Woodway is large, wooded lots and a town of 1,384 people. The canopy is the landscape. Lawns live in the gaps between old trees, the soil stays shaded and cool, and privacy is the reason people bought the property. A soggy bed under firs may be canopy drip and poor surface grade, not a spring. We do not trench through a root plate to solve a grading problem.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98020 · 2020 population 1,384
Wet shade is often surface water plus a tree
We watch a rain before we cut roots. If the water is sheeting from a patio or a downspout, we catch it uphill of the tree and move it. If the soil is wet because it never sees sun, a drain helps only when there is an outlet. Otherwise we change the planting and the grade.
Roots in the trench get cut clean if they must, and we do not promise a tree will not notice a line dug through half its roots. Sometimes the line moves.
The ground in Woodway
We are not opening these lots to the street. Pruning is about structure, light, and keeping limbs off the house, done so the screen of trees stays. Under that canopy the lawn is the hard part: moss, thin grass, and roots at the surface. Aeration helps the pockets that get some sun. The deep shade wants a different floor — bark, ferns, and the understory that is already trying to grow — not another season of seed that germinates and dies.
Hardscape, when it belongs, is a terrace or a quiet patio in a clearing, built for wet shade so it does not turn green and slick. Bark on the beds keeps the mud down and the edges readable from the house. The work should look like it was always in the trees, because it is.
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
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.
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.
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.
More from this crew
- French drain installation across Snohomish County
- Retaining walls in Woodway
- Gravel installation in Woodway
- Landscaping in Woodway
- Patio installation in Woodway
- French drain installation in Edmonds
- French drain installation in Mukilteo
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.
