Reshape the yard so water sheets away from the home instead of pooling on the clay against it.
Tell us what your yard is doing and we’ll come take a look — no charge, no pressure.
Sometimes the best drainage isn’t a pipe at all — it’s the shape of the ground. Grading and swales reshape your yard so water sheets away from the house and follows a gentle, intended path instead of collecting wherever it pleases on the clay.
A surprising number of drainage complaints come down to grade: the ground falls toward the house, or sits dead flat, so water has no reason to leave — and on clay that won’t absorb it, that water just sits. Correcting the grade, and cutting a shallow swale to guide the flow, can solve the problem with no drain at all, or shrink the drain you need. We’d rather sell you the right amount of work than the most.
Grading here has to account for how little the clay absorbs, so the surface carries more of the load. We build swales with enough width and fall to move real storm volume, seed or sod them to hold the soil, and tie them into whatever discharge the lot allows. A swale on clay has to actually convey water, not just “spread it out” to sit somewhere else.
A reshaped clay yard doesn’t have to look like earthworks. A shallow swale seeded to grass vanishes into the lawn; where flow is stronger, a rock-lined channel or a dry creek bed carries real storm water, resists erosion, and reads as a landscape feature rather than a scar. On clay that won’t absorb water, these visible channels are often doing more work than they look like — and they let us grade a yard for drainage while keeping it something you actually want to look at.
Free on-site drainage assessments across Waco and McLennan County. We’ll tell you what’s actually happening in your Blackland clay and what it takes to fix it.