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Yard Drainage Fixes

Yard Drainage Solution Finder

Eight questions about where water collects, how long it stays, your slope and soil, and where your downspouts discharge. You'll get the approaches that fit your conditions, what to check next, and the questions worth asking a contractor.

Free, no sign-up, nothing stored. Your answers stay in your browser.

Question 1 of 8

What are you seeing?

How the finder decides

Eleven approaches are scored against your answers, but two questions carry most of the weight — and they are the two homeowners most often skip.

The first is surface or soil. Water sitting on firm ground is arriving faster than it can leave, which is a collection and redirection problem. Ground that is soft and seeping days after the surface dried is saturated, which is a subsurface problem. The same puddle can be either, and the two need opposite solutions — which is why a French drain installed for a surface problem so often disappoints. The finder penalises a French drain heavily when you report firm ground, and favours it when you report saturation.

The second is whether you have an outlet. Every gravity solution — catch basins, channel drains, French drains, swales — has to put water somewhere lower. If your property is the low point, those options mostly fall away and the field narrows to storing or soaking water instead: a dry well, a rain garden, or a pump. Answering this one wrong changes the entire result, which is why the tool offers a way to check rather than asking you to guess.

Two answers override the scoring outright. Downspouts discharging within a few feet of the wall always produce a top-priority recommendation, whatever else you reported — see downspout drainage problems for why. And ground that is wet even in dry weather sets a groundwater flag that caps every gravity option at a partial fit, because drainage moves water across a site; it does not lower a water table.

Two tests worth doing before you answer

Both take about ten minutes and both replace a guess with a fact. Every question has a genuine “not sure” option, and choosing it produces better output than guessing — but these two are worth going outside for.

  • The screwdriver test — for the surface-or-soil question. Two or three days after the surface has dried, push a long screwdriver into the ground where the water sat. Normal resistance means the soil below is fine. If it slides in easily and the hole begins to fill, the ground is saturated. The distinction it settles is explained in how yard drainage works.
  • The string-line method — for the outlet question. Stake the wet area and a point 20 to 50 feet away, run a string between them, level it, and measure down to the ground at the far end. You are looking for roughly 1% of fall — about ⅛ inch per foot, or 1¼ inches per 10 feet. See how much slope you need, or the slope calculator.

If you are unsure about soil type, a percolation test settles it, and clay soil and drainage explains what a slow result rules out. Soil matters most when the finder is weighing options that rely on water soaking away: heavy clay penalises dry wells and rain gardens sharply, because a storage solution the ground cannot empty just stays full.

What it will not tell you

It narrows the field. It does not diagnose, and it does not design. Drainage depends on grade, soil, rainfall, layout, buried utilities and local rules, none of which can be assessed remotely — so the output says commonly suits and worth investigating, never you need. Any tool that promises a specific fix from eight answers is claiming to know more than it does.

It also deliberately refuses one job. If you tell it a drain that used to work has stopped, it stops and sends you to clogged yard drains instead. Diagnosing an existing failure is a different task, and checking what you already have is almost always cheaper than adding more.

What to do with the result

Read the shortlist as a research list, not a shopping list. Open the approaches it returns, check them against what you can actually see in your yard, and use the “what to check next” items to confirm or rule each one out. Then take the contractor questions with you: a good drainage contractor will explain where your water is coming from and where it will go, and those questions are how you find out whether they have thought about it.

If you would rather read the options first and answer questions afterwards, start with comparing drainage solutions — the finder applies the same reasoning those pages teach, so both routes should land you in the same place. If they disagree, trust what you can see in the yard.

Frequently asked questions

What drainage system do I need for my yard?
It depends on two things more than any other: whether the water is sitting on the surface or the soil itself is saturated, and whether there is anywhere lower to send it. Surface water with an outlet is usually a collection problem — a catch basin, a channel drain, or regrading. Saturated soil is usually a French drain or an interceptor. No outlet at all rules out most gravity solutions and points to a dry well, a rain garden, or a pump. The finder above walks through both questions and the six others that refine them.
How do I know if it's a surface problem or a soil problem?
Wait two or three days after the surface has dried, then push a long screwdriver into the ground where the water sat. If it goes in with normal resistance, the soil below is fine and you have a surface problem — the water is arriving faster than it can run off, and the answer is collecting or redirecting it. If it slides in easily and the hole starts to seep, the soil is saturated and you have a subsurface problem, which surface fixes will not solve.
How can I tell if there's anywhere lower to drain to?
Drive a stake at the wet area and another 20 to 50 feet away toward where you would like water to go. Tie a string between them and level it with a line level. Measure down to the ground at the far stake: the difference is your fall over that distance. Drainage lines generally want about 1% — ⅛ inch of drop per foot, or 1¼ inches per 10 feet — so 6 inches over 50 feet is workable and an inch is not. If you are the low point, gravity solutions are off the table.
Why does the tool always mention downspouts first?
Because a roof is the largest hard surface on most properties and downspouts discharging within a few feet of the wall are the single most common cause of a wet yard — and the cheapest to correct. An inch of rain on 1,000 square feet of roof is over 600 gallons, and putting that beside the foundation will defeat almost any other drainage work. If you answer that your downspouts discharge close to the house, that recommendation outranks everything else regardless of your other answers.
Will a French drain fix standing water in my yard?
Often not, and this is the most common expensive mistake. A French drain is a subsurface solution: it collects water that is already in the soil. Water pooling on top of firm ground is a surface problem, and the drain has to wait for that water to soak down before it can do anything. Where the ground is genuinely saturated, a French drain is frequently the right answer. The screwdriver test is what separates the two cases.
Does the finder tell me exactly what to install?
No, and it is built not to. Drainage depends on grade, soil, rainfall, property layout, buried utilities and local rules that cannot be assessed from eight answers. What it gives you is a shortlist of approaches that fit the conditions you described, what to check next to confirm or rule each one out, and the questions worth putting to a contractor. The language is deliberately “worth investigating” rather than “you need”.
My drain used to work and now it doesn't — can I use this?
The finder sends you elsewhere for that, on purpose. Diagnosing a drain that has stopped working is a different task from choosing a new approach, and running a failure through this flow would produce misleading recommendations. Start with the clogged yard drain page instead — checking and clearing existing drainage is nearly always cheaper than adding more.

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