patio drainage project

Finally getting somewhere on this, been slowly working it for a couple of weeks. Problem was water would come from on the hill and congregate at the patio and one the patio. Hopefully this will get rid of it. The area where the seapage pipe is will be covered in river stones as a walkway, eventually to go out to the pond.

Part 2, yes the water drains in the above portion of the project..........

part 3, last one for today..............walkway rock next week!


Special thanks to Mark, my neighbor, I could use a few more like him. I till his garden for him..........and I dont have to plant one. Great Neighbor.

As for the gas line, ok, something had to go wrong........fixed free by gas company.............

and the bota..............of course she did great!

Good project Danny. What did you dig your ditch with? A potato plow maybe?

Your Kubota sure saved your back for this project. Moving all the gravel from the pile to the ditch any other way would have been painful.

I look forward to your stone walkway project. I have an area where I was considering doing just that. Please share as much as possible on that project so I might learn something.

Potato plow, something in the pics is not showing. backhoe, that ditch is 2 foot deep on the first side, and 15 inches on the patio side.

The driver for the gravel wondered, till I showed off the bota. I have about 6 tons to put in the floor of my barn now also. Going to start with 8 tons of river gravel which would give me a 4 foot wide x 4 inch deep top, and we may put in some walk stones, not sure yet. All of this one day will form a walkway up to the pond.

thanks for taking a peek

Hey Danny looking like you are making good progress. The drainage grates are a great idea.

Are you sure you want to use river stone for the walkway area? What do you think about some sort of flagstone, limestone or bluestone pieces? They would give you flat stepping stones to make the walk easy and stable. You can set them right on top of gravel or gravel and fill in around them with a little additional grave to make a pretty nice, easy to walk on, walkway.

A few years ago I made a path around a shed that connected up to a grape arbor, and a stone staircase that goes through my woods. I cleared the ground like you have, then I set down sand and set small and medium stone 'slabs' on the sand. It was filled in with pea gravel between the 'slabs' and I planted grass and flower beds adjacent to the path. Its held up without any problems (except the occasional weed growing in between the stones). And it is easy to walk on. I used bluestone that came in random sizes with the biggest pieces being 12" by 18" and the smallest ones being about 4" by 6". The hardest part was they were random thicknesses so some had to be "dug" in and others could just sit on top of the sand.

The picture below is taken at the bottom of the staircase where I built a landing out of the bluestone. The picture is looking up the stairs, there are 4 'sets' of 4 to 5 stairs between the base of the hill and the top of the stairs, each set of steps has a small flat landing before you get to the next set of steps. When I was done, almost all the dirt in the photo below was covered with the bluestone.

Looking good Danny!!

ddrane2115 said:

The area where the seapage pipe is will be covered in river stones as a walkway, eventually to go out to the pond.

Click to expand...

For the ditch leading from the patio to the pond, are you going to use the 4" black plastic perf pipe that comes in a roll? Is that area done already?

I ask because I've been having issues with many of my pipes where I did the same. After about 10 years, they've collapsed and are worthless. Where I used 4" S&D pipe (the thin-wall white rigid pipe), it's still working flawlessly.

First, I will put walk stones "in" the river gravel and maybe some sand around them to hold them. I like your steps though, very nice.

as for the walkway from the patio to the pond, it will be only river gravel and step stones. The pipe will not have much weight on it, and in 10 years I will be long gone from here. I will put a pic up of what I am trying to defeat...........some of it already done, but I was still getting too much water on the patio in big rains anyway.

Doc said:

Good project Danny. What did you dig your ditch with? A potato plow maybe?

Your Kubota sure saved your back for this project. Moving all the gravel from the pile to the ditch any other way would have been painful.

I look forward to your stone walkway project. I have an area where I was considering doing just that. Please share as much as possible on that project so I might learn something.

Click to expand...

hey doc, changed plans a bit, due to river rock being so expensive here. put the rest of my rock in the pit, covered the pipe of course and it drains like a champ We will add some step stones later after the rock settles a bit.