Everett is the big city in the county, and the ground changes block to block: waterfront fill, older neighborhoods with tired topsoil, and tighter lots where the roof and the driveway shed more water than the yard can swallow. Boeing and the working waterfront are the backdrop. The yards are ordinary residential lots with city drainage problems. City water problems are usually a roof pointed at a foundation in a yard with no slope. The drain has to reach a legal outlet, often the street or a connection we confirm first.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98201 · 2020 population 110,002
Downspouts, tight side yards, and the street
Side yards are narrow. We dig by hand when a machine will not fit, and we still slope the pipe. A level trench in a side yard is a storage tank against the house.
We check whether the city allows a curb outlet before we promise one. Some streets do, some want a permit, some are a hard no. The estimate says which. Tie-ins to an old clay footing drain get a camera or a test, not a guess, because those pipes are often already full of roots.
The ground in Everett
On a typical Everett lot the soil has been graded, driven on, and patched for years. It sheds or it puddles, and it rarely does the quiet middle thing a new lawn needs. Downspouts often end in a splash block ten inches from the foundation. That is the puddle by the basement window.
We work from the waterfront streets up into the neighborhoods near the naval station and out toward the valley. Access is the constraint people forget: a machine that fits a Mill Creek cul-de-sac may not fit a fenced backyard off Broadway. Permeable pavers and a short French drain solve more Everett problems than a bigger patio. Lawns here are for people who want the grass cut and the moss knocked back, not a show lawn. We schedule mowing and aeration around that.
How we do the work
A French drain is a perforated pipe in washed rock, wrapped so the fines do not fill it, sloped to a place the water can actually leave. We do not end a drain in a dry well of hope, and we do not outlet it at the neighbor’s shed.
The trench is deep enough to catch the water you are chasing, which is often the downspout and the wet line along the foundation, not a decorative strip in the middle of the lawn. Surface grading still matters. A drain cannot fix a patio that pitches at the house.
What we look at first
- Where the water shows up, and where it can daylight
- Downspouts that are dumping at the footing
- Utilities before we trench
- Whether the wet spot is a seep that will need more than one line
Cost follows the outlet
A short line with an easy daylight is a different job from a line that has to cross a drive, miss a gas service, and reach a ditch fifty feet away. We price it after we see the outlet. We do not quote a per-foot number from the curb.
What the trench looks like
Fabric, washed rock, pipe with the holes oriented the way the detail calls for, then rock, then fabric closed, then soil. The lawn or the bark goes back on top. A trench of pit-run gravel with a pipe tossed in will silt up, and we do not build those.
Downspouts
Solid pipe until it is away from the house, then into the drain if the drain can take the roof. We do not dump a whole roof into a two-inch pop-up in the middle of the lawn and call it drainage.
More from this crew
- French drain installation across Snohomish County
- Retaining walls in Everett
- Gravel installation in Everett
- Landscaping in Everett
- Patio installation in Everett
- French drain installation in Mukilteo
- French drain installation in Marysville
- French drain installation in Lake Stevens
Sources for the climate and the water
- USDA plant hardiness map for choosing plants that can take a Snohomish County winter.
- EPA WaterSense on watering less once a lawn or a new planting is established.
- EPA Soak Up the Rain on keeping roof and yard water from becoming someone else’s problem.
