Why French Drains Without Inlet Basins are Maintenance Free

I wanted to show you guys a French drain at work. You always see us building French drains, but I don't show enough footage. Don't do enough video of actually working French drains. So I'm in Washington Township, Michigan. I'm in Glacier Club. Beautiful, beautiful community golf course community. This gentleman gets all the rain off the golf course. Now it's down to a drizzle and still because of the pathway and the elevation, look at the moving water and this is a drizzle. So you should see this when the rain's really picked up. It's, it's, it's pretty amazing.

So you know, over time this grove has been etched. There's nothing you can do. The water's coming in here. Not going to beat that. What you want to do is you want to build a system. So what we did is we put a French drain system right along here, that's the low point, and it's picking up all this water.  It's pouring in and the drains taking it in. You know, notice how you don't see the water running on the surface and going into the storm drain.

Now I don't have any inlet basins. I preach against no inlet basins. The way I build my systems, you don't need an inlet basin. So here we are, we're down to a drizzle and this thing looks like a fire hose when we have a really, really good, even moderate downpour. It's just drizzling a little water. We're moving a lot of water -- just fantastic. And again, no surface water. [...]

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

[FRENCHDRAINMAN]

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[jasonw]

Thanks for showing us more systems FLOWING. It's so cool to see water being drained away.

[BuildingWithZach]

Yes! Finally comments arnt disabled! So glad you’ve shown us French drains working! I hope that we can see more French drains in use!

[MQQB]

Can you make a video showing how to install a french drain system without the inlet basins? Does this mean that I can drain a low spot to my storm drain without any inlet at all? In other words, completely buried with nothing showing above ground?

[bradslawson]

When the water enters the storm drain catch basin where does it go? Is there a pump down inside that kicks on automatically? How does it work? Thanks.