Yard Drainage in Rhodesdale, MD — Dry Ground You Can Mow

When You Need This

Half the back yard is a pond for three days after every rain. The mower leaves ruts in June. There is a green slick where the grass drowned out and the mosquitoes live. Water runs off the neighbor's side and stops at your fence line.

Closer to the house it gets worse. Downspouts dump right at the corner of the foundation. The crawlspace smells damp. Mulch beds wash out onto the walk. Water stands against a patio or a slab and freezes there in the winter.

This is the most common call he gets, and the reason is the ground itself. It is dead flat, so nothing sheds on its own. The water table is high, so there is nowhere for it to soak down to. A lot of the soil is clay that will not take water at all. Near the Nanticoke, the Choptank and the Marshyhope the ground stays saturated for weeks and the tide decides when a ditch can even accept water.

How Steve Does It

The outlet comes first, always. He shoots the yard, the house, the walks, the drive, the property line, the ditch and the road, and finds out whether there is any fall to work with. If nothing will run by gravity he will tell you that, and price a basin and a pump instead of selling you pipe that has nowhere to go. On this ground the survey is the whole job.

Then he fixes the cheap things first. Downspouts get taken off the foundation and put into solid pipe that runs well past the house to daylight or a pop-up. Grade around the foundation gets pulled so it falls away on all four sides. A lot of wet yards are fixed right there, and he says so instead of adding pipe.

For the low areas he decides between three things. A swale — a wide shallow channel you can still mow — cut on a steady fall to the outlet, which is the simplest and the longest lasting. A catch basin set at the low point with a grate, tied into solid pipe. Or a stone-and-fabric drain where water has to be picked up along a whole line rather than at one spot.

Pipe gets laid on a bottom he has cleaned flat, bedded, and set to a steady fall the whole run with no dips, because a bellied line holds water and silts shut. Solid pipe carries; perforated pipe collects, and he does not mix the two jobs up. Clean washed stone goes around collector pipe, wrapped in fabric so silt cannot get in. Basins and cleanouts go in at the corners and the ends so the system can be flushed years from now. The outlet gets a headwall or riprap so it does not undercut itself.

Then restoration. Trenches get packed in lifts so no stripe sinks in the lawn, topsoil goes back, and he seeds and straws it. He works with the skid steer on tires to keep from tearing up the ground he is there to fix.

What It Costs in Rhodesdale

The outlet is the first cost driver — gravity to a ditch is straightforward, a basin with a pump is not. Then linear feet of pipe and how deep it has to run, how many basins and cleanouts, and how much clean stone the collector lines take. Whether downspouts get piped. How much of the yard needs regrading. Access, since a fenced back yard the machine can barely reach costs more time. Obstacles too: sprinklers, plantings, a patio, a walk, existing lines to cross. Then topsoil, seed and straw to put it back.

Estimates are free. Steve would rather walk it with you right after a rain, because that is when the yard shows exactly where the water goes.

Why Choose Marshy Hope

Steve Hackett owns the business and runs the machine. Fifteen years in the trade, six of them working for himself out of Rhodesdale. He carries a $1,000,000 general liability policy and will send the certificate to you or your builder before he starts. Estimates are free, and you hear back the same day or the next one. One crew handles it from dirt to concrete, so nothing gets dropped in the handoff.