfill around our house, thus making a pond.

we have since rented backhoes 3 separate times and dug out the pond deeper (you can see in pond pages on my blog below)

Our son built next to us and he installed french drains all the way around his house and two across the back yard to drain water away into a ditch, and then we graded everything else toward the pond so water drains into the pond.

we still have some soggy areas that don't drain well to the pond, esp west of our drainfield and some in front yard other side of slope, but the areas where the french drains are dry off very quickly..still do need a little regrading.

we didn't dig the drain 4' deep though..here that would be IN water..we dug ours more like 18" deep, and used perforated pipe with a sock over it to keep the pipe from clogging..with a slope toward the drains..then he dug a deep drainage ditch south to north where the county had drained the property once when they caused some major flooding here..deepening the drain away from both houses..toward the swamp in the north woods.

you can see a lot of the property on the blog..will be posting fresh photos this spring once the pond is no longer frozen..right now we are expecting a foot plus of snow in the next 24 hours