NOT. Mike and I spent more than three hours digging a trench in the back yard. Digging in mud, in heat, in the buggy, smelly, swamp that formed after a landscaper "regraded" and sodded the lawn. You'd think someone with some forty years of experience would have a working knowledge of water and how it flows downhill, wouldn't you? Would you bury a drainpipe that sloped upward from the center of the lawn if you wanted water to drain away from the center of the lawn?
It's hard to get a picture that does justice to the festering bog that formed in the yard over the past month, but here's my best attempt:
You can't see the algae that grew as the grass died; you can't smell the rot, and you can't hear the buzzing of wasps and mosquitos drawn to the stagnant water. You also can't hear the squishing sound as you walk across it, or the sucking sound as you dig and lift a spadeful of mud.
So, protesting constantly, Mike helped me pull up the decomposing sod and dig this:
The first thing you should notice is that this makeshift trench is full of water. Hours later, it's still full of water. Despite the drain pipe at the end:
See the bit of pipe? The guy who graded the lawn buried this pipe, and it was supposed to solve all the problems. It runs from here along the side of the house to the front, which slopes down to the street. I live on a low hill; how hard can it be to drain water off a hill? See how the water isn't going into it? Now check out the other end of the drainpipe, where the water is supposed to gush out and run down into the street:
Notice the dryness, the undisturbed straw that was tossed around to cover the grass seed that was sown. (Notice the lack of success wrt the grass.) This end of the pipe has never seen water; doesn't know it's purpose in the universe.
I'm trying to negotiate with the guy who hired the guy who did this. I'm trying to get him to dig up the pipe and bury it again. Wish me luck.
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