The Drainage Pro WaterPath™ process
Identify the source. Capture the water. Move it. Discharge it somewhere legal. Restore the property. Prove the path works. That is the product — not a French drain.
What most companies sell
The market sells the product on the truck. Wet yard becomes French drain. Garage flood becomes a longer downspout. The first visit is a free look and a quote for what they install every week.
What WaterPath™ is
Where is it coming from, where should it be collected, how will it travel, and where can it legally leave. Then restoration and a record. The Drainage Analysis is how that gets decided before anyone opens the ground.
Six moves. One path.
Where is the water coming from?
Most failed drainage jobs start here — someone sold a product before they named the water. A wet side yard can be a downspout, a broken irrigation lateral, a neighbor’s discharge, perched groundwater, or a lot that pitches toward the house. Those are five different paths. They do not share a trench.
We do not walk the yard, point at a puddle, and call it a French drain.
Where should it be collected?
Capture is a decision about elevation. The grate, channel, swale, or perforated line has to sit where the water already wants to go — or the grade has to be changed so that it does. Collecting three feet off the low point is how you install a drain that never sees the storm.
A basin in “the wet spot” with no fall and no outlet is not capture. It is a hole.
How should it travel?
Once water is collected it has to travel. Solid pipe carries it. Perforated pipe collects it. Mixing the two is how a system recharges the lawn you just tried to dry. We specify diameter from volume and length, set a recorded slope, and put cleanouts where a future crew can actually reach a blockage.
We do not run corrugated pipe downhill “until it feels right.”
Where can it safely exit?
Every system ends somewhere. If that somewhere is illegal, uphill, or the neighbor’s fence line, the job is not finished — it is relocated. Flat lots often have no gravity fall. That is a pump conversation, not a longer trench. We write the discharge into the scope before anyone digs.
“It should soak in over there” is not a discharge.
Make the property look right again.
The property should look like a finished home, not a jobsite. Restoration is part of the path: sod, beds, concrete or pavers we cut, and irrigation we crossed. A correct drain under a wrecked lawn is only half a job. The homeowner should see grass and a grate — not a scar.
We do not leave a trench and call the rain “settling.”
Can we prove the path works?
The sixth move is the reason WaterPath is not a slogan. Starting and ending elevations. Intended pipe slope. Pipe type. Discharge point. Before, progress, and after photographs. A flow test. An as-built for the owner. The scope says what rainfall and site conditions the system was designed to manage. We do not promise to prevent all flooding.
If it cannot be shown, it was not finished.
Entry product
We do not spend field days on free opinions. The Drainage Pro Property Water Analysis is a paid diagnostic — credited toward an approved installation — so the first trench is the right one.
Process
No. A French drain is one collection method. Some lots need grade. Some need a channel at the driveway. Some need a pump because there is no gravity fall. We identify the source, the collection, the conveyance, and the discharge before anyone digs.
Every property is different. Free “estimates” turn into unpaid field days and a sales pitch for the product the crew already knows how to install. The analysis is the product: walkthrough, sources, elevations, downspouts, collection and discharge planning, a preliminary diagram, and a written proposal. The fee is credited toward an approved installation.
It depends on trench length, soil, access, pumps, discharge distance, and restoration. As a planning range we test: localized correction around $1,500–$3,500, core installations around $3,500–$9,000, and whole-yard or complex systems $9,000–$25,000+. Commercial and multifamily work is scoped separately.
No responsible drainage company promises that. We design for the sources we can identify and the rainfall and site conditions written in the scope. Extreme events, neighbor discharge, and municipal systems can exceed any residential installation.
Then it is not a drainage job. We screen for irrigation leaks on the analysis. A pressurized line can mimic a drainage failure. Installing pipe to “fix” a leak wastes the project and leaves the leak in the ground.
Move water. Protect property.
A Drainage Pro Property Water Analysis finds where water comes from, where it collects, and the right way to send it away from the house.