Water, Water Everywhere: Managing Rainwater Around Your Home
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When water comes into your yard, it has no conscience. It comes and goes as it pleases, using the path of least resistance. It’s up to you—the homeowner—to figure out where the water is coming from and how to direct it to protect your home from damage.
In this post, I cover how I wrangled water issues during my first year in my little green home.
Gutters, Downspouts, and Storm Drains
Downspouts have one job—to take the rainwater collected in your home’s gutters and channel it away from your house and foundation. In my neighborhood, the water moves down the downspout and into a storm sewer that’s connected to the city storm drain system.
I hated the downspouts on the front of my house. They were clunky and looked like crap.
Worse than that, they were really lousy at their job.
When it rained a lot (and in Portland, that’s often), the water would back up into the gutters, which would overflow, sending sheets of water down the windows and exterior walls, where it would pool around the foundation.
Which is very, very bad.
Initially, I assumed that I had a clogged gutter problem—so I cleaned the gutters.
It didn’t help.
So I tested the house’s storm drains using a garden hose, and got very wet when the water shot back up onto my shoes, pants, and jacket.
I then assumed—based on considerable evidence—that the house’s storm drains were clogged from decades of poor maintenance.
I was going to have to take matters into my own hands once again.
Fine.
Adding Rain Chains in the Front Yard
I had two problems to solve:
Find an alternative to the clogged front storm drains, and
Replace the downspouts with an attractive alternative.
My front yard slopes slightly from the house to the street, so I could take advantage of gravity to carry water away from the house once the water made it to ground level.
I needed something to carry the water from the gutters to the ground, and something to carry the water toward the street, where it could dissipate and be absorbed into the soil.
Enter rain chains.
A rain chain is a decorative metal chain that connects a series of cups. Instead of a downspout, you hang the chain from the end of your gutter using a gutter adapter. The chain uses gravity and surface tension to guide the water from your gutter down the rain chain.
A rain chain turns a rainy day into a celebration because you can see and hear the water traveling down the rain chain. And in Portland in the winter months, you celebrate a lot.
It’s actually kind of nice. And much more attractive than a downspout.
Of course, once the rainwater chuckles its way down the rain chain, it has to go somewhere. After a bit of experimentation with water basins, I ended up using a heavy-duty plastic catch basin with 2-inch diameter plastic pipe attached to catch the water as it landed in the basin and guide it away from the house.
To make sure the water was well away from the house before it dissipated into the soil, I dug a twelve-foot-long trench for each pipe approximately 6” deep, making sure that the end of each pipe emerged at the lawn’s surface. I surrounded each opening with river rock so they would remain clear.
It worked like a charm. And, three years later, both my rain chains still work great.
One rainy day the following Spring, with my rain chains doing their thing, there was a knock on my door. It was a neighbor who walked his dog twice a day. His dog sat at his side.
“What’s that?” he said, pointing at the busy rain chain next to the front door.
“That is a rain chain,” I said.
“A rain chain?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m getting one,” he said. “My storm drains are backing up and the water is sitting on my lawn.”
I explained the catch basin and pipe arrangement and he resumed his walk with thanks and a smile.
Adding a Gutter and Rain Barrel in the Back Yard
The gutter on the back of the house had one downspout that attached to a working storm drain—a minor miracle considering the situation in the front yard.
However, the roof over the back patio had no gutter. When it rained, the water would run down the corrugated patio roof and flood the back patio.
So I added a gutter to the patio roof with a rain chain instead of a downspout. The rain chain directed the water into a 50-gallon rain barrel that I elevated on a stand.
Once I got everything set up, I called it good—until the day I saw water start pouring out of the rain barrel’s overflow opening, flooding the patio.
Sigh.
I immediately ordered two 8-foot heavy-duty plastic pipes—the same ones I’d successfully used with my rain drains. I connected the pipes and attached one end to the overflow opening using a hose clamp. As I did in the front yard, I dug a 6-inch trench to hold the pipe.
Because the back yard sloped toward the house, I had to get fancy with the trench to make sure I didn’t direct the overflow water right at the foundation. I ended up running the pipe parallel to the house, then turning it so the water could run downhill past the house into my side yard, where it would be released into the soil to dissipate.
Like the rain chains in front, it’s still working great three years later.
The Flood
I thought that I was done wrangling water in my yard.
I was not.
This time it was a situation completely out of my control.
One morning in June, I walked into my back yard to check on my newly-planted raised garden beds.
The first thing I saw was the flooded French drain.
WTF? It hadn’t rained the previous night.
I went inside, put on my rubber garden boots, and went into the yard to investigate.
My yard was awash with water.
I checked my raised beds. Fortunately, the seedlings were not yet drowning, but it was only a matter of time before they would be underwater.
And the house was next.
I checked my house inside and out for a leak. Nothing.
I called the water bureau.
Thirty minutes later, two servicemen showed up clad in jeans, T-shirts, and waders.
They checked and confirmed that the leak was not coming from my house.
“Where’s it coming from, then?” I asked.
“Well,” said one. “Let’s go in your back yard and see if we can locate the problem.”
I stood on the back patio while they sloshed around in my yard.
They looked at me, eyes wide.
“Ma’am, there’s about 10,000 gallons of water sitting in your back yard.”
Great.
The two of them sloshed their way around my back yard’s perimeter. They stood listening in the far right corner, then sloshed their way to the fence and looked over.
They sloshed their way back to me.
“We think we’ve found it.”
It turned out that an exterior pipe carrying water under pressure into the commercial building behind my home had broken. Water was pouring unchecked into my back yard.
The service guys went back to the office to report in.
Water continued to pour into my back yard.
Several hours went by.
I called the water bureau. The bureau had called the offending building's property management company and was awaiting a callback.
Twenty-four hours later, water continued to pour into my back yard.
I called the water bureau again. This time I was not polite.
A few hours later, I got a callback from the bureau director.
“I want to apologize,” he said. “We still haven’t heard from the property management company, so we are now turning off the water supply to the building.”
“That should get their attention.”
The tactic worked—kind of. The property management company called the water bureau to rip them a new one for turning off the water “for no reason.”
The bureau director responded appropriately.
The pipe was fixed that day.
It took a week for my yard to dry out, but, thanks to the kind folks at the water bureau, the seedlings in my raised beds made it to adulthood.
Water makes its own rules.
It goes where it goes.
It’s up to you to pay attention and to make sure you send unwanted water where you want it to go. In my case, gravity (and the water bureau) both turned out to be effective partners.
I also have the direct mobile number for the water bureau director—which came in very handy a year later.
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