Whenever it rains, my bback yard is like a swimming pool...what can I

Ryk33405022
by Ryk33405022
Entire yard is soggy but some areas are drenched.
  7 answers
  • Cheryl Cheryl on May 20, 2018

    Add dirt.

  • 2dogal 2dogal on May 20, 2018

    Put in a swale to catch and direct the water flow.

  • Mary Mary on May 20, 2018

    redirect your downspouts

  • Ebbjdl Ebbjdl on May 20, 2018

    Start by making a run off, so the water drains somewhere else. Next, get some rocks to fill in where the water accumulates, this will cause a run off. Make it high enough to give it no place to go except down and away.

  • Linda Linda on May 20, 2018

    I lived in a house in Downers grove IL that had that problem. I reported to the city and they added fill on my property and the neighbors to correct the issue. This might be worth a try. You can also create a dry river bed to collect water and drain Away. Try youtube for more dry river bed designs. A link is attached to get you started. Hope this helps.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=how%20to%20make%20a%20dry%20river%20bed%20for%20drainage

  • Roxy Roxy on May 20, 2018

    Looks like you have the same problem we had, with the rain water sloping from the yard toward the house. In order to keep the water out of the house, we had to have a french drain installed. It's connected to a sump basin under a downspout to catch the roof water, and inside the sump basin is a pump that pumps all the water into the yard area near the street. This took some money, but it really works good. YouTube has some videos about installing french drains and sump pumps. On the other downspouts we attached flexible extenders to direct the water away from the house and a little further out into the yard.

  • Gayle Gayle on May 20, 2018

    We have this same problem and we have included most of the above suggestions (plus installed a french drain system in the worst part) in trying to mitigate the water damage. The french drains solved a lot of the problem, but we spent upwards of $4,000 for them--- expensive!


    The dry creeks are great to look at and they really do work. They were also expensive (landscape labor!) but if you are young enough to do the work yourself, would be far cheaper than french drains. We love our dry creeks and are planning to install a couple more.


    The cheapest solution we've found is to create flower beds and reroute the water. Our yard is sloped and we get our neighbor's runoff. We created several beds using large landscape edging, (or in one bed, we used recycled beer bottles), tilled up the existing dirt inside and then added really good dirt (mixing it all together). The water flows on the outside of the beds and while we still have a lot of water when in rains, it's much more manageable.


    Good luck!

    Here are a few pics.