I have a landscape drain that has been buried, lost over the years of neglect from previous owners. I have located what I can within somewhere around 3-5 ft of the end that would be somewhere close to the edge of the driveway to drain away rain etc into the lower end of the backyard. I cannot for the life of me dig up anything that appears to be the end or grate. Would there be any way to use the pipe I can find and drill into it and attach something to allow drainage? Drill holes and wrap with landscape fabric? I really need to stop the ponding and the muck from poorly draining clay that is all that is in that area. It seems to be probably 3-4" white PVC. I am about ready to drill a hole and shove a hose into it and just let the hose drain the water. But I don't know if that is a very good idea. A plumber told me he would clean it out –but I have to find the end first. I am afraid an idiot previous owner buried it under a huge rock… any ideas?
How to backtrace a landscape catch basin with only the exit point
drainagerain
Related Solutions
This page says clay soil absorbs water at the rate of 1/2 inch per hour, 4 times slower than sandy soil or loam.
http://www.ornamentaledibles.com/tips/soil.htm
Let's assume you get 5-10 gallons per minute or 300-600 gallons per hour. A gallon is 231 cubic inches or 462 square inches 1/2 inch high. So 600 gallons/hour needs 277200 square inches or 1925 square feet. Assuming your trench is 12 inches wide, you need 1925 linear feet of pipe under steady state conditions.
Let's consider another situation where you store all the rain water and let it absorb as slowly as it wants. Assume you get 600 gallons which requires 80 cubic feet. So if your trench were 12" by 12" you would need 80 linear feet of pipe.
If it's heavily driven on, it's likely extremely compacted, which only increases the water run-off and retention (since it can't properly drain anywhere).
can you use gravel? A gravel driveway would likely be the easiest solution.
Barring that, you could look at using a grid 'pavement' system:
It lets you plant grass without the turf having to take the brunt of the vehicle weight, so it remains porous.
Best Answer
You can find the end, or at least the first leakage point in the line, with one of these:
It's intended for cleaning drain/sewer pipe. How it works is the small bladder/balloon will expand under the water pressure of the hose (garden hose water source) and has a small exit point on the other side of the balloon. So it will expand to the pipe size then fill it up. This way will use a decent amount of water but on a dry yard day should work fairly well.
Item/Picture source but they come is all different sizes and should be available at your local hardware store. I would measure the pipe first and buy the largest/closest size one you can, this is a 3" to 4" pictured but it may not seal a 4" pipe well until it has a certain amount of back pressure.
Same concept different approach, you can get 4" (or 3" depending on what you have) pipe fittings and step it down to a garden hose fitting.