Lynnwood is built tight: retail around Alderwood, houses on smaller lots, and soils that were compacted when the neighborhood went in. Rain runs off roofs, walks, and the mall-side pavement faster than the yard can take it. 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 98036 · 2020 population 38,141
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 Lynnwood
Residential yards here are often a rectangle of tired turf, a fence, and a patio slab that has settled toward the house. The soil underneath is dense. Water sits, moss follows, and a new plant put into that ground without loosening it just stalls.
We aerate and dethatch before we promise a greener lawn, and we look at the downspouts before we sell a flower bed. Pavers and gravel show up on the small patios and the side yards where people actually walk. There is also commercial work along the retail streets — pruning, pressure washing, and beds that have to look kept without a full-time gardener. Native, lower-water plantings make more sense than a hedge that needs shearing every three weeks next to a busy road.
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
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.
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.
Maintenance
Silt arrives. Cleanouts and a flush every few years keep the pipe a pipe. Catch basins, if we used one, need the leaves emptied. A drain with no access becomes a dig when it clogs, so we put the access in.
More from this crew
- French drain installation across Snohomish County
- Retaining walls in Lynnwood
- Gravel installation in Lynnwood
- Landscaping in Lynnwood
- Patio installation in Lynnwood
- French drain installation in Edmonds
- French drain installation in Brier
- French drain installation in Mountlake Terrace
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.
