A French drain is a trench cut to a consistent fall, lined with filter fabric, filled with washed gravel and carrying a perforated pipe. Water in the soil finds the gravel, the gravel feeds the pipe, and the pipe takes it somewhere useful. That is the whole idea.
What separates one that works for decades from one that fails in three seasons is entirely in the detail — and in Georgia the detail that matters most is the filter fabric, because red clay will migrate into an unprotected gravel bed and silt the system solid.
Do you need this?
If any of these sound like your property, this is the service:
- A low area of the yard holds water long after it stops raining
- Water collects against a foundation, retaining wall or crawl space vent
- A slope delivers runoff straight into your yard from next door or the road
- A previous drain has stopped working or never worked properly
- The lawn is permanently soft along one line or edge
How the job runs
- 1
Establish the route and the fall
We find where the water is and where it can legally and sensibly go, then set a consistent slope between the two. Fall is what makes it work.
- 2
Call Georgia 811
Drain trenches run deep enough to matter. Utilities get located before we dig.
- 3
Cut the trench
Excavated to depth and grade with the machine, cleaned up by hand where it matters.
- 4
Fabric, gravel, pipe
Non-woven filter fabric lines the trench, washed stone goes in, perforated pipe is bedded with holes down, more stone over, then the fabric is wrapped closed.
- 5
Discharge
Taken to daylight, a dry well or a permitted structure. Never discharged onto a neighbouring property.
- 6
Backfill and restore
Topsoil back, graded flush, seeded or sodded. Within a season you should not be able to see where it went.
What affects your price
Part of the broader metro Atlanta drainage range. Price is driven by length of run, depth, how hard the digging is, whether the discharge point is close or far, and whether the surface has to be restored to lawn, gravel or hardscape.
We quote after seeing the site, and the price we give you is fixed and in writing. Estimates are free and there is no obligation.
Get a free quoteWhy it's different in Georgia
This is the service Georgia clay was invented to punish. Clay particles are fine enough to migrate into washed stone and choke a drain from the inside. Non-woven filter fabric, fully wrapped, is the difference between a drain that outlives the house and one that quietly stops working before you have finished paying for it.