Drainage that stopped working
When a system works for a season or two and then quits, it usually wasn't installed badly. It was built for the wrong soil.
The four common causes
A dry well that never could
It went into soil that can't take water fast enough. It works while the ground is dry and fails the first wet winter.
Silted up
There was no sediment trap or filter fabric, or the wrong fabric. Fine soil washes in and fills the gaps.
Plugged, crushed or disconnected
Roots growing into the pipe until it's packed solid, thin-wall pipe crushed under a driveway, or a joint that pulled apart.
Too small for the water
It was sized for the roof, but the yard also gets water from uphill.
Before you replace it, find out which of these it was.
In three of the four cases, a like-for-like replacement will fail the same way.
What we'd do
Find and inspect the existing system and check whether the soil could ever have supported it. Then we either repair it or design something that matches what's actually down there.
