Help me solve a drainage issue in my yard

My house sits on a little more than an acre in SE Michigan. The whole lot slopes down to a small area on the southern end of the house, both front and back. Behold, an extremely pixelated Google Maps image with even better Paint graphics to show the water flow:

To give you a better idea of what I'm dealing with, here is a pic looking at the area from the back yard:

You can see several things in this pic. One, my arbor vitaes are suffering. And two, the pipe that runs down the back of the house. That's the drain from my sump pump, which runs quite a lot. It used to just drain out the back of the house, but that was causing erosion on the hill next to the foundation, so a couple of years ago, I ran that pipe down the back of the house to get it farther down the hill and stop the erosion. Here's a pic of where the pipe ends:

As you can see, I took some old broken-up pavers and piled them up there so that the water could disperse without causing further erosion. Which works well, but if you look behind it, there's quite a little swamp. Looking at it from the front yard, it's even worse:

Closeup of the muddy area in the front:

So, none of this ever really drains. It means I can't use my walkout because as soon as I step off the small patio, I'm in mud. It means my dogs track mud into the house, and it means I can't really mow those areas because the mower gets stuck. And it's killing my arbor vitaes.

I know there is a lot of leaves there right now, but I have tried clearing all that. I also dug a channel under the fence to kind of equalize both sides, but all that did was make both sides equally wet.

One thing that seemed to help some on the back side was a sort of mini French drain I made out of a 5-gallon bucket. Basically, I drilled a bunch of holes in the bucket, dug a big hole, put some pea gravel in the hole, then partially filled the bucket with more pea gravel, the buried it even with the ground with a lid with more holes in it. The idea being to give the water a place to go and eventually soak into the ground or evaporate instead of sitting up on top and making the whole area muddy. Unfortunately, the volume of water was too much for my little bucket, so it was soon full and I was back to square one.  But I have thought about doing the same thing on a bigger scale with something like a large plastic trash bin or a 55-gallon drum. A friend of mine has a little mini-excavator he's always looking for an excuse to use. I even thought about putting one on each side of the fence, maybe connecting them with some 4" PVC or something.

Or, I guess I could just dig a little pond, but I'd rather not do that, either. I suppose the "real" solution is to dig down until I get to sand, then backfill with pea gravel to make a miniature drain field, but that would be a big job and probably not practical in such a small area. The area where I live has a lot of clay, so you have to go down a good 10-15 feet to get past it.

Any other ideas?

Is that area beyond the flooding area in the second photo lower than your walk-out basement so that you could dig a swale to get the water to flow out of there? You would want to use a skid steer to scrape off the black dirt and then dig a gentle sloping channel away from your house, replace the black dirt and plant grass. 

What Is a Drainage Swale?

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

I need to follow this 

There are larger, commercially available versions of your bucket, but they don't give them away. 
 

https://www.menards.com/main/plumbing/water-systems/landscape-drainage/catch-basins-grates/nds-reg-24-x-28-75-flo-well-reg-storm-water-leaching-system/fwas24/p-1444448963613-c-8633.htm?tid=8074104a-d884-480a-a7e7-44365dc622b2&ipos=4&exp=false

i can also tell you from first hand experience that it's a really big hole to dig by hand, and these went into an otherwise well drained area to collect output from downspouts. 
 

IIRC, they also offer a premaid French drain that's essentially a 4"x10 foot sock with an inlet/outlet fitting on it. 

In reply to Karacticus :

He does have a buddy with a mini excavator itching to dig.

Can you dig a ditch from the house to past the fence?  Near level with the ground on the other side of the fence, and bury drainage tile down there up to the home- and direct all the water into that.  Which would direct it out far enough to work?   Or at least bury another "french drain" farther away.  

Rons said:

In reply to Karacticus :

He does have a buddy with a mini excavator itching to dig.

I was thinking something like this

I hope the CV designation doesn't mean it has a Citroen or Renault engine !

Do your property edges send water down hill away from you? Would piping it there swamp a neighbor?

Check out this YouTube channel:

https://youtube.com/@GCFD

and here is one of his videos

one thing I like that he does is use glued schedule 40 PVC for catching downspouts - and he sometimes extends the pipe vertically as much as 3-4' above the ground. It looks a little funny but it sets the inlet point higher than the outlet - effectively letting you pipe water uphill (so long as the outfall is lower than the inlet). 

In reply to einy (Forum Supporter) :

French : Horse power

Hydroblox that can outlet is the easy button to fix this. 

https://leesupply.com/hydroblox/?utm_source=mv&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=intent&customer_id=546-629-9909&gclid=Cj0KCQjwt_qgBhDFARIsABcDjOeRRqScS-CruKKzMxbi0gUouIq1uPKbZgNQwWX1h3EONtSOCQpCHTcaAiCcEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

VolvoHeretic said:

Is that area beyond the flooding area in the second photo lower than your walk-out basement so that you could dig a swale to get the water to flow out of there? You would want to use a skid steer to scrape off the black dirt and then dig a gentle sloping channel away from your house, replace the black dirt and plant grass. 

What Is a Drainage Swale?

That's the problem. This is the lowest point on my property, so I have nowhere else to send the water, other than my neighbor's yard, and I'd rather not just pass the problem along to him. So I need something that will hold the water long enough to let it evaporate or seep into the ground without being a mud pit.

Those drainage catch basins might be the ticket.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

VolvoHeretic said:

Is that area beyond the flooding area in the second photo lower than your walk-out basement so that you could dig a swale to get the water to flow out of there? You would want to use a skid steer to scrape off the black dirt and then dig a gentle sloping channel away from your house, replace the black dirt and plant grass. 

What Is a Drainage Swale?

That's the problem. This is the lowest point on my property, so I have nowhere else to send the water, other than my neighbor's yard, and I'd rather not just pass the problem along to him. So I need something that will hold the water long enough to let it evaporate or seep into the ground without being a mud pit.

Those drainage catch basins might be the ticket.

Which direction is the general slope of the entire neighborhood? Say you got a 6" rain event, it wouldn't all just drain into your basement door? Walk out to that road and take a photo looking back at your house. If everything naturally drains through your neighbor's yard, as long as your small area doesn't drain directly into his house it should be ok to drain your little wetland. It's hard to tell but it doesn't look as if your neighborhood is super flat.

Edit: You are allowed to drain low spots of your yard into the natural drainage.

It looks like the sump pump drain comes out of the basement at a much higher altitude than where the pipe eventually drains. Why not just shoot a buried drainage pipe straight out from the house where it comes out of the basement. It will eventually clog up with roots and you will have to dig it up and put a new one in, but that should take a bit. If you want to get more thorough pipe your gutter drain to the same area. That might take something with some more area underground like those half tube septic drain field pieces but it should still only be a single weekends day worth of work. Basically nature wants to put all its water over there, maybe not putting the other stuff there will keep it from being a swamp

Just curious, is there a layer clay or something else (rock?) that is keeping the water from just soaking in?  

Looking at your pictures, it doesn't seem possible that the water table is that high.

It might be informative to ask around to see if anyone near you has a well, how deep they are, and what they drilled through to get there.

I would do one of two things.  The swale like Volvo mentioned, or a french drain.

The french drain can be done in that area with a shovel if you're up for some manual labor.  Dig a trough long enough to get the water out to the slope.  Make it about 10" deep or so.  You'll have to determine that based on the actual elevation change.  Taper the trough out a few feet.  Lay a sock-coated perforated pipe in the trough and cover with a few inches of gravel.  Return the dirt on top and plant grass.  I might consult a local reference to make sure that will suffice for your soil type because they're all a bit different.  Sandy soil drains very well, but clay soil doesn't.

When they leveled into a hill to build dad's 40x40 barn, they didn't do a very good job of leaving a swale for drainage.  Dad borrowed a 3-point ditch witch from a local farmer.  We dug down a couple feet around the back of the garage, dropped in a socked drain pipe, tossed in about 8-10" of gravel, and put the dirt on top.  In our case we had to go about 100' but the results were fantastic.

I also agree that you need to divert the sump line and rain gutter and probably through a french drain.

French drain.  Build an entire drain field if you have to. 
 

Your neighbor has a mini-ex. 

A swale will still have a wetter area, french drain is the solution.  Power equipment or a heart attack, your choice on digging strategy.  And the french drain still needs a runoff point at the end because the ground will never always absorb runoff.  Don't sweat a little runoff to the neighbor's yard, he is downhill from you and gravity happens.  I bet he already has a problem in the low spot and a little more water won't make a difference.  

Yeah, after watching the video that Volvoheretic posted, I think a french drain is the solution, possibly with a catch basin at one or both ends.

To answer some of the other questions, it's not that the water table is high, it's the very high clay content in the soil around here. When they put my septic drain field in about 20 years ago, they had to go down about 15 feet to get to sand. But when I got a new well (about 30 feet from the wet area in the photos), they had to go about 60 to hit water.

The swale I mentioned was if the ground next to the house doesn't slope away from the house enough which from the photos looks like that is the case. 6 inches in the first 10 feet. Done correctly, you shouldn't hardly be able to tell its there. I agree, the sump and downspout does need a French drain and needs to eventually daylight someplace at its end in case it gets saturated.

How much is the ground required to slope away from a house?

It sounds like you're dealing with a challenging drainage issue in your yard. Have you considered consulting with a professional plumber? They have the expertise to assess the situation and offer effective solutions.It sounds like you're dealing with a challenging drainage issue in your yard. Have you considered consulting with a professional plumber? They have the expertise to assess the situation and offer effective solutions. An apprenticeship can take up to five years, so plumbers are well-versed in tackling drainage problems. They might suggest options like installing a larger-scale French drain or exploring other drainage systems to redirect water away from problem areas. It's great that you're already thinking about different strategies, and involving your friend with the mini-excavator could be a handy resource. Reach out to a local plumber for expert advice tailored to your specific yard and location.