Yard Drainage and Lawn Drainage Company in The Woodlands, TX

It ranges from $500 to $8,000 and up depending on the solution. Simple regrading starts at $500 to $1,500, catch basins are $300 to $500 each installed, French drains run $25 to $50 per linear foot, and channel drains $30 to $60. Dry wells are $500 to $1,500 each. Complete yard drainage systems typically land at $2,500 to $6,000. Every project begins with a free on-site assessment and a written quote.

Usually a combination of Beaumont clay and grade. Clay has a very low infiltration rate, so rain that would soak away elsewhere sits on the surface here. Add a lot graded flat or towards the house, construction compaction, and downspouts discharging at the foundation, and water has nowhere to go. The fix is almost always conveyance — moving water to a discharge point — rather than trying to make clay absorb it.

Surface drains — catch basins, channel drains, grading and swales — move water sitting on top of the ground, which is most standing water on clay. French drains are subsurface: perforated pipe in gravel that collects water moving through the soil, for a lawn that stays soggy and never firms up rather than one with a visible puddle. Installing a French drain where the problem is surface water is the commonest wasted spend in drainage.

It helps significantly with the moisture cycling that causes the problem. Beaumont clay swells when saturated and shrinks in drought, and that repeated movement against a slab is what stresses foundations here. Keeping water away from the perimeter — correct grade, piped downspouts, and drainage that discharges well clear — reduces the swing. It is not a substitute for a structural assessment if you already have movement, and we will say so rather than sell you drainage.

Most residential projects take one to three days. A simple regrade or a set of catch basins is often a single day; a full system combining grading, French drains and a discharge run takes two to three. Wet ground extends everything, because trenching saturated clay is slow and it damages the lawn you are about to restore. We schedule around the forecast where we can.

Trenching is disruptive while it happens, and restoration is part of the job rather than an extra. Trenches are backfilled in layers and compacted so they do not sink into visible lines later, and turf is relaid or new sod laid over the runs. Six months on you should not be able to see where the work went in. Ruts from equipment are avoided with ground protection on soft ground.

To a legal discharge point, which we identify before designing anything — usually a street, a roadside ditch, a natural swale, or a dry well sized to hold the volume. This is the constraint that shapes the whole design, and it is what separates a working system from an expensive one. You cannot discharge onto a neighboring property, so where no outlet exists, a properly sized dry well is the answer.

Very little, if built correctly. Filter fabric and washed gravel keep fine soil out of the pipe, which is what silts a drain up and shortens its life. Catch basin grates should be cleared of leaves seasonally, and the discharge outlet checked once a year to make sure it has not been buried or blocked. A well-built French drain here should give 15 to 25 years.

Often, and we will tell you when that is the case. Regrading to a one to two percent fall solves a great many yard drainage problems with nothing buried and nothing to maintain, and it is usually cheaper than a drain system. It works where there is somewhere for the water to run to. Where the lot is landlocked, the low point is against the house, or the problem is subsurface, grading alone will not do it.

Residential yard drainage generally does not require county permitting, but the discharge matters legally — you cannot direct concentrated runoff onto a neighbor’s property, and some communities have rules about connections to their storm systems. Covenanted areas including The Woodlands may require review for visible work such as swales and regrading. We check before we design, because a system that has to be removed is the most expensive outcome available.

Late fall through winter, if you can plan ahead of it — the ground is workable, our schedule is lighter, and a system installed then is proven before the next wet spring rather than being installed reactively during one. That said, most drainage work here happens in direct response to a storm that just exposed the problem, and we run projects year-round for exactly that reason. Wet ground slows any season down, because trenching saturated clay damages the lawn we are about to restore.