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Permeable Driveway and Subsurface Drainage Installation

9:06
11:31
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At 9:06 in

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What happens here

At a residential property, the landscaper discusses a critical drainage issue: a driveway that slopes directly towards the house, causing water to run into the basement. The proposed solution involves digging out the existing driveway and installing a permeable base using Class 5 or 57 stone. This material, while seemingly solid, allows water to permeate through it. The sub-base will be carefully graded with a laser to ensure all water flows away from the house towards a designated drainage easement between the garages. This underground drain tile system will collect the saturated water from the permeable driveway, directing it away from the foundation and preventing future flooding. The focus is on controlling subsurface water flow.

Goal: Prevent basement flooding by installing a permeable driveway with a subsurface drain tile system.

Tools and materials

  • CAT Skid Steer CAT — Excavating the existing driveway and grading the sub-base
  • Drain Tile — Collecting and directing subsurface water
  • Laser Grader — Precisely leveling and sloping the sub-base
  • Class 5 or 57 Stone — Creating the permeable sub-base for the driveway
  • Clay — Raising the grade around the house's foundation to direct surface water away

What they say

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Okay. All right. Here's Chance sight. Here's the issue. This driveway angles down and then it goes this way. right into his house. Chris wants to put in a permeable driveway, but he doesn't want to flood out his basement. We talked about controlling your water by creating a drainage with your subgrade. It's exactly what we're going to do. Is all of this water, at least in this zone, is getting trapped. And what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to take clay and add a non-permeable soil into this. Raise this grade up. That may mean you have to raise this elevation of this retaining wall. The sill plate of your house is right here. Can you guys see the delineation in the stuckle? It may not show up on camera, but I caught it when I was looking at it. You can bring dirt all the way up to 8 in below that. So, that means we can take this whole grade and kick all of this water down this way. We want all the water to travel as far away from your house as possible. Right now, the challenge is we get the water to this point. It wants to naturally come down to here, and it wants to still go to where you don't want the water to go. So, what we're going to do is we're going to dig this driveway out. This surface water is going to come down. It's going to hit here. We're going to have a ledge. So, it's going to drop. It's going to be like a waterfall underground at this point because this is where your driveway starts, right? It's going to migrate right through the driveway. It's going to hit that subbase material and we're going to angle that this way. We're going to angle this whole subbase material, this driveway to this point, which is the property line right where Chance camera is set up. We're going to collect all of that water underneath your driveway. We're not collecting it at the surface. So, we're going to bring all that water in the drain tile system down this way between your garages. And then you have a drainage easement behind this garage. So then what Chance's going to do is after he's got the driveway cut down deep enough. He's got everything flowing this way. He's going to laser grade it. He's going to pull out his laser. He's going to test every single spot to make sure everything's flowing this way. Then he's going to bring back in. He can use class 5. Class 5 is permeable. May not seem permeable, but it's very permeable. He's going to bring class 5 in and rele out your driveway. And then he can put in his sand base. He can put in his per his uh pa…

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