Geo Fabric and French Drains the TRUTH - The French Drain Man

Geo Fabric and French Drains the TRUTH - The French Drain Man

This is a video I've been meaning to put some time aside and do for you the homeowners, the DIY guys, and even the homeowners that are shopping for a drainage system. What to ask for, what the tell your contractor you want. Actually, you're the customer, they're not willing to do it, hire somebody else. You do want a Geotextile, non-woven fabric. You don't want to build a system without it. Matter of fact, you all the work that goes into building a system and to miss that one step. Now you just gave your system an expiration date and it's really unfortunate.

We do a lot of commercial work as well and whatever the engineer's spec in is what we will use when we designed our own systems, we have the couple gotos that we really love. Now the first one, this is, this is our fastest, it's a four-ounce. Love it for our open French drains when we have a lot of surface water and we want to just turn our French drain into one long channel drain, this is what we use.

Well, I have the hose turned up all the way. You see it takes time. I am trying to show you how fast it'll take the water in. I have a pretty good stream. I have great water pressure. So. All right, so let's, let's just fill this bucket real quick, and then we'll move on to the eight-ounce fabric. So, this fabric I love for surface water and it's going to protect the drainage systems that I built for my clients. It's going to prevent the gravel from migrating into the subsoil and the subsoil from migrating into the gravel. That's where they plug. That's why you want to use this. So that was the four-ounce.

This eight-ounce. This will slow it down a little bit. All right, you can see how heavy that is. Always use this for your retaining walls. When you're using boulders and big slab rock and things like that. You don't want to use no lightweight. You want to, you want to definitely use this. Okay, so here's eight-ounce, show you the difference. So when I move the hose away, you can see it takes that hesitation that just it filtrates all the water. Well, this is going to last and last and last the last decades. That's what's amazing about this, but I wouldn't recommend this for open French drains Open French, drains your moving sheet water.  Sheet water is when you have it just coming off a carport or coming off of a concrete parking lot or concrete driveway. Sheet water is some serious stuff. You can't screw around with it. [...]

French Drain Man – Michigan’s Yard Water Drainage Experts. Masters in the art of constructing contained French drain systems & curtain drain systems that and fix your yard drainage problems for years to come. Over 30 years’ experience in solving yard water drainage problems in Oakland, Macomb, Lapeer and St. Clair Counties.

French Drain Man / Sherwood Landscape Construction, LLC
122 S Rawles St
Romeo, MI 48065
248-505-3065

#frenchdrain #drainagepipes #frenchdrainman

[FRENCHDRAINMAN]

Best Pop Up Emitter FDM's V2.0 for Downspout Drainage

[tbarbuto]

I'd like to see this test with water running through actual substrate.

[PetesZ]

Wouldn’t a better test be putting a slab of 2 1/2” sod over the fabric and bucket?

[zinc]

I'd love to hear your take on the effects of clay mud over time on this textile fabric. I have a hunch that it will clog up the fabric.

[jbehrens]

The non-woven geotextile fabric at Menards called Duraweb is said to be 5.6oz and does not drain nearly as fast as the 8oz he shows. I wish I would've bought his 4oz. I didn't realize this guy was selling this stuff through his website.

[harryhalfmoon]

Just wanted to say thank you very! Your videos helped me diagnose a big moisture issue in my basement. I dug a trench outside the basement wall and found... corrugated pipe in sand with no fabric. And when it rains... it completely fills up and stays that way. I know what to do now! Greetings from the Netherlands!

[sawbilly]

What happens when the sediment closes the pores on the fabric. Silt will virtually stop the flow of water.

[DarkTruth]

Just watched "Apple Drain" guy talk about this same thing. He made it sound like it geofabic wasn't necessary. I wish one of you guys worked here where I live in Maine. Im about to do this myself but I'm little nervous.

[anthonyrobinson]

I heard you, I believe, say 6 inch overlap on the fabric in french drain. Would 6 inch overlap also be the standard if you running a perforated pipe and a solid pipe (w/ catch basin) in the same trench.

[roberto.gallegos]

I’m putting in corrugated pvc drain pipe behind concrete retaining walls and connecting them to wheep holes. Should I use 4, 6, or 8 ounce fabric?

[captainamerica]

Dude I wished your were close by- no matter what you have saved me trouble while in the planning stage, I have a ditch that is 75 feet long, and then turns to the left another 75 feet-I need to be able to get water to channel off the property. What type of ditch pipe and how deep...will a ditch witch do the work, How much overlap on the fabric?

[roberto.gallegos]

I had three step down concrete retaining walls put in on our sloping backyard to get more use out of it. I’m about to start the process of installing drainage for the walls. They are not very tall, 36, 36, and 32 inches tall. From what I’ve seen about the soil, it’s silty sandy soil for about 1-3 feet then clay. I would call you to help with this but your not in our area. I was thinking about using the drainage PVC pipe with clean drainage rock and wrapped with filter fabric. Would this work?

[rojilander]

What if you did a 2 foot high burrito separately with 4 ml and also had a separate geo piece coming up the dirt side of the dich (against a curtain ditch of house) ? Would this be better fore the long run to keep fines out of the stone surrounding the burrito? Or would this be overkill?

[alicepepplow]

What about when I got heavy clay soil around it? someone told me that over time the clay will stick to the fabric and became impermeable

[GregJGreen]

I have a triangular area approximately 2' x 3' and 24" deep south of my garage door that I filled with 5, /8 minus around 2 years ago for driveway runoff. It's plugged and my son came over to dig it out for me. I couldn't believe how much soil had invaded the gravel, it was as if it hadn't even been touched 24 months ago.
Bought pond pebbles this time, but I can't find any geo fabric in a small quantity; I'm tapped this month but need to come up with something. Would lining the sides with landscaping fabric and leaving the bottom open work as a stopgap measure for the season? Thanks much for your time.

[ranmangolf]

what size perforated drain do you recommend, 6" or 4"?

[chuck]

Excellent videos!!! I understand you're opposed to inlet basins for the reasons mentioned (debris) however, how do you join the ends of one 4 inch high octane to another 4" high octane pipe (a continuation of high octane)?

[daltonsmith]

What oz do you recommend for a pop up emitter ?

[michaelwas]

so maybe install the 8oz on the bottom and 4oz on the top?

[jimbobjimbob]

But doesn't the fine clay soil clog up the fabric? That's what I have seen out there.