And make sure it was set on a bed of sand to get level. The drain pipe can be at the second row, and make sure pipe has pitch out, rule of thumb is 1/4" per foot.

I overkilled the paver base and made it five inches with a very compacted one inch level sand. Here in Florida, this seems to work well for drainage.

Great job.

because (or so we thought) it was being pushed by a huge amount of soil against it. I researched this issue last year, and if I recall, there are tons of videos etc on YouTube on issues like this.

It turned out our issue had nothing to do with drainage, so we wound up not putting in a french drain running the length of the fence.

Use a search like this in Google: french drain retaining wall

Learned quite a bit with each one.

"And by the way, the French drain was named after its inventor, Henry Flagg French, and not the country France. French was a 19th century lawyer from Concord, Massachusetts whose book, Farm Drainage: The Principles, Prospects, and Effects of Draining Land, is credited with popularizing this type of draining solution."

Thanks for the info.

In 2003, because of the US backlash against France for not supporting the Iraq Invasion, I wonder if the RWNJs were boycotting French drains too, in addition to French's mustard, French wine, and stuff like renaming French Fries to "Freedom Fries". Perhaps they renamed French drains to "Patriotic Pipes" or "Liberty Lines"?




One thing you have to give the right wing credit for: they are consistently despicably stupid and mean through the ages!

Proper design of surface and sub-surface runoff is needed to prevent structural failure of retaining walls.

I over killed the project, partly because I wanted to learn the techniques. Anything three feet or more would have required city approval. Our slope is much smaller and it's a perfect size to be a sitting bench.

An extra wide wall cap of 18”-24” (retaining or non-retaining wall) is a good feature for leaning back or lying down.