A French drain is disruptive to install, it needs somewhere legal and downhill to send water, and it silts up if it was built against soil rather than in clean stone behind fabric. The fourth downside is the largest: it is often the wrong fix, bought because it was the fix that was offered.

The one that binds here

Ogden is mapped mainly as Urban land and rated hydrologic group D, the survey’s slowest class. Here the outfall is the downside that binds. Water a drain collects cannot be returned to the ground a few yards away, so it has to be carried to somewhere that will take it — and on built-up ground the reinstatement of whatever the trench crosses is the second cost, often larger than the drainage. Both belong in a quote, itemised.

The reasoning behind that

Disruption is unavoidable. An exterior run means a trench the length of the affected wall, and whatever is on top of it — lawn, patio, planting, driveway — comes up. Reinstatement is a real line on the quote and is sometimes larger than the drainage.

The outfall is the constraint people discover late. A drain does not consume water; it moves it. Somewhere downhill has to accept it, and where nothing does, the design becomes a dry well or a pump and the price changes accordingly.

Silting is the failure mode. A perforated pipe laid against soil fills with fines over a few seasons and stops working with nothing visible on the surface to say so. Washed stone and fabric are what prevent it.

And a drain solves ground water. It does nothing about a downspout at the wall, a slope running toward the house, or a leaking pipe. Those get checked first or the drain is treating a symptom.

More on this: French Drain and Sump Pump Repair in Ogden, UT.

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