BWW Project #35 Lower Drainage Guide

 BWW Project #35: Lower Drainage Guide

With the two 8-foot runs that take rainwater off the patio and down to the south edge of the garage, what now to do with all this water?  Cathy has been digging up corners of vica and sod and exposing old rock walls which have helped.  She also dug a small channel through the arbor vitae where the canoe and kayaks are stored to help guide it down toward the street.

Above this area it has silted in over the years and we both got busy digging, leveling and installing two more guides, this time using 4 X 4 posts instead of 6 X 6 as on the upper berms.  We tried to cultivate some swales in the yard, three in fact.  The first guides water draining from the yard and garden of the neighbor to the south along the south edge of the vica zone, where I had uncovered a brick pathway and edged it so that it could run down.  At the bottom it will fan out into the neighbor's front lower yard and find its way to the street uneventfully.

Next comes the area between that zone and the western tip of our round garden, so water coming down the inside of that swale is guided toward a double 4 X 4 berm.

Water from our previous project and a little bit of edge runoff  find its way to a lower berm of one 4 X 4.

The two berms come together at a funnel that guide all water into the middle of the vica zone and under the canoe and down to the rock patio by the tree below, which spreads it out on its way to the street.

Some runoff can find its way down the walking path if it is a real deluge and ultimately ends up the same place.

I lined the inside of both wood berms with brick to guide the water without rutting.  We seeded the entire area in with grass and are watering it in.  Hopefully we can keep the birds from eating the seeds long enough for them to germinate and get some grass started.  We can always fine tune the entire thing as necessary, but it looks promising.