French Drain

denick

What do you consider a French drain?


This is another of those terms that seem to have different meanings in different areas.


Nick

rino1494

Any ditch that contains pipe and stone to carry away water.

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PipeGuy

To me french drain = dry well; they don't drain to daylight but merely percolate into the surrounding ground.

jmic

IMO French Drain / Farmers Drain being the same is just diverting ground water from one location to another without pipe by means of native stone - rocks. I've heard one of the reasons farmers built walls was to allow water to follow along them, of course another was to get rid of the dam rocks they kept plowing up, then also to keep the heards in. Then you could argue they wanted to create boundries.

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Joe

Teetorbilt

I'm with Rich. They work great in sand, not so sure about other substrates.

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tgeb

When I use the term "French Drain" I think of removing water not storing water the way a dry well might.

A dry well you would pipe water to and allow it to percolate away.

A french drain would be to intercept water from either below grade as with ground water or from above grade in order to.... I don't know, drain rain water from a lawn that is too flat.

And it's great cause sometimes they come with baguettes.

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tgeb

And you could run a French Drain to a dry well.
But usally we run them to daylight.

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