[tnprogrammer]

I have a back yard that slopes from side to side. One neighbor's yard is on the high side and I get a good amount of water that runs down into my back yard. Both surface water and subsurface water that leaches through the soil for a while after a hard rain. I'm thinking about installing an open drain between our yards that would catch the surface water that runs down the hill. I'm thinking the trench would be about 18" deep and built like a typical french drain. a couple inches of drainage rock on the bottom, the corrugated piping and then fill the trench with drainage rock, adding some of the larger egg rock for the last couple of inches on the top to make it look more decorative instead of looking like a drainage trench.
Here's the question....usually I would line the trench with landscape fabric, but I want the subsurface water to leach into the trench also. Would you guys recommend lining the trench, or opt more toward just filling the trench with rock and socking the pipe. OR....no lining for the trench or pipe either one? With all of the water that comes through that soil I have to believe that if there is no fabric anywhere that a lot of silt would migrate through the rocks and clog the pipe.
Thanks.

 

[Bondo]

Ayuh,..... In my experience, the rock does a better job of stoppin' silt, than the fabrics,....

Ya might wanta run the ditch along the hi-side, 'n down the back line,....
The sideline will capture the water, 'n it can dissipate along the back line,....

 

[tnprogrammer]

Yep, that's pretty much what I'm doing. Still working on getting the whole trench dug out. It is about 90 feet total and runs the length of the back yard between mine and my neighbor's yard in the high side. I should have the depth at about 16-18 inches after I've got it all shoveled and cleaned out. It is about 12 inches wide so will have quite a bit of rock in it. Also, I want a lot of "below surface" water to seep into it and get carried down to the fence line so I just didn't want to restrict any of that subsurface water with fabric that may be too restrictive. I wanted to get an opinion from some of you guys that have built a few of these trenches to see if you even bother with the fabric on a trench used for this purpose, especially since this is going to be an open trench without grass or soil covering the top.

 

[Mort]

The filter fabric will keep the dirt from plugging up the voids in the rock. It won't restrict it too much.

 

[tnprogrammer]

I'd really like to use PVC instead of corrugated. This trench is 90' long and it would be nice to have a cleanout. However, as you can see in the pic above it is not exactly straight. Do they even make couplings for all these different angles?
I was even looking at the EZ-Drain piping, that has the styrofoam looking peanuts wrapped around the pipe all encased in fabric. It is expensive stuff though at $50 for only 10'. Plus, since this is an open drain I'm not sure if I could stack some larger decorative rocks (egg rock) on top of it.

 

[Bondo]

Ayuh,... I think yer imaginin' huge demons where there are none,.....

The corrugated drainage tile, with or without the sock will work for many, many years,...

'bout the only thing I've seen clog it up is tree roots, which will plug up any pipe with any holes in it,....

 

[tnprogrammer]

Bondo,
I think you're right. I'm going to line the trench with some cloth, pour in the drain rock and corrugated pipe and leave it. That open trench should catch a ton of water.