The Swamp

Nope, not talking about a taking a trip to Louisiana, I'm talking about our backyard. When we first moved in we noticed the very back left corner of our lot was always a little wet. The problem has continued to grow until now the entire left side of our backyard is so wet that we couldn't get a lawnmower through there if we tried. Here's a couple pictures I took a few months ago:




The previous owner was apparently aware of a drainage problem and installed a few drains- one at the back corner, a few along the middle of the yard, and one at the front corner of the backyard. They are all supposed to flow out to a spot in the side yard and then out to the street. We are clueless as to how this whole setup was setup, and didn't know there was a place in the side yard where this drained. And since the previous owner let it get covered up with dirt and grass, we were really unaware of it. It was finally uncovered, but that didn't help. After many phone calls and emails to the county engineer, city manager, our builder, and my dad, we realized no one was going to take responsibility and we were going to have to fix it ourselves.

So Jeremy set out digging a ditch this morning. We decided to add two more drains up by the retaining wall and have them connect to the existing "system". HOPEFULLY this will drain all the water that is coming from our neighbor. (Supposedly he is only watering once a week, but you don't get yard of the month only watering once a week now do ya?!)



Two trips to Lowe's, a trip to Home Depot, and a few calls to my dad later and we still aren't done. The drains are there but now we need to fill in the yard a bit and then adjust the height of the drain in the side yard...and THEN hopefully we'll be done. Ahhh...home ownership.