This is a time lapse video of digging a trench and installing a french drain in my yard. This drain is about 155 feet long and connects two downspouts, it has three catch basins, and ends with a pop-up emitter near the street. It took about 25 man-hours over three days to install. All the digging was done by hand.

In the beginning of the video you can see the flooding problem I was having. This was especially bad but I would get standing water in my back yard about 10-15 times per year.

While digging the trench, we came across an old slit corrugated pipe buried in the ground with a little bit of pea gravel around it. It appeared to be an old french drain. I have no idea where it goes but it obviously wasn't working any more. I moved into this house less than a year ago so I asked the previous owner about it. He lived here for 19 years and had no idea it was there. The installers cut a piece out of the old drain to route the new drain through that area. I took a look into the old pipe and it looked clean and clear. We never saw another piece of it through the rest of the digging.


I Am Running with Temporary Success from a Monstrous Vacuum by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: http://chriszabriskie.com/honor/
Artist: http://chriszabriskie.com/