Water problems in Peachtree Corners tend to arrive in one of two ways. Either the lot sits low and the whole street drains through it, or the house sits on a pad cut into a slope and everything above it comes down the back wall. Both are made worse by the same thing: red Piedmont clay, which takes in water slowly and then gives it up slowly, so a storm that would soak away in sandy ground runs across the surface here instead.
The city also sits on the Chattahoochee, which brings a second layer of rules to anything that moves earth near the river. Here is how we work through a drainage problem in this part of Gwinnett, and what the rules mean for your yard.
What we install
French drains, which are a perforated pipe in clean stone wrapped in filter fabric, sized and sloped to carry water to a place it can safely go. Catch basins and solid pipe where surface water collects in a low point. Dry wells where there is nowhere downhill to send it. Regrading, which is often the cheapest fix and the one people expect least.
And downspout extensions, which sound trivial and solve more basement problems than anything else on this list. A downspout discharging at the foundation is putting the roof’s entire catchment into the soil against your wall.
The diagnosis comes before the trench
We would rather see the yard wet. A visit during or just after rain tells us in ten minutes what a dry-day guess takes a week to get wrong, so if you can call while the ground is still holding water, do.
What we are looking for is where the water enters, where it sits, and where it can legally and physically be sent. That last part decides everything. A drain with nowhere to discharge is a hole full of stone, and there is no point building one.
The river corridor rules, which catch drainage work more often than walls
The Metropolitan River Protection Act covers a corridor 2,000 feet wide from both banks of the Chattahoochee, and a good part of Peachtree Corners falls inside it. Within that corridor there is a 150-foot impervious surface setback from the river, a 50-foot undisturbed vegetative buffer along the river, and a 35-foot undisturbed buffer along flowing streams inside the corridor.
The trigger for a certificate is a proposal that increases land disturbance or impervious surface beyond what exists or has already been approved. Drainage work runs into this more often than people expect, because the usual instinct with a wet yard is to add hard surface: a wider patio to get out of the mud, a gravel pad, a paved path. That is the direction the rules push against, and on a lot near a creek the better answer is usually to slow the water down rather than to cover the ground it sits on.
If your lot backs onto a stream that feeds the river, assume the buffer applies and check before you dig. The buffer is measured as undisturbed, which includes the vegetation, not only the soil.
Where the water is allowed to go
Piping a problem across a property line and onto a neighbour is how a drainage job becomes a dispute. We look for a discharge point on your own land: a daylight outlet on a lower part of the lot, a dry well where the soil will take it, or a connection to an existing legal outfall.
Where a lot genuinely has nowhere to send water, the answer is storage and slow release rather than speed. A rain garden planted into a low corner holds a storm and lets it down into the soil over a day or two, which is both cheaper than a long pipe run and better for everything downstream. On a street where every yard drains faster, the creek at the bottom is the one that pays.
A build that leaves the lawn intact
Trenching is disruptive by nature, so the aim is to be in and out and to leave the ground knitted back together. Turf comes up in strips and goes back down the same day where it can. Spoil goes into a truck rather than a pile on the lawn. Our machines run on batteries, so trenching along the side of a house does not mean a petrol engine running under a bedroom window all morning.
Questions Peachtree Corners homeowners ask about drainage
Water only stands for a day. Is that a problem?
Standing water on clay for a day after a storm is normal. Standing water three days later, or a patch that stays soft all winter, is telling you something about the grade or a buried obstruction.
Will a French drain fix a wet basement?
Sometimes, and often the cheaper fixes come first: extending downspouts away from the wall, and correcting the grade in the first ten feet around the house so it falls away rather than toward it. If water is still getting in after that, the drain is worth doing.
How deep does the trench go?
Deep enough to intercept the water and keep a consistent fall to the outlet, which on most yards here is somewhere between eighteen inches and three feet. The fall matters more than the depth.
Can you tie into the storm system in the street?
Not without permission, and it is not usually granted for a private yard drain. Most residential work discharges on the owner’s own land.
My neighbour’s water comes onto my lot. What can I do?
You can manage water on your own property, and you cannot concentrate it and send it back. In practice the workable fix is usually an interceptor drain along the boundary on your side, taking the flow before it reaches the house.
Do you have to dig up the whole lawn?
No. A drain follows a line, and the line is chosen to do the work with the least trenching. Most jobs are one run and a couple of connections.
What time of year is best?
Any time the ground is workable, and there is an argument for late autumn or winter: the ground tells the truth about where water goes, and the turf has time to knit before summer.
Does a rain garden just become a mosquito pond?
Not if it is built right. A rain garden is designed to empty within a day or two, which is shorter than the time mosquitoes need to breed. A blocked drain holds water far longer than a working rain garden does.
Nearby
The clay is the same either side of the county line, but the authority is not: drainage in Brookhaven, drainage and grading in Dunwoody and our general drainage, French drains and grading page. If the wet ground comes with a slope that is moving, retaining walls in Peachtree Corners is the companion job, and our Peachtree Corners page covers everything else we do here.
Book a site visit
Call us while the yard is still wet if you can. We will walk it, work out where the water starts and where it is allowed to go, and tell you plainly if the fix is a regrade and two downspout extensions rather than a trench. Book a site visit.
Sources: the Atlanta Regional Commission on the Metropolitan River Protection Act corridor, setbacks and buffers; City of Peachtree Corners river corridor review guidance.