Playing Ball With Poppy

Diversions...

We have four gutter downspouts in the front of our house that "dump" directly into the front flower bed. Even with splash troughs placed beneath where the downspouts end, during heavy rains the water flow would result in a lot of washout in the bed. So, I opted to run some drain pipe underneath the bed itself and have the downspouts feed directly into the pipe. The first order of business was to remove the one curved piece of downspout at the bottom and then dig a trench in which the 4" drain pipe would run out just past the flowerbed into the grass area where a "pop-up" drain would be located at the end of the pipe. Where the pop-up was, I used a post hole digger to cut a deeper spot which would be filled with gravel...

Here is the completed trench, with the downspout adapter in place, ready for the length of drain pipe with pop-up adapter to be put in place. Note the cut-out area just into the lawn grass - which is where the pop-up drain will be.

Here is one downspout diversion completed, and I was smoothing out the dirt back over where the pipe had been run.

A little closer shot of the pop-up adapter at the end of the pipe. As water travels down the pipe during rain, the center section of the green pop-up will be forced up and the water will flow directly into the grass.

Of course, when you've turned the "big 6-0" as I have, you have to pace yourself when doing manual labor!

Here is how the pop-up area looks before putting down the pipe and pop-up adapter. The pop-up device sits in a 90 degree elbow. The bottom of that elbow has a slit opening (approximately 1/4" wide by 1" long) so that when the rain stops, the last bit of water in the pipe itself is allowed to drain out the bottom. With a 4" or so deep hole below this elbow, filled with gravel, that water should be allowed to drain without the dirt/mud clogging it up. At least, that's the theory!

Here's the same hole, with the elbow and pop-up in place where it will reside at the end of the drain pipe.

Making a measurement to cut the drain pipe itself...

Measuring and then cutting the pipe to the desired length...

Assembling the pieces (just dry fit, no glue needed) and dropping them all into their places comes next.

Here's what happens when you get a little too "horsey" with your post hole digger, and there happens to be a sprinkler system pipe and hose right where you are digging! This, of course, was unexpected, and required a "time out" from the job at hand to run get 4 elbow fittings, primer, and PVC glue to fix my boo-boo! This is not the first time I've done this...

Here's the fix all in place, and I hand dug the hole underneath where the broken irrigation pipe was located - so that I could put a liberal pile of gravel underneath the pop-up adapter.

The job (as most jobs seem to these days) took more effort than I had expected, but I did get it all done. Now, maybe it will actually rain again and I can confirm that it works as expected!

Cheers, Tom