When we worked on our yard, my wife wanted to make a French drain on the side of the house. I didn’t know what that was, but I researched it and learned that it was a lot of work. It doesn’t rain very often in southern California and we’ve been in a major drought on top of that. But I still made and it works incredibly well.
I dug out a trench that runs from our back yard to the street. Then I lined it with some landscaping fabric like a taco. I put down a thin layer of gravel and then some 4″ PVC pipe with holes. I thought the holes would point up, but they are supposed to point down. Then I covered it with the rocks and wrapped it up with the cloth and lightly covered it with dirt.
The idea is that water travels in the path of least resistance. So it’ll soak through the dirt but find it’s way to the rocks. The cloth prevents dirt from getting into the rocks and the holes in the PVC, so the trench will fill with water. The holes on the bottom let the water enter the pipe and it gets carried down until it exits at the street.
I also added pipes that connect the rain chain to the drain. Since our gutters run the length of our house, even a light rain makes a huge down pour at the chain.
This was not the most fun project I worked on, but it was probably one of the more important ones dues to the hill in the back and our zero-lot-line house.