Drainage quotes often name a solution before diagnosing the problem. These three fix genuinely different failures, and installing the wrong one is expensive and useless.
Regrading: when water runs the wrong way
If the ground slopes toward the house, or a patio acts as a dam, no drain compensates. The fix is changing the shape of the ground so water leaves on its own.
Planning something like this for your own yard? Our team does Austin landscape design, from the first sketch to the last plant.
This is the first thing to check and the most commonly skipped. It is also the most durable fix, because it has no components to clog or fail. If the grade is wrong, correct it before considering anything else.
French drain: when water has nowhere to go
A perforated pipe in a gravel trench, wrapped in filter fabric, that collects subsurface water and carries it somewhere. It works when you have somewhere to take the water to: a lower point, a street, a drainage easement.
Without an outlet a French drain just moves the problem a few feet. On flat blackland clay lots this is the constraint that decides whether it is viable.
Dry well: when there is no outlet
A buried chamber that holds water and lets it soak away slowly. Useful precisely where a French drain has nowhere to discharge, and often paired with one.
The limitation is our clay. Blackland clay absorbs slowly, so a dry well sized for sandy soil will overflow here. Sizing has to account for how quickly the surrounding soil actually accepts water, which is often much slower than assumed.
Start with the cheap checks
Before any of the three: extend the downspouts. Water discharging beside the foundation causes a large share of standing-water complaints, and extensions cost very little.
Then walk the yard during actual rain and watch where water enters, slows and stops. Five minutes of observation beats any amount of guessing on a dry day. See drainage solutions and property grading, and remember that core aeration helps compacted clay absorb rather than shed.
Diagnosing before choosing
Walk the property during actual rain, not on a dry day. Note where water enters, where it slows, where it stops and how long it stays. Photographs with timestamps are more useful than memory.
Check the roof runoff separately. Gutters and downspouts concentrate an enormous volume at a few points, and a large share of standing-water complaints resolve with downspout extensions alone.
Then look at the grade around the foundation. If the ground falls toward the house anywhere, that is the first thing to fix regardless of what else you install. A drain downhill of a bad grade is treating a symptom.
Sizing and outlets
A French drain needs somewhere to discharge, and that outlet has to be lower than the collection point. On flat lots that is frequently the constraint that rules it out, and it is why some installations simply relocate a wet spot.
Dry wells need sizing against how quickly your soil actually absorbs. On blackland clay that rate is very low, so a well sized from a generic table will overflow in the first real storm. A percolation test gives the real number.
Both benefit from a catch basin at the surface collection point, and from cleanouts so the system can be flushed. Systems installed without cleanouts silt up and become unserviceable, which is why some drains stop working after a few years and nobody can say why.
Maintenance and what fails
Drains clog. Fines migrate in where filter fabric was omitted or wrapped incorrectly, roots find the moisture and enter through joints, and surface basins fill with leaves and silt.
Annual attention keeps a system working: clear the basins, check the outlet is not buried or blocked, and flush the line if flow has dropped. Ten minutes a year prevents the slow decline that ends with digging it up.
Where roots are a known problem, solid pipe rather than perforated in the root zone, or routing wide around significant trees, avoids the issue. Cutting major roots to install a drain solves one problem and creates a larger one.
Common questions we get about this
Three come up almost every time.
Can I do this myself? Usually part of it. The diagnostic work and the finishing details are where experience shows, and the preparation underneath is where shortcuts cost the most. Most homeowners who do it themselves succeed on the visible work and struggle with base preparation, drainage and timing.
When is the best time? In Central Texas, almost always autumn. Soil is still warm, air has cooled, and anything planted or installed has months to settle before summer stress arrives. Spring works but races the heat.
What does it cost? Any number quoted without seeing the property is a guess, because our two soils, the slope and the access change the work substantially within a few miles. What we can say is that the invisible preparation is where the real cost sits, and where the cheapest bid has usually economized.