Type of Work
Drainage and Erosion Control in Sandy Springs
Water intercepted, carried and released where it can do no harm, so it stops moving soil and standing against the house.
Drainage is the most common reason a Sandy Springs homeowner calls a landscaper, and the reason is arithmetic. The Georgia Piedmont takes somewhere in the region of 45 to 55 inches of rain a year, it arrives in short heavy convective storms through the summer, and it lands on a red clay subsoil that the Metro North Georgia Water Planning District describes as absorbing up to about half an inch of water per hour. Rainfall rates in an Atlanta thunderstorm comfortably exceed that. Everything the soil cannot take goes overland, and on a sloping wooded lot overland flow does three things: it scours the mulch out of beds, it cuts channels down the fall line, and it collects wherever the grade flattens against a foundation, a patio or a neighbor's fence. The fix is rarely one pipe. It is a sequence: catch the water high on the property before it gains volume, carry it in something sized for the flow, and release it somewhere it can leave without doing damage. That last part decides the whole design, because a run of pipe is only as good as the point it ends at, and on a lot that falls toward a creek or toward a neighbor the destination is the hardest part of the job to get right.
What the scope covers
- Where the water starts, mapped before anything is dug: roof area, driveway, neighboring lots upslope, and the point at which sheet flow becomes a channel
- French drains built as a graded trench with washed stone, a perforated pipe and a filter fabric wrap, rather than a stone-filled ditch that silts up in three seasons
- Catch basins and solid pipe where volume is high, with clean-outs at direction changes so the run can be jetted rather than dug up
- Downspout collection taken well away from the foundation instead of ending in a splash block at the wall
- Regraded swales and dry creek beds shaped to carry storm flow slowly and to look like part of the garden between storms
- Bed and slope stabilisation with deep-rooted planting, jute or coir matting, and a mulch that stays put on a grade
- A discharge point settled before the trenches are set out, with enough fall to it and somewhere the water can leave without eroding a bank or landing on a neighbor
To have this priced on your own property, call (404) 737-3568 or use the quote form. Someone walks the yard, takes measurements, and leaves a written scope with a price on it. No charge for any of that.
Read next
On drainage, specifically
- Why does my yard flood when the soil drains fine on paper?
- Because infiltration rate and total capacity are different things. The Cecil-type soils across the Georgia Piedmont are described in the USDA soil survey as well drained with moderately high saturated conductivity, yet the same descriptions record medium surface runoff, and the Metro Water District puts practical clay absorption at about half an inch per hour. An afternoon storm here can drop that in fifteen minutes. The water is not sitting because the soil is bad. It is sitting because it arrived faster than any soil could take it.
- Where is the water supposed to end up?
- Somewhere downhill of the problem that can take the volume without eroding, and that is the question to settle before anything is dug. A drain needs continuous fall from the inlet to the outlet, so the destination fixes the depth of the whole run and often fixes the route as well. Ending a line at the property boundary and letting it sheet onto the neighbor is not a solution, it is a relocation of the problem, and it is the single most common reason a homeowner ends up paying for the same yard twice.
- How long should a drain last, and what makes one fail?
- Decades if it was built properly, three or four seasons if it was not. Failures are boringly consistent: fine clay migrating into stone that was never wrapped in fabric, a pipe laid without continuous fall so water stands in the low spot, a run with no clean-outs at the direction changes so it cannot be jetted when it does silt, and a discharge end that has been buried by mulch or grown over. None of those are visible from the surface, which is why the way a drainage quote describes the buried detail matters more than the price on the bottom line.
- Is a French drain or a surface swale the better answer?
- They solve different problems. A swale moves surface water that is already running across the ground, and it handles large volumes cheaply. A French drain intercepts water moving through the soil and lowers a wet zone, and it moves far less volume than most people assume. A yard that puddles after a storm and dries in a day usually wants grading and a swale. A yard that stays soft for a week wants subsurface interception. Plenty of properties here need both, in that order.
- What about erosion on a bare slope?
- Cover is the whole answer, and speed matters more than species. Bare Piedmont clay on a grade sheds soil in the first storm after it is exposed, and the soil that leaves is the thin plantable layer rather than the subsoil under it. In practice that means matting the slope as soon as it is shaped, planting through the matting with something deep-rooted, and keeping the mulch coarse enough that it interlocks instead of floating away.
From the Yard Notes
More on this, written for north Fulton
Usually Booked Together
Work that tends to arrive in the same scope
Landscape projects here group themselves around water and grade. A new patio changes where runoff goes, a wall changes the grade above it, and planting into a slope only holds if the water crossing it has somewhere else to be. Pricing the pieces together is usually cheaper than pricing them one at a time.
Landscape Design and Planting
A drawn plan for the whole property, then beds shaped, soil amended and plants set in the right season
Retaining Walls and Grading
Slope turned into usable ground, with drainage behind the wall rather than pressure
Patios, Walkways and Steps
Stone laid on a base that will not move, with the water taken somewhere rather than trapped
Shade Planting Under the Canopy
Beds that work in four hours of filtered light, planted without wrecking the roots holding the trees up
Find out what the yard would cost
Call (404) 737-3568 or use the quote form, and a Sandy Springs landscaping company prices the work at no charge.