Yard drainage
Standing water in the yard after rain
Fence line ponds, soft play areas, and tire ruts that are still wet three days later. On Liberty Hill clay the reason is usually the soil and the builder grade, in that order.
What is happening
The water is not going anywhere
On blackland and the nearby Williamson County lots, rain does not sheet off to a creek. It soaks the first few inches, hits clay that will not take it, and stops. New pads make it worse by shedding roof load onto finished sod that was never graded toward a discharge. Older lots add decades of irrigation that keeps the edges soft year round.
A French drain is not magic. It is a graded trench with socked pipe in washed rock that collects shallow water and carries it to a legal outfall. If the actual problem is a clogged gutter or a broken irrigation head, we say that instead of selling you a trench.
On a walkthrough
Signs it is a drainage job
- Water still standing at the fence more than a day after the storm
- Side yard mud that never quite firms up between rains
- Downspouts emptying into a four foot strip beside the house
- A neighbor lot sitting higher than yours, so their runoff becomes your pond
- Grass thinning or going to moss in the same patch every spring
- Mower ruts that stay printed in the lawn for a week
Before we trench
Three cheaper things we check first
The gutters
Blocked or undersized gutters concentrate the roof into one spot. Sometimes that is the entire problem and a buried extension fixes it for a fraction of a full drain.
The irrigation
A stuck valve or a cracked lateral keeps one area wet regardless of weather. If the wet spot does not track with rainfall, that is where we look.
The grade near the slab
Occasionally a few yards of soil regraded away from the foundation solves what looked like a drain job. We tell you when that is the case.
Start here
Tell us what the yard is doing
The form is how jobs start. You describe what you see after a storm, we walk the lot, then you get scope and price on paper. Nothing is priced over the phone.
Get a drainage quote
Tell us the city and what the yard does after a rain. We answer about an inspection and a written quote.