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A 10 inch drain pipe is a pretty big deal, I can use a 6 inch main with 4 inch laterals to drain 20 acres or so.
The sock likes to fill up with fine clay silt and slow drainage, which is already slow in a clay soil. But soil types can be tricky, there are times the sock is needed, and times it is bad, and local soil differences can make the difference. Mostly clay soils bleed out a bit of the fine clay soils and the tile works best without the sock.
If you have water in the basement issues, getting rid of the surface water helps, but you would really need a tile a foot below your footer, to get the pool of water out of the ground.
Dad started tiling this farm in the late 1950s, and added more in the 1960s, then again in the 1970s, and I did a lot of cleanup and additions in the last 5 years.
It is a real science and art to figure out how to deal with hills, clay, and tile size and slope. Just one little thing can make or break a good tile design.
It also takes time to really understand what the tile is doing in clay soils. You are not drying the soil out, you are taking away pools of water that exist in the soil. You wet soils will still hold a lot of moisture for growing lawn or crop. Those low spots or weeping side hills are like a lake, there is always more water pushing towards them, so you need to get that pool of water to drain away.
Folks in dry climates have a hard time understanding that. Me, I don't understand irrigation, that is a foreign concept to me.... I'd have a hard time in some of the dry locations you folk make work for you.
Here on wet ground, on deep clay, you need to go someplace with the water. In dry areas, you all can just make a French drain, a hole of rocks and gravel, and the water drains down into your subsoil where it is dry. Here in real deep clay, if you dig such a thing, the water actually oozes up to the surface most of the time, you can't get rid of water that way. You need the water to carry away some where.
It is also odd for you to be able to tie into a city drainage system, that often is forbidden. I realize the benefit of being able to do that, and you need to live with the depth and conditions of such a hookup.
When I read of willow trees, I kinda winced the other day. They are death to a drainage system. They seek out water, any time your ground dries out a little, they will aggressively put roots into the tile area looking for saturated soil, and their aggressive hair roots will block up the tile in a few short years. I have a very old, 6 foot across cottonwood in my field, I understand grandpa would rest the horses in its shade and have lunch under it. So while I farm around it, the tree is staying, it earned its place in my fields. We had to discuss that, and plan for around it with the tile, so it doesn't create problems in the future.
I really think those 2 trees are going to hurt you so e day. Without the tile, they are good at wicking away water from a wet spot, but with a porous tile like, they love to block them up.
Tile will drain away the pool of water in the ground above it. Then the ground will drain out farther away from the tile, in shallower levels as you get farther away from the tile. A two foot deep tile will likely only drain 20 feet to each side of it, and it takes several days to get that far out.
If you put a tile 4 foot deep, it will drain maybe 70 feet off to each side, tho it will take maybe 4-5 days to cover that far.
In clay if you get 6 feet deep, the tile might drain a very large area, but it will take days and weeks for the water pool to soak through that much clay, so it might not seem it is doing much after a heavy rain.
There is a lot of small detail on tile that makes a big big difference. It is almost an art form, to match the tile depth, slope, size, and soil types to what you want to do. Soils hold pools of water in odd places - side hills are the thing 'here' they weep out water for weeks, as the water drains out of the tops of the hills, and find places half way down the hill to bleed out.
Back in the day, dad ran tile down the low spots, and got that water to drain away. Now I had to go back, and drain out the side hills, where the water was pooling. This makes nice fields, but does not dry out or burn up my crops or soil. It just gets rid of those excessive pools of underground water, making room for the next rainfall to soak in and again, slowly drain away through the tile.
It sounds like your tile was put in as best it could be, it helps with the problems. Wasn't maybe quite right for the soil type, but sure is better than nothing, and you had to work with the tile outlet that was available. You can put ver small vertical inlets in, I'd think the 3 or 4 inch tile vertically to the surface would work well, and drain away the pools quickly.
Sorry for all the rambling, but tile drainage really interests me, every time you do some you learn something new.
Paul
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