Catch basins, channel drains and regrading to clear the standing water Blackland clay won’t absorb.
Tell us what your yard is doing and we’ll come take a look — no charge, no pressure.
When water stands on top of the ground — sheeting across the lawn, pooling in the low corner, turning one spot into standing mud for days — the fix is a surface drainage system sized to how water actually moves across your Blackland clay lot.
A French drain handles water trapped in the soil; surface drainage handles the water you can see running and pooling on top. In Waco the two run together, because the clay barely absorbs anything — rain that can’t soak in runs to the low point and stands there for days. The tools for the surface problem are catch basins, channel drains, and regrading.
We walk the property and, where it matters, shoot grades so we’re designing to real elevations. The goal is to catch water where it collects and give it a continuous downhill path to somewhere it can leave — because on clay that won’t absorb it, a catch basin with nowhere to drain is just a bucket.
On flat Blackland lots, a fair amount of the water in your yard may have started somewhere else — a higher neighbor’s lot, a street that crowns toward your driveway, a back corner that collects half the block. Part of the assessment is separating what originates on your property from what arrives from off it, because that changes both what you can fix and where the water has to be intercepted. An interceptor drain or swale along the uphill edge can catch incoming water before it ever reaches the problem area — a very different fix than draining water that’s only yours.
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.