Yeah big time. Raging torrent barreling down the hill this morning. The low-lying, flat sections of town got flooded badly too.
Great work so far, and what a lot of work it is. Looks a lot like what I’ve got going on these days. Dug a 12” ditch around two sides of my new barn. Two pipes in the same ditch. One perforated for French drain the other solid for roof runoff. This is where I’m at currently. Went with sdr 35 instead of corrugated. There will be times I need to drive the tractor over it and just wanted to do it right and do it once(hopefully). My dad sitting down on the job. Guess he’s not getting paid today! Oh wait, he was never getting paid. All the pipe in and wrapped up. Have to leave one end open for now so I can tie in downspout, gutters supposed to be up soon. To the left of my tractor runs a swale down the back and around the other side of barn. Basically follows the same path of the pipes just up one level higher. The thinking is water coming down the hill will hit the swale first and the leftover will find its way to the French drain along with the ground water. The whole area behind barn is getting stoned all the way out to the swale. Have 17 yards of stone to move this weekend. I don’t have to tell you Eric Wanderweg just how much work a project like this is. Truthfully after the 2 long days it took me to get to this point I was burnt out on this project. Hopefully it pays off.
So it took me 3 & 1/2 years to figure this out, but here it is: I now have a natural spring in my backyard. The back part of my yard was always wet, and I assumed it was just surface water running downhill. That’s not the case at all. Back in August 2020, a tropical storm blew down a large double trunk red oak along my property line. It left a large hole in the ground which quickly filled with water. I dug a shallow swale from that hole to the woods on the other side of my yard. It’s still flowing constantly, even yesterday morning when it was 23 degrees outside. The water is relatively warm, which proves that it’s not surface water running downhill, but groundwater percolating to the surface in the hole where that tree was. Now I have to get serious about making a real swale there, lining it with rocks, and burying a culvert so that I can drive my tractor (and truck) over it on occasion. Maybe I’ll even build a small pond in the woods someday. Pretty cool to have a natural spring regardless.
Where it's not surface water, does it make sense to have it tested? I think I would, just because it would bug me not to.
Do you have city water? Or are there city water lines in the area? You might call them to see if they want to test it, see if it's their water, main lines can leak for years undetected...
Yeah city water. BUT… it’s in a natural undisturbed area. The lines are quite a bit a ways from where it’s coming up from the ground too. I’ll check out the infrastructure map later though. If I test it and there’s no chlorine in it, then I guess it’s safe to assume that it’s groundwater. I know on the big hill I live on, there are all sorts of drainages and small brooks mapped out, where the source appears seemingly out of nowhere.
Lack of chlorine is a poor indicator, the low level chlorine can be used up by contact with the soil...floride is a better indicator, if they use it. They can also use a listening device to check for leaks in the area too. Underground leaks can travel quite a ways if they find a vein of sand or gravel.
