Maybe you didn’t notice the issue when you initially purchased your property, but after the first hard rain, it became obvious. There are areas in your yard where the water pools, collects and linters for days, and sometimes, even longer. Now you’re faced with trying to find an answer to the question ‘how do I get rid of standing water in my Silver Spring MD yard?’
Unfortunately, there’s not a single, simple answer to that question, because there are so many different things that can cause or contribute to your standing water issue. In this article we’ll take a look at the more common causes and outline the best solutions in each case.
The first thing to note is that these types of issues can be broken into two broad categories: habit-based and design-based.
As the name suggests, habit-based issues are ones that arise from things you’re doing or not doing. Answering the question ‘how do I get rid of standing water in my Silver Spring MD yard?’ in these cases tends to be a straightforward proposition. Here are the two most common examples:
#1 – Simple Overwatering – This is far and away the most common of the habit-based issues. If you’re giving your plants more water than they need, and more than the soil around them can absorb, it’s going to pool and collect until you give it time to recede. The very first thing you should try is to water less and see if the problem goes away on its own.
#2 – Decorative Planting Beds – Many people like to build decorative beds for planting herbs, flowers, or vegetables. Unfortunately, these creations are sometimes built without proper drainage channels incorporated into the design, which means that excess water in the beds doesn’t have an easy way to escape, so it pools where it is.
This problem is compounded in cases where people build decorative beds immediately around their homes, especially in cases where they don’t redirect the downspouts connected to their rain gutters. Anytime it rains, the water collects there, where it can seep into the foundation of the home and cause significant damage.
Simply building or expanding your drainage channel will solve the problem in most cases like these.
Design-based issues arise from features or characteristics that are specific to your piece of property. In these cases, answering the question ‘how do I get rid of standing water in my Silver Spring MD yard?’ is more labor intensive, but still quite possible. We’ll outline the most common of these types of issues next.
Poor or Improper Grading
Of all the design-based issues, this one is the most difficult to address. Poor or improper grading creates a situation where the water pools in the lowest areas of your property, and there’s no solution in place to move it from there.
While it’s possible to bring in heavy equipment and dramatically alter the grade of your property, the simpler solution is the installation of a French drain.
If you’re going to do this, however, it pays to think ahead to the other landscaping work you may want to do in the future.
If you’ve got a long list of landscaping initiatives you’d like to undertake, the best approach is to create a Master Landscape Design document which will help you organize and prioritize the projects you have in mind. Armed with that knowledge, we’ll be able to install the drain in such a way that it won’t interfere with the future projects you have planned.
Clay
Soil composition is a major factor that determines how well or poorly water drains from a given section of your property. Areas that have high concentrations of clay can’t absorb much water, no matter what you do. The solution here is identical to the one we outlined above. The installation of a French drain will redirect the water away from the area, and either into a nearby stream, drainage ditch, or perhaps a decorative pond.
Thatch
This is a layer of organic material that exists between your grass and the topsoil that supports it. Over time, this layer can become highly compacted and tightly interwoven, to the point that water has a difficult time filtering through it and draining away.
In this case, the answer to the question ‘how do I get rid of standing water in my Silver Spring MD yard?’ is to remove the thatch layer and aerate your lawn. Doing this requires the use of some specialized equipment but is generally a project that a serious DIYer can undertake on his own. If it’s not something you want to tackle solo though, we’re happy to provide assistance.
Hardpan
Hardpan can either occur naturally, or it can be manmade, usually by the presence of heavy equipment moving repeatedly over a given area. It’s a condition where the layer of sub-soil beneath your topsoil becomes so tightly compacted that water can’t filter through it.
Here, the answer to the question ‘how do I get rid of standing water in my Silver Spring MD yard?’ involves bringing in specialized equipment to break up the hardpan. It’s a big project that all but the most committed do it yourselfers will want help with.
Whatever the root cause of your drainage issues, we’ve got the skills and experience to correctly identify the root cause and solve the problem for you, giving you one less thing to worry about. You don’t have to put up with areas of standing water anywhere on your property. Give our office a call and we’ll take care of it for you.
