By Guest Contributor General Information • Home Improvement • Tips and Tricks 3 Comments

A Guide to Maintaining a Yard Drain

Otherwise known as landscape drains, yard drains are pretty common. Depending on the type of landscaping you do or if you have an ingrown pool in your yard, you might have a yard drain. It’s just like having a drain in your basement floor or the bathtub. In this case, it’s used to prevent your yard from flooding. But just like other drains, a yard drain can get backed up.

But the real question is what do you do when your yard drain gets backed up? That’s what you’re here for right? Let’s start by looking at the basics of a yard drain.

The Basics

As we discussed a yard drain is pretty simple: It’s a collection of water that’s carried to a termination point to prevent yard flooding. Though they often deliver collected water to a nearby street or a storm drain, they can also terminate into a dry well or a surface-drainage field. 

The Maintenance 

If you have a yard drain the best time to service it is in the fall. The fall is the time when the leaves start to fall clogging up your gutters and your drains. If your gutters happen to connect to your yard drain be sure to clear that first before working on the drain. If you don’t do that you’ll just be making more work for yourself. No need to backtrack.

When servicing your yard drain the first thing you want to do is remove the cover and remove any leaves or guck that you can by hand (a shop vac works too). You want to remove anything that shouldn’t be in there. Next, you want to check the termination area (the ending) just like you did the top of the drain and make sure there isn’t anything clogging it. Once that’s done you can take your garden hose and flush it out to ensure that it’s working properly.  You’ll want to repeat this servicing once a month during the fall.

The Back-Up

If you’ve serviced your drain and it still isn’t working properly chances are it’s backed up. In this case, there are a few things you can do.

Consider a Drain bladder

A drain bladder is a rubber bag that you can attach to a garden hose. After you put it on the hose and put the hose in the drain turn the water on. The bag will then become pressurized and seal the pipe. It will then shoot water out at pressure to remove the clog.

Try a Motorized Drain Auger

If you’re familiar with a roto-rooter (used to clear sewer drains), this is pretty much the same thing. Motorized drain augers use a rotating cutter cable with a head that cuts roots and debris from inside the drain’s pipe.

Pro Tip: Whichever method you use to unclog your drain, be sure to check both the entrance and exit of the drain. You may need to do the same thing at both ends to ensure both ends are working properly. Check out our post on mistakes to avoid in the front yard.

3 Comments

  • Yellow Restoration

    Thanks for sharing this blog with us. you are sharing a lot of important tips with us. it’s very interesting and knowledge full about the cleaning.

  • Jack Wilson

    Hi Jennica, I was looking for this kind of blog for a very long time and here I got in your blog. After reading your blog, I come to know that the yard drain is very common and easy to clean. Thanks much for this blog and keep sharing!

  • Derry Molave

    Wow. I am definitely going share this post about drainage systems with a few of my friends. Very cool information. https://www.excavatingharrisburg.com/

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