Hand excavated french drains are indeed historic.
Since the earliest men and women started inhabiting this planet and learned to construct aqua ducts, their lives have been much better.Aqua ducts are the foundation for hand excavated french drains.
Just imagine the joy in the heart of the first engineer to design and construct an aqua duct, built around, through and under the earth that could gravity flow fresh groundwater from a source deep in the mountains, perhaps miles away, a long ways from the village or camp, through river rocks that were constantly cleaning the water on its down hill journey to the city or camp, where it would have arrived clean and clear at the village.
They would have said, “this dude rocks”, literally. River rocks!
Removing sewage was as easy as flowing it down hill away from the village in a french drain aqua duct into drain fields. Pretty much what we still do, but without first putting it in a 3″ abs solid pipe, then flowing it off to a drain field, if a septic system is used, or off to the sewer.
The first french drains were probably open ditches, dug with a hard flat bottom grade, running groundwater downhill.
These aqua ducts would likely have contained no pipe, just a good grade and river rock.
Throughout the USA and all over the world people live in homes or huts of some sort. Whether these homes or multi-family residential buildings are great or small in stature, or whether they are made of expensive masonry or cheaper materials, they all are built on a piece of our beloved mother earth somewhere.
Every home site has it own unique topography. You must use it to determine what the course of action should be, with respect to designing a gravity groundwater removal system, such as a hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system.
Hillside home sites can be just as, or worse affected by groundwater than flat home sites usually are.
On flat sites, groundwater sits and saturates, rather than runs away from the home on the bottom of a hand excavated french drains.
Engineering a gravity flow hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system to collect rain water when it is coming fast, should be the objective in almost all cases. Individual considerations rule in the end. When you can’t flow, you pump. Only then. And always outside first, not within your crawl space or basement.
When the ground will not perk, I usually put in a dry well overflow that prevents it from ever filling up. If you are blessed with a down hill grade that allows the installation of an overflow with a grade of at least 2″ per 10 lineal feet, install one if you feel the ground may not perk.
Be aware that even in the hardest clay, groundwater perks in almost all cases.
Power to run an exterior sump pump is required somewhere near-by the sump well, or can be installed on the bottom of a hand excavated french drain, in solid conduit. An exterior electric plug to power a sump pump, if needed, should have a gfci plug as well as a weather head.
One of the advantages of not hard wiring a sump pump to a breaker of its own is that when the sump pump burns out no electrician bill is required to replace the sump pump and attach it to a new power source.
Just plug in a new sump pump at the sump well, where the cords will be bundled under 6″ of river rock, that surrounds the sump well concrete cylinders, stacked and used to house the sump pump. The sump well would also have a concrete top.
If you have chosen low lying land for your home site, when it rains really hard you are going to wish your home was not built there. Plain and simple.
Unless you collect groundwater with berms or asphalt made speed bumps at the street, in front of your driveway and lawn, in the case of neighborhoods with no curb and gutter, and install hand excavated french drains to catch the groundwater when it is on the street, or within the top layers of the earth in your lawn, be assured, your groundwater problems will only get worse with time.
Since the dawn of civilization humans have struggled to survive on this, inhospitable at times, water world we live on called Earth. Humans have struggled with the need to convey drinking water to the camp, and rainwater away from the camp, as well as the remove sewage from the camp, and away from the camp or city, even as we are literally spinning in space on a planet that contains more water than ground.
Later on in history, cities learned to engineer the satisfactory disposal of groundwater and sewage waste material by gravity flowing it away from the city or castle within aqua ducts, created both above ground and in the ground as well.
Some of the older above ground, wooden trough types of aqua ducts, resemble the old log flow systems once used in the Cascade mountains of Oregon in the 1800’s to flow logs out of the mountains and down to the rivers, where they would, and still doing in places, continue their journey down stream and probably, around here anyway, out to the ocean.
The original concept of using aquaducts and french drains was for these purposes, as well as to bring naturally purified drinking water to the camp or city, as it trickled through miles of river rock on its way to the grateful villagers, who sure needed that warm bath and a glass of water to drink.<>The discharged grey water from washing and toilet use was flowed away with the always running water source, originating at a year round spring or clear lake.
The constant flow of water through an aqua duct system would have been used to flush the system constantly.
How cool is that? Engineering, and great craftsmen would certainly have been in great demand everywhere at that time, just as it is today.
The person that designed and constructed the first hand excavated french drains, likely lived on easy street within the village from that point on. I can only imagine the other craftsmen humbled by their gratitude for this early engineer.
They would have been full of questions for the engineer that came up with that concept. Flowing groundwater down hill is a no brainer. Flowing groundwater away from low and flat areas is for pros, and that is why so many homes leak. Homeowners don’t hire the right guy.
Today we are using the same technology for the removal of home groundwater. Just as the early humans used it to prevent their camp from flooding and to convey drinking water to their camp, so do we today use them to remove and convey groundwater from around our home site, venting it into the earth to perk below, naturally, just like what is happening everywhere around you on this planet.
Early humans probably used a gravity flow system of home drainage, installed within the compound walls of their castles as well. Later in history, feudal society used aquaducts to run rainwater out of the walled complexes and castles, and into the moat, which was a large stormwater retention lake that surrounded the castle, used for security and well as for fire fighting.
Castle owners used the storm water retention ponds, called a moat, to water agriculture and livestock, as well as a place to raise fish. These were all tangible benefits that everyone enjoyed, as well as a cool swim on a hot day I’ll bet.
Lower the drawbridge!
We call cousins of these early groundwater removal systems hand excavated french drains today. We use them in modern society as well, although perhaps not on such a grand scale as our former planetary occupants did. Pretty much the same hand excavated french drain gravity flow system however minus the moat and castle in most cases.
The technology of french drain groundwater removal is certainly not new and did not originate in France for that matter. In fact, the story goes it was actually re-named in America by a guy named Mr.French somewhere in the eastern part of the U.S. <
Modern man has the tendency to diminish the works of former civilizations by glorifying their concepts, knowledge and words as if the words and concepts of today are superior to those in the past. That is a hype to convince homeowners and citizens to always be primed to buy into something new for its name sake, being new, and therefore of new value. Perhaps.
In the case of home drainage with hand excavated french drains, the old way of clean safe excavation is the very best for results.