French\u00a0drain or swale,\u00a0which\u00a0type of drainage system works best in Florida? Every one knows about sandy soils in Florida, but\u00a0people don’t realize that thick clay\u00a0layered soils are often just below the surface. French drains have limitations. They are designed to allow water to enter the pipe thru perforations (holes or cuts) in the pipe. This limits the amount of water that can enter and will allow water seeking roots (especially Palm Tree roots and even grass roots) to enter the pipe. Roots can easily wrap around inside and\u00a0block\u00a0water flow. Southern Drainage Systems\u00a0now\u00a0uses a special fabric, designed to prevent roots from entering the perforated drainage pipe. This allows the drainage\u00a0system to work for decades, free of roots. When\u00a0the French drain\u00a0pipe is\u00a0set accurately using special commercial grade fabric to filter sand and prevent roots from entering the pipe along with a laser\u00a0to verify proper pipe elevations, the system can work flawlessly for decades. Southern Drainage Systems has installed many hundreds of residential drainage systems over the past 2 decades. To our knowledge, all are still properly functioning to this day.<\/p>\n
French drain benefits:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0French drains can be installed in a confined area or space.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0French drains can blend into the landscape if necessary.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0French drains can be installed against or along a building.<\/p>\n
4. French drain can be installed deep in the ground.<\/p>\n
Swales\u00a0can have\u00a0advantages over French drains.\u00a0Swales are often a wide shallow groove\u00a0or trench\u00a0cut into the ground to capture and guide water to a location where it is released\u00a0and can flow with out concern.\u00a0Swales can carry massive amounts\u00a0of water but there is the\u00a0potential\u00a0for erosion\u00a0along the sides or base depending\u00a0on water velocity.\u00a0Swales can work well in residential and commercial applications with\u00a0sufficient\u00a0area. A minimum swale\u00a0width is\u00a0often 6 ft. wide. Over time sediment carried in the water can slowly fill in the swale and it will need to be\u00a0excavated\u00a0and removed.<\/p>\n
Swale benefits:<\/p>\n
1. Swales can carry massive amounts of water.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0\u00a0Swales have\u00a0no pipe or basins.<\/p>\n
3. Swales can be\u00a0shallow and hidden in a landscape but they do require more area in width than a French drain<\/p>\n
Both types of drainage\u00a0systems can be very effective in Florida’s clay or sandy soils. We will discuss Catch Basin Drainage Systems in the next blog post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French\u00a0drain or swale,\u00a0which\u00a0type of drainage system works best in Florida? Every one knows about sandy soils in Florida, but\u00a0people don’t realize that thick clay\u00a0layered soils are often just below the surface. French drains have limitations. They are designed to allow…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,44],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-5428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drainage-system","category-pipe-repair","entry","no-media"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5434,"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5428\/revisions\/5434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5428"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.floodingdrainage.com\/wpfloodingdrainage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=5428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}