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the Drainage Plan

Much of our house planning revolved around drainage, and I've not been able to describe it terribly well, so here's a picture.

The soils report stated that we needed to take care of all water down to three feet below existing grade. The light blue lines show the pipes at the bottom of the retaining wall. Water is drained as follows:

• On the left (Elk St.) side of the picture, the pipe is about 4' underground. It moves the water to the right.
• The pipe extending up the right-hand side runs about 8' underground and moves the water toward the bottom.

The dark blue lines reflect surface water and gutter drainage. It starts at the top and moves through 4'' pipes to the right. Once it enters the box next to the manhole, the pipe becomes 6''. This goes down the middle of the driveway to the final drain which then takes it to the street.

Finally, the thick red square & line at the top is part of a city storm drain. During the winter, the park across the road drains into the box, and is carried via about a 12'' pipe to the right. Since we were spending so much in drainage anyway, we decided to design it such that if that pipe was to fail, our house wouldn't flood, nor would our the drainage system fail. Even in the event that one of our drain pipes clogged, the driveway will move all of the water as necessary.

The driveway is concrete, and when we put in the front grass, most of the surface water will drain through either the dark-blue drains or directly onto the driveway, so chances are the sump-pump in the manhole will get little if any use, but it's there if necessary.

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