[Stonehenge]

I wanted to post a pic of this portion of a project we did last spring.

There's a concrete trough the surrounds 3 sides of a detached garage, and there was no place for the accumulated water to go with the old drive. I originally was just going to have a paver swail, but it would have had to be too large, and unattractive.

So I took a crack at this - the uncoated/unpainted grates are resting on notches cut in vertically installed pavers. The bottom of this trough is also pavers, finding it's way up to the grade of the drive. It channels the water well, and was a mildly tedious but fun twist to a project.

I'm not entirely fond of the look of the perfectly machined grates against the imperfectly installed pavers, and if I had to do over I would have had the grates coated black.... (I wanted the rust look to go with the pavers, and the look of the house, but...ehh)

[Stonehenge]

This is the full length of the trough:

[Rex Mann]

Stonehenge,

Did you use some type of Sand-Lok, Polymeric Sand or Sealer to lock the sand in?

Are those Clay pavers?

Peace,

Rex

[Stonehenge]

Yes and yes. Also, there's a 45 mil pond liner cupping the trough.

[PSUscaper]

A 'hand shovel only' area in the winter time..................lol.


had to say that because the condo place I work at has channel drains in front of all the garage doors.......when you drive up to back drag snow out and drop the plow, you smash it down on top of it.......have to be kind of careful.

I really like the concept.....I remember you talking about this project a loooooooooooong time ago..........good to see some pics.

Personally, I think I would of gone masonry on this. Set it all in concrete.

I like it though. It works well, is different than the everyday 'run of the mill' project. However, I kind of take it that you aren't 100% satisfied........

All I know is sometime I make a 'easy' problem a complicated one......in the quest to be more creative, I make things much more complicated than they need to be......................maybe you understand this.

steve

[agla]

This type of drainage system is available complete with sloping channels and a place to attach the drain pipe to. They are made to take the abuse (or use) of plowing, etc...

[Stonehenge]

Agla, I did a little research before starting this one, and the suppliers I saw didn't have a channel system that would allow the water to daylight at the same grade as the top of the grate, so I opted for this paver system for the grating instead.

In fact, the company I bought this from (Ironsmith) also had the sloped channel. But my need was for a channel that could empty onto grade...nobody had that.

Steve, yeah, I'm not 100% satisfied, but it's much better than what we were going to do there. And it was fun to try something a little different.

[BRL]

So Jeff,
How deep is your drain? I think I can see a small hole behind the leaf in the second picture. Is this where the water drains? If so, that means this set up leaves standing water in the drain correct? If so, you could still buy the pre fabbed drains, but by another solid end piece fro the outlet side, and drill your own hole where you want it, instead of using the prefabbed end piece with the pipe fitting. Correct? Just a thought to make a project like that go faster & easier maybe.

Steve,
Gotta get some polyurethane edges on those plows working over those greats! No more worries.

[Stonehenge]

The driveway has a good slope to it, so there is no water left in the drain. So at the top of the drive, the distance from the grate to the bottom of the drain trough is larger, but I needed to gradually slope it back toward driveway grade at the end. Even at that, it's still pitched down the drive, so water continues to flow (provided they clean the leaves out ).

I hadn't thought of modifying the plastic drain trough system they offered with the grate - I'll have to check into that - cutting the pavers just so was a huge pain, and with moderate results...

This is an exaggerated sketch of what's going on with that drain, in cross-section:

[BRL]

OK I understand now. And I think my idea would work for that situation too, for next time Still looks like it belongs there, so it looks good.