I’m interested in putting in a dry well this spring to keep the downspouts from emptying too close to the house. There does seem to be a bit of a trickle in the basement from time to time as a result of the fact that one of the downspouts dumps right onto the walk that abuts the wall of the house.
The kicker is that I live in Minnesota and am worried about how the cold will affect the dry well. I guess the dry well will freeze, or at least the lines leading to it will and the melt will back up. Is this a serious problem and can it be overcome so as to allow me to put in the dry well?
Any recommendations?
cj
Replies
It would be wise to know what the perc rate is for the proposed drywell area. Also you need to make sure the drywell is large enough, based on that perc rate and the amount of water the roof will shed, to prevent backup.
I live in CT, and about 7 yrs ago, I installed an 8'x8'x8' drywell for the same condition as you. But my drywell only serves the rear roof downspouts of the house, since the remaining downspout exits have sufficient grade pitch for proper drainage. Having experienced record cold temps recently here in New England, yesterday we received about 1.5"- 2" of rain while there was still about 16" of snow on the ground. No problems with freezing or backups, ever! Maybe you should consider the drywell just for the problem downspout, instead of all of them.
A bad day at home is still better than a good day at work
Edited 2/4/2004 10:48:23 PM ET by bob
I've got the same problem as you, but have opted for a different solution. Instead of the drywell, since my gutters need replacing anyhow, I'm going to replace them and pitch them the other way, so that the water drains on the side of the house that's at the bottom of the grade instead of at the top. It should help during spring thaw especially.
Of course, that's not very helpful advice if you have a level lot or a complex roofline.
A drywell will tend to freeze deeper than surrounding soils because it is gravel will little moisture content. You can counter that by covering with "blueboard", maybe one or two layers of 2". And a few inches of soil cover over that.
Yes, if any of the pipe run can be below freezing when there is run-off, then you might plug it up. For instance a cold night with lots of snow cover on a "hot roof". Similar to forming ice dams on the eaves, you might get icing in the gutters or downspouts. You could seasonally remove the downspouts for the winter and reinstall in the summer, if the water problem is in summer, not winter.
I hesitate to recommend heat-trace, especially around plastic pipe. It fixes somes problems while causes others, like fires.
Thanks folks. I was hoping that some of the cold weather folks would check in. I'll be putting no more than two of the downspouts on the drywell and I'll run the calcs to determine whether it will work. Freezing is the one issue that I've not been able to get past. I've been looking at my neighbor's frozen downspouts and getting the willies. I'll let you all know this spring how the installation has gone and next winter whether it has frozen or not!
cj