Drainage Solutions in Dallas-Fort Worth

Drainage work in Dallas-Fort Worth usually runs $2,000 to $25,000, depending on how much water you are moving and how far it has to travel. Most single problems get solved for $3,500 to $9,000.

Because of what is under your yard. Most of the metroplex sits on heavy black clay, and clay does not soak water up. It sheds it. Water that would disappear into sandy soil in twenty minutes sits on our clay for a day or more.

That causes three problems that feed each other.

• Foundation movement. Clay swells when it gets wet and shrinks when it dries. Water pooling on one side of your slab while the other side bakes means one side lifts and the other drops. This is by far the most expensive problem on the list.
• Plants that drown. Roots sitting in soaked clay cannot get air. People replace the plant, the new one dies too, and the plant was never the problem.
• A yard you cannot use. A backyard that stays soft for three days after every rain is not really a backyard for a good part of the year.

New construction makes it worse. Builders grade for the lot, not for your yard, and heavy equipment packs the clay down until what little drainage it had is gone. That is why so many new homes in Celina, Prosper, and north Frisco have standing water in their first year.

What you are seeing points to the answer.

• Water stands in a low spot. Surface drains, or regrading if the low area is large.
• Ground stays soggy but you never see a puddle. A French drain. The water is down in the soil, not sitting on top of it.
• Water runs across a driveway or patio. A channel drain along the edge.
• Water runs toward the house. Regrading. Nothing else fixes a slope that points the wrong way.
• Gutters empty right next to the foundation. Buried downspout lines. This is the cheapest fix with the biggest payoff.
• A slope washes out every storm. A retaining wall with drainage built into it.

Most yards need two or three of these working together. A French drain that empties into a low spot has only moved the problem.

It is a trench with a perforated pipe sitting in washed gravel, wrapped in fabric, sloped so gravity pulls water to an outlet. It collects water that is down in the soil rather than sitting on top. That is why it is right for soggy ground and wrong for a puddle.

Three things separate one that works from one that does not.

• Slope. It needs to fall at least about an inch every eight feet, the whole way. A flat drain is just a trench full of standing water.
• Washed stone. Cheap gravel with dust in it packs up and stops draining within a couple of seasons.
• Fabric around the stone. Without it, clay works its way in and the drain slowly plugs itself.

And the water has to end up somewhere. Open ground, a dry well, or a pump. Every drain needs a real outlet.

It is the cheapest foundation insurance you can buy. Foundation repair around here commonly runs $8,000 to $30,000 and up. A full drainage system costs a fraction of that and deals with the cause instead of the damage.

The goal is simple. Keep the moisture around your slab as even as you can, all year. Water moving away from the house, gutters emptying well clear of it, and no area that stays soaked while another dries out.

Yes, and it usually should. A dry creek bed moves a lot of water while reading as part of the landscape, with river rock, boulders, and planting that belong on a Texas property. Channel drains disappear into paving. Surface drains hide in beds.

We design drainage as part of the yard instead of bolting it on afterward. That is the difference between fixing the problem and looking at the fix every day.

We handle drainage across Dallas-Fort Worth. Most of our work is in the newer neighborhoods north of Dallas and on the genuinely sloped properties in Bluffview, The Colony, and Flower Mound.