Slope and Grade: What are the applications to be aware of in your landscape? Do you need to improve or create slope and/or grade? Get all the details here.
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PODCAST TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 SLOPE AND GRADE
01:22 Application: Guttters
02:48 Ground Level
04:36 Underground Drainage System
08:00 Hardscape Grade & Slope
11:09 Your Lawn or Pond Grade & Slope
14:20 Irrigation System Application
15:48 Can you DIY Grade & Slope
17:59 When Buying Your Home
21:27 When you have FLAT Land
27:08 Application at Brook & Pond
28:00 Foundation Beds
28:58 Sum It Up
Hey everybody coach here welcome to the show this week this week we are talking about slop and grade in your residential or commercial landscape you know did you know that 90% of house damage over the course of a house’s lifetime is usually attributed to water damage of one kind or another
There’s standing water on the ground or water damage that occurs during storms associated with wind and driving rain Etc water damage of all things talk about something that we all need in the landscape but we don’t want too much of it right you know today we discuss
Mitigating damage of your home by paying attention to grade and slope in the landscape are you ready to learn a little bit let’s get started I’m glad you’re here hey I really appreciate you sticking with me this long taking a quick break here as a notification uh to
Let you know that yard coach has gone to a YouTube member membership at various levels great benefits to new members besides just the education you get here on the podcast and on the YouTube channel and at some levels you even got access to consultations and live chats
With me hey check it out if you get a chance and help support all the quality content we produce here at yard coach every single week hey welcome back hey in the landscape world and the good professionals emphasis on good professionals who work every day grade and slope in many elements of the
Landscape project are Paramount and in the top five important things that we as professionals think about grade and slope is applicable to a few elements of the landscape would you like to take a look let’s do that grade and slope doesn’t even start at the ground level
Grade and slope starts at the roof line starting with the gutter system of the house if you don’t have a working gutter system that uh takes roof water during those big downpours or even the trickle rains and removes it away from the foundation if you don’t have a gutter system it
Just drops water right at your foundation there a mere couple of feet away from the foundation you’re just inviting other problems you’re inviting ponding seeping and water penetrates through concrete unless there’s some kind of a treatment program that is subsurface but slope of a gutter system is critical for allowing that roof water
To come off the roof into the gutter itself and then sloped towards the down spout the greater slope of that gutter I cannot tell you but generally you know like 1% will get water to the down spout without any problem now number two the grade and slope at ground level now
Becomes Uber important in one of two ways number one would be the slope of the ground ground evacuates the water that has come off the down spouts naturally there is a natural slope from the house away from the dwelling itself hey pretty good idea right and number two the drainage system that is
Subsequently installed needs slope away from the home in order to further evacuate potential problem water from around the dwelling so let me clarify maybe you have natural slope away from the house and that’s good but when you have that natural slope and where that water discharges out of a down spout
Where is it going to and is there so much water that comes off your downspout that you start to have erosion problems as a result and has your downspout been uh constructed in such a way that the water doesn’t just come off the roof line down the downspout and just boom
Right there at the foundation and you haven’t extended that water away very very important but if you live in a flat area and you have very little or no slope you’re going to have to figure out a way to get that water away from your house and away from the area which
Generally involves planning beds and walkways driveways Etc you’re going to try to get it at least 20 ft away from the foundation or whatever holds your house up okay so think of that 20 ft is a minimum now if you do decide to do an underground drainage system slope again
Comes into it we want to have the ability for the water to enter the drainage system and have enough slope so that it is evacuated away you can’t have a a great gutter system and then put it in a drainage system that is flat as a
Board and it just fills up and maybe Eeps out at the terminal end instead of flowing out at the terminal end so when you’re thinking about constructing a project like that or you’re having somebody do it pay attention to what you are doing or what that professional or
Handyman is doing and make sure that there’s some slope involved it’s very easy for a lazy person not paying attention just to throw a trencher or pick and shovel in trench out a few feet throw some pipe in and hey I’m good okay even though there’s some hydraulic pressure gradients involved you still
You don’t want that system backing up to the Downs spout and then you know maybe because of poor maintenance or whatever it just starts bubbling out at the downs spot rather than out at the terminal end so with the proper slope the distance for drainage systems could be I like 20
Fet as a minimum but it could be only 10 if that’s what you have or it could be further you depending on your personal application of what the problem might be I know here at brooken Pond when I finally don’t have frozen ground I will probably have I will have a corrugated
Drainage system that’s going to be 20 feet 20 ft on the east side from the garage and then probably 30 to 40 ft or more out front and I’m going to try to run it across the driveway and to the lawn area so I’m going to have a little bit of I’m going
To have a little bit of distance involved so what about other kind of drainage systems and grade and slow application here’s the third one and that is Hillside stabilization if you have a hillside in your property whether it be your front yard or your backyard and you have retaining walls involved
Etc that are you know constructed correctly and everything’s nice and level but you should have some type of drainage system with proper grade and slope that mitigates the subsurface or even surface water coming off that Hillside and then horizontally discharg ing it away from the retaining system
That you have in place and safely evacuate it at one end or the other or both in order to prevent any sort of hydraulic pressures that can build up behind that retaining oall and generally depending on your soil depending on your soil and the means of construction usually 4 feet is the cut
Off where anything higher than 4T you should definitely have some drainage behind it lower than 4 feet depends on what your annual rainfalls are how steep of slope how long the slope is so how much water could potentially be coming down there and then think about a
Minimum of a 3-in drain pipe a perforated drain pipe sleeved in a geotextile fabric and buried in gravel behind it and then sloped correctly horizontally behind the wall to an evacuation Point okay let’s think about a fourth application grade and slope becomes extremely important when we are in a construction mind and we’re
Building things like patios walkways driveways grade and slope are critical for water evacuation and drainage now walkways are probably the least critical But A good rule of thumb one that I had taught to me by my cement subcontractor and that is a minimum like every time he
Put in a walkway for me he always had a half inch from one side of the walkway to the other and generally tipped in the direction away from a dwelling water that collected on the the walkway would never run towards the foundation beds and collect there it was always the
Other way it would run towards fences it would run towards anything other than the house so for patios and driveways an industry standard that works really well and that is an eighth of an inch per foot okay so if you had you know a driveway a 20ft driveway think of how
Many inches you want to have that slope away from the entrance into your garage and your driveway whether it be gravel whether it be cement whether it be paer patio whatever it might be you want to have a slope that generally averages about an eighth of an inch per foot and
That will evacuate water away in the right direction when it comes to patios now you know I kind of did a lot of work in a very flat area of Northern California so flatness was almost my middle name when it came to landscape grade and slope applications it really
Was so if you’re doing something like a a driveway application and you just can’t it’s going to look really weird if you have a driveway that slopes if you’re doing a big driveway apron where you’re doing a larger patio area and you’re flat as a board and you start
Trying to apply an eighth of an inch per foot then you know darn well that your patio way out at the end is going to be sunken down two or three inches and it’s just going to look funky cuz you got this patio that’s sitting below grade
Down there there are other ways to mitigate that and what I would suggest is maybe go something like somewhere between zero and an eighth in somewhere a 32nd or a 16th or something and then make the center of that driveway apron or patio pore whatever it might be make
The center of that a drain collection point and you put a drain in there and then all the sides all four sides or whatever you’ve created has a slight slope towards the center where the water can be collected and then underground you can make an evacuation drain that’s
That’s the way you might get around super flat patio and driveway installation drainage problems on just flat as a board Landscapes so this also applies and comes up with my my fifth idea regarding this and that is when you’re installing Lawns planning areas if you’re putting in a pond and you need
An overflow all of these things GR in slope I mean if you have a really nice planning bed you got a nice gutter system you have a walkway that’s been put in and it’s pitched away from the house beautifully blah blah blah but then you go and you put in this thousand
Square fet of lawn and the lawn slopes towards the house irregardless of whether you have a walkway there or not you have caused the potential of having ponding down towards the house and that walkway which in some places of my country and parts of the world it doesn’t take nothing for water to
Collect at a walkway and overflow it and flow into a foundation bed and start pooling in and around a a foundation I mean a couple inches of water in a matter of a few hours which is very capable in parts of my country can flood out that area so you have to consider
When you’re doing these Landscapes DIY or you’re monitoring the professional that you’ve hired make sure that grade and slope or if grade and slope cannot be achieved that some form of drainage capture some form of water capture can be implemented now I’ll give you an example of a lawn
System that I put in many many years ago which kind of goes right along with this walkway area in the backyard on the foundation side a 4-ot bed on the backyard side a lawn with irrigation and other stuff in it but I could not change the grade enough between walkway and
Back fence that wouldn’t look weird you know you would have a fence line and then you’d probably have a 6-in drop before you could get slope away from the walkway to The Back Fence I mean it would look really out of proportion as far as grade change application so what
I did was we tilled prepared installed irrigation and then I did a perforated drain right along that walkway that connected into the permanent drain system for the roof line and any water that came down the lawn towards the walkway would be captured in the 6-in drain basins and evacuated around and
Eventually out the side of the house and out to the street so it’s something to think about and if you haven’t picked up on this yet thinking these things out ahead before you even put a shovel in the ground is Paramount to having the project turn out correctly you have to
Be able to identify the problem in the first place diagnose it plan a corrective measure and then implement or execute that corrective measure so you get the result that is needed and wanted here’s another grade and slope problem that I have seen a lot over the years
And that is uh poorly installed or not maintained irrigation valve assemblies and pressurized lines coming into those valve assemblies and how they’ll sit there and develop freeze cracks or joints that have come apart for one reason or another they weren’t obviously blown out for the winter and you come
Back and there’s freeze cracks and damage and then nobody knows and it sits there for days or weeks or longer and you end up with this soaking swamp area at the corner of a house that maybe is somewhat concealed from view by Shrubbery or or mulch or stone or
Something and nobody notices it for a very long time and all of a sudden you have foundational problems or you have wicking in deciding and you’re going what the hell is going on and you go out there and take one step towards your valves and you sink in this pit that you
Didn’t even know was there and that’s why monthly inspections especially in the springtime after you’ve had you know winter you turn things on and you inspect before you even turn them on and make sure that everything looks good and then as you turn them on you’re inspecting making sure we don’t have
Cracks and leaks and all that other stuff that goes along with it so all of this being said all of this grade and slope and everything is this a DIY homeowner thing or is this professionals only CL Club no it’s very much a DIY thing it’s just that if this is not your
9 to5 you have to learn you have to inspect you have to determine cause and corrective measures just like a professional would and then do it do it yourself do you do it by the means of just a shovel or do you do it by the
Means of a weekend rental where you have to dig things trench things in install things that is all part of the planning process it really is so the construction process the repairs or the initial installs can both be done by DIY you know you you can do it you just have to
Determine how much is actually being called upon you and know where your skill set is and if it’s above your skill set raise your skill set learn read watch do whatever do step by step hire a professional for a 1-hour consultation on how to and then you can
Do it yourself Wily neiling it is generally not the best practice any man with half a brain can go out and dig a trench in one form or another but it’s the guy with the bigger brain that can go out clean that trench put a 4ot level
In the bottom of that trench and periodically throughout the trench and make sure that you have that Bubble at least touching one one line on the uphill side and knowing that okay I got at least an eighth or a quarter inch of fall in this trench I’ll be good or you
Can do a string line and do it that way it’s what I outline in my book and my course you know a simple String Line you can do it with a laser level and a story pole and all that but most people don’t go to that level unless they’ve been
Trained or they’re in the business themselves what if you’re upgrading your home to a brand new house I can remember that I can remember that first brand new house and no no Landscaping front or back I was happy at the time I was not in the landscape industry but I had a
Lot of landscape experience and I noticed that the yard they did a pretty darn good job that the builders and the site work contractor they did a good job as far as backyard elevation Street elevation how much fall I would say there was probably 14 Ines of fall
Between the backyard and the street which hey for Northern California that was that was quite AIT that was quite a bit in many places really was but let’s talk about you’re buying your first home or you’re buying your second home and it’s an existing home in a better
Neighborhood or a better school district or whatever but there’s more to it than just what kind of flooring what kind of bathroom fixtures how’s the roof look these are all important things but also go outside and take a look around and look at if you get a home inspection
Make sure you tell that person to inspect the grade and slope look for ponding or soaking wet areas check the foundation if there’s a basement do we have Essence and stuff in on the the inside walls of concrete basement it might indicate you know that there’s
Some water on the outside there and make sure that by the time the inspection is done you have a very good working knowledge of this can be corrected really easy or walk away one or the other okay now take for instance brooken Pond here when Myro and I looked at this
Thing we really like the property we really did but one of the things that I like the most was I could tell by the site work that okay we’re perched on a on a shelf on a Hillside and the slope and grade basically goes away from the
House it does a pretty good job except for the teeny tiny part of the backyard where they just didn’t complete the grading for some reason I don’t know why I’m going to assume because of the power supply that comes from the pole to the house that they didn’t do anything there
Uh but that’ll be addressed once I have uh ground thaw and Spring and Summer come along that will be addressed but it’s one of those things when we bought it that I knew that we had a problem or a potential problem and there had been some oh pseudo DIY remedies that just probably
Did not work I’m going to be very curious to see during thaw this spring where water goes and how much collects where there was an underground drain placed in one corner of the backyard but I’ve shot a hose down there and I don’t see an exit Point anywhere so I don’t
Know where it comes out an excavator will tell the story and I’m going to lower the power line down underground grade everything out and then we’ll be in business so I’ll tell you this where I used to work U there were countless landscape jobs that I took on that were
Just flat as a board I mean flat as a dining room table there was no no change in elevation between backyard and Street it was just not something yes site workk and Builders tried to build up property Lots at least 12 in above where they eventually put in the roads so there was
A little bit but then the elevation the side elevations up where the house are until until you got to the front driveway which had a slope down to the street everything was Mesa it was just super flat so a lot of the jobs that I did involved going in and either new
Installs got all drainage and a lot of the drainage that new new homes had there was not really well thought out they would put a couple of uh catch bases in the backyard throw some gravel around them do two 3-in corrugated discharges down each side of the house
And that was all you got and most of the time the grading that was done they would send a subcontractor in and they would have a box scraper and this is how the yards were scraped out and funny thing is is the sidey yards were always
Graded and sloped to kind of a vshape between the house and what do you think went right down the middle of those V the V between the side of one house on the side of the other yep fences and what are the first things that used to rot out in people’s residential yards
And succumb to post rot and stuff those fences wouldn’t last a decade and they’d be rotted out because of the way that the places were graded now the backyard back fences they always had just a slight bit of ele elevation and they lasted a lot better than the side fences
But a lot of my jobs that I did involve mitigating or renovating existing grades or if I couldn’t mitigate the grade then I would have to install uh various drainage systems and I can remember the most serious one I ever did it was in a development that this one particular
House was kind of in a bowl for the block and a big rain event which Northern California doesn’t get a lot of but this particular one I think there was a 2-in rain event and the whole surrounding block kind of drained towards my customer’s backyard and it
Was so bad that uh his backyard flooded it flooded up to the patio it came over the patio and towards the family room slider it came up to the family room slider and it was as that was Rising that he had to go to the City Corp guard
And get sand and sandbags and he had to run to the rental company and get a utility pump and he ran a utility pump for 12 hours of pumping water away from his patio and out and around and out to the street so my phone rang fortunately
It did not go into the family room and cause any sort of damage but uh my phone rang the week later and when I came over things had dried out pretty much and I told him I said I can see the problem I said you’re in a bowl here and you’re
Going to have to address this but in a very very big way and he says whatever it takes I do not want to have to go through what I went through this past week and I said okay here’s here’s my plan my plan was to trench the entire back foundation and
Patio of his home where all the water would be coming down and then we would put in a perforated drain system and that drain system including downspouts would run back away from the house and out into a new lawn area and in that lawn area would be a three foot deep 2
Feet wide sump and we would put a reliable sump in there and a 2-in discharge that would discharge out through the backyard out to the sidey yard and down to the sidewalk and he says sounds good how much is that going to cost and it was well into the low
Five figures and we got on it and it took about 10 days of hard work in the summertime and by the time we got all done it looked like a new backyard and you couldn’t really tell because where we put the trench became a 4ft decorative rock apron around the
Backyard and then we decorated that with some small Shrubbery not very big Shrubbery at all but a lot of decorative container shrubs as well container shrubs in color and checking back with him that winter when we did have some rain no problems whatsoever no problems
At all and it was one of my prouder moments because when you can approach something like that you can offer a service but more importantly a solution and then that solution actually worked made me proud the only thing that I told him was you have to clean your
Gutters there were a lot of tall trees redwoods liquid Amber trees birch trees and if he did not have those gutters cleaned and those down spouts cleaned and the sump clean cleaned uh a couple times a year at least you just open yourself up for the problem again
Because drainer systems can be overrun when maintenance ises not apply so what else might I need to do here well I know one thing that I’m going to need to do and that is driveway application now I got tons of slope out here I really do
Uh the slope from the house to the lawn area is probably 24 in even more down towards the corner of the lawn probably closer to 3 feet but the driveway itself as it goes down away from the house and does a little Lazy S turn goes across
The brook and up to the road I need to go in there and take an excavator and scratch out little ditches on each side and then when I do the driveway this fall I need to Crown it a little bit and then allow water to go down the sides of
The driveway rather than come down the middle of the driveway and the potential of wash out you know and ruding I I don’t want that so we’re going to have to address some little things here and there you can kind of see exactly how important slope and grade really is you
Know it is going to cost you probably 15% of installation cost to put in mitigating Solutions rather than do nothing and have to come back and try to uh repair or replace water damaged foundations or basement floodings or mold and mildew because of wicking uh that’s the other thing is if you’re
Doing Foundation beds and stuff make sure you don’t over mulch to the depth where wet mulch touches siding uh it’s one thing if it’s metal siding but generally even metal siding has OSB and other stuff behind it that if it’s if it’s too much mulch and you get wicking
You can destroy the the sheathing and stuff that’s behind your metal siding so keep that in mind so to sum up grade and slope in the top three of importance when it comes to home buying uh new landscape projects renovation projects so buyer beware number one number two be
Very aware of the slope and grade and determine the corrective measures and just as importantly your scope of your skills are you able to do it or are you able to learn how to do it to correct any sort of problems that are present and if you’re constructing new Hardscape
Or even Greenscape projects always consider the slope and grade of those projects another one is if slop and grade is not present consider mechanical means to evacuate and mitigate water problems in the form of sump basins and sump pumps a lot of people don’t know that they’re out there they know about
The one in their basement but they don’t know that they could do it outside side so consider those things as well and if you’re thinking about doing a renovation project front yard or backyard just because you’re doing lawn or just be doing your raised beds or whatever make
Sure you always consider that you have water mitigation in mind and that slope and grade are correct you don’t don’t want to do all The Hardscape and everything is honky Dory but you’ve evacuated the water away from your dwelling out on the lawn and it has
Nowhere to go so B and other things are kind of important creating changes to mitigate all this takes all the same steps as I outline in my 15-step checklist it’s not all the steps necessarily but it’s at least the first six or seven that go through the
Planning and the budgeting you know and the sourcing and the implementation and the drainage Etc and then you have to repair and replace green stuff that may get Disturbed as a result of these these projects so taking these extra steps of inspecting and diagnosing and correcting
The problems is what you need to do for the preservation of the very expensive home that you’ve invested in so that’s what I have for you guys this week I hope you found it useful hope you’ve learned a little something if it left you with any sort of questions that I
Didn’t answer please email me I’ll I’ll respond to you and if you’re on the the channel drop it in the comment as far as what you found at your home or a friend’s home or whatever and what has been done or not done I really appreciate you sticking with me this
Long I really enjoy bringing this educational stuff to people’s ears and minds and I hope it’s I hope it’s useful I really do hey if you want to help out don’t forget we’re over there on patreon I really would appreciate any support that you can give and if you check out
The website yard coach.com we have that book and course and also the the 15-step checklist for doing projects such as this I’ll catch you guys next week as always to your landscape success thanks for joining me bye for now hey friends Maestro here just dropping a reminder to check out the
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