Pop-up emitter for a rock garden?

[jplee3]

Hi all,

I am in the process of planning and considering options for a landscape redesign which also takes advantage of a rebate for turf removal. The front lawn area I'm considering replacing with a rock garden or something to capture and reclaim water. Would it be viable to use a pop-up emitters that redirect run-off from the backyard drains and gutters directly into the rock garden? If so, where exactly would the pop-up emitters be placed? Could you place them in the middle of the rock garden itself? Are there concerns too with pop-up emitters being submerged with water (like would it backflow into the drainage system and potentially cause flooding)? I would probably introduce rain barrels into the picture as well as part of the water reclamation planning.

 

[Marck]

Greetings, welcome to the Forums.

Any garden with some rock in it could be called a rock garden. Perhaps you mean a drought-tolerant garden? What you are describing actually sounds like a 'rain garden'. Combining raing gardens, rain barrels and other such water collection is a good idea. A rain garden is best planted with plants that wil need little or no watering other than rain. (Hint: California native plants).
Design a rain garden that doesn't need sprinkler irrigation.

Of course, by run off you mean run off form precipitation, there should not be any run-off from irrigation.

It's not clear what your design is. Do you have any photos or drawings?

 

[jplee3]

Greetings, welcome to the Forums.

Any garden with some rock in it could be called a rock garden. Perhaps you mean a drought-tolerant garden? What you are describing actually sounds like a 'rain garden'. Combining raing gardens, rain barrels and other such water collection is a good idea. A rain garden is best planted with plants that wil need little or no watering other than rain. (Hint: California native plants).
Design a rain garden that doesn't need sprinkler irrigation.

Of course, by run off you mean run off form precipitation, there should not be any run-off from irrigation.

It's not clear what your design is. Do you have any photos or drawings?

Thanks! My understanding is that a "rock garden" is more just a 'basin' that primarily consists of rocks (of all shapes and sizes) but with some drought-tolerant plants in it as well as plants that can withstand flooding too (Fescue is one I think?). The idea is that it turns into somewhat of a 'pond' after heavier rainfall but otherwise is a dry "pond" outside of that.

Here's a picture of the front yard area. The areas on the other side of the grass previously had bushes/shrubs and a large ficus tree that we had removed.

Our yard is a bit complex because there's an inside area behind those walls that is part of the front yard and there's a path/side yard leading to the backyard.


Here's a very rough drawing I came up with (which factors in some old design features/hardscape that I was considering at the time... this isn't necessarily how I may actually have it done though):

The arrows are where the gutters are. I was thinking about running a french drain type system on each side of the walkway that exits into a catch basin (this area I was even thinking about having some kind of rock or rain garden). We do have some fruit trees in the area (peach and possibly apricot as well as an orange tree in that red brick area and I really like the idea of keeping those so that's a factor.

 

[cntrlwagdnr]

Hi all,

I am in the process of planning and considering options for a landscape redesign which also takes advantage of a rebate for turf removal. The front lawn area I'm considering replacing with a rock garden or something to capture and reclaim water. Would it be viable to use a pop-up emitters that redirect run-off from the backyard drains and gutters directly into the rock garden? If so, where exactly would the pop-up emitters be placed? Could you place them in the middle of the rock garden itself? Are there concerns too with pop-up emitters being submerged with water (like would it backflow into the drainage system and pPpop up emitters

Hi all,

I am in the process of planning and considering options for a landscape redesign which also takes advantage of a rebate for turf removal. The front lawn area I'm considering replacing with a rock garden or something to capture and reclaim water. Would it be viable to use a pop-up emitters that redirect run-off from the backyard drains and gutters directly into the rock garden? If so, where exactly would the pop-up emitters be placed? Could you place them in the middle of the rock garden itself? Are there concerns too with pop-up emitters being submerged with water (like would it backflow into the drainage system and potentially cause flooding)? I would probably introduce rain barrels into the picture as well as part of the water reclamation planning.

Something weird happened - ignore the top part.
I'm a bit confused. Pop-up irrigation devices need water pressure to operate or they will not pop up, so "run off" will not work. You would need a pump, in which case "backflow" would not happen. And why would it flood anyway, since one would assume that if you were not using redirecting the run off it would go somewhere else and you are not adding to the volume. Drip system emitters also clog very easily, so you would need to use a very fine inline filter.

 

[jplee3]

Something weird happened - ignore the top part.
I'm a bit confused. Pop-up irrigation devices need water pressure to operate or they will not pop up, so "run off" will not work. You would need a pump, in which case "backflow" would not happen. And why would it flood anyway, since one would assume that if you were not using redirecting the run off it would go somewhere else and you are not adding to the volume. Drip system emitters also clog very easily, so you would need to use a very fine inline filter.

Thanks! Is there a better way to redirect or at least reclaim water from the gutters (in addition to rainbarrels) and also the backyard and divert it into the front area (in front of the walls)? Right now there's an old catch basin (circled orange) that has a 4" pipe exiting to the curb - would it be better to replace that with a dry well?

I've drawn orange lines depicting the anticipated flow of water if we were to add/update drainage. Currently the drainage consists of 3" PVC that is buried and exits over the catch basin. The section of drainage closest to the home is problematic (there's a belly in the line so it doesn't drain well) and there have historically been problems with flooding and water intrusion in this area up against the home (previous owners had dirt covering the weep screed and many plants, which we have since removed and also done repairs on the weep screed). Anyway, the arrow I drew off the catch basin is pointing to the approx location of where we would install a rock or rain garden - this could perhaps be PVC + some form of irrigation coming from the catch basin or dry well and diverting the collected water.

The other thing I was curious about with the drainage is if it's best to stick with PVC to divert the water away or if we should opt to install a french drain instead. I've had irrigation/drainage and landscape contractors out and most of them have said just to replace the PVC with new sections of PVC and not to bother with a French drain - for whatever reason most of them think they just wouldn't be effective or efficient in our yard.

 

[cntrlwagdnr]

Having done a fair bit of French drain in the past i would agrees with your contractors. French drains are for collecting excess water in the ground. I.e. For drying out naturally soggy ground. You are redirecting above ground run off from a known source. For redirecting water from point A to point B you need solid PVC pipe.

 

[jplee3]

Having done a fair bit of French drain in the past i would agrees with your contractors. French drains are for collecting excess water in the ground. I.e. For drying out naturally soggy ground. You are redirecting above ground run off from a known source. For redirecting water from point A to point B you need solid PVC pipe.

Part of the issue here is that the walkway was made *level* with the weep screed. Not sure what the previous owners, landscapers and/or builders, were thinking when they poured it. This created the problem because the soil in that area, which was already too high, was just soaking up water. We've removed the dirt but now if it rains enough water may pool up since the dirt is also below the level of the walk way. The stucco repair contractors who rebuilt the weep screen/patched the damaged areas were keen enough to raise the weep screed a few inches though, so we could at least add a bit more grading away from the side of the house towards the path. But I don't know if if we would be able to level it off with the height of the path. So this is why I was thinking about a french drain or perhaps something like a channel or trench drain? I'm not really sure what the best solution is. One contractor was saying to install a solid piece of PVC along the entire side of the house and not to add any surface drains at all. He would try to 'encourage' natural run-off of the water simply by grading the dirt away and adding rocks/gravel or what not. I'm not sure about this - I still think there's a risk of water pooling along the side of the house if not getting stuck and pooled up right along the side of the walkway.

 

[cntrlwagdnr]

Hmmmm..... you might try asking your local building inspector how to deal with it. Sounds like there may be a fundamental problem in how the house and lot were built. Nibbling at it may not fix it. It may take some more major changes.

 

[jplee3]

Hmmmm..... you might try asking your local building inspector how to deal with it. Sounds like there may be a fundamental problem in how the house and lot were built. Nibbling at it may not fix it. It may take some more major changes.

You mean one of the ones that works for the city? I'd be scared of involving/asking someone there as they may call something else out...!!!

I don't know if it's as *huge* of a problem as I'm making it out to be - I'm probably overstating the issue. I think what I probably should do is just go out there and experiment a bit to see if I can create a grade of dirt that slopes away from the side of the home towards the path.... the current issue is that there is a bunch of irrigation piping as well as the original drainage piping in place. I'm afraid that if I start removing it bad things and other delays could happen. Granted, we haven't really been using the irrigation system much but we do need to replace the manifold and I need to add a ball valve to replace the existing gate valve.

 

[Marck]

Your design seems sound ooverall. This is basically a rain garden or bioswale. In exceptionally heavy rains it would be designed to become a temporary pond. Sunken gardens work similarly. if pathways are blocking the flow design a culvert of run underneath them.
Thes can be either unobtrusive or designed like an architectural bridge feature. Yes rocks can be incorporated into such features, though they are not requisite.

Still in landscaped areas it good to create dips and other areas for small amounts of water to be captured and soak in to the ground.
Instead of french drainage or open culverts consider a series of landscaped dry creek areas, each lower than the one above it all leading to the bio swale. Each terrace of the dry creek will capture some rainfall that will soak in and the over flow will continue downward towards the main bioswale/rain pond. Think more of terraces rather than slopes.

You also want to mulch with woodchips or asimilar organic mulch that will act like a sponge holding light rainfall in place.
You want to to take advantageof Winter rainfall and not let it all run off the property.

 

[jplee3]

Your design seems sound ooverall. This is basically a rain garden or bioswale. In exceptionally heavy rains it would be designed to become a temporary pond. Sunken gardens work similarly. if pathways are blocking the flow design a culvert of run underneath them.
Thes can be either unobtrusive or designed like an architectural bridge feature. Yes rocks can be incorporated into such features, though they are not requisite.

Still in landscaped areas it good to create dips and other areas for small amounts of water to be captured and soak in to the ground.
Instead of french drainage or open culverts consider a series of landscaped dry creek areas, each lower than the one above it all leading to the bio swale. Each terrace of the dry creek will capture some rainfall that will soak in and the over flow will continue downward towards the main bioswale/rain pond. Think more of terraces rather than slopes.

You also want to mulch with woodchips or asimilar organic mulch that will act like a sponge holding light rainfall in place.
You want to to take advantageof Winter rainfall and not let it all run off the property.

Thanks. The only concern I have with the patch that's up against the side of the home is that it's pretty narrow. I'm not sure if a dry creek would work that well here, especially next to the chimney as that's a very narrow and tight space (I'd say maybe 5-6" max). The other side of the walkway might work better for that but we have to also be careful as this is a zero lot line:

Also, I'm still unsure about the backyard space and what we would want to put back there assuming we remove the turf (btw: since this pic was taken, the ficus trees have been removed. The previous owners also had an insane amount of bamboo and allowed much of it to get into the ground - there are still a number of rhizomes in the ground that we're finding as stray bamboo shoots pop-up here and there. It's a pain in the rear):

Phyla nodiflora/lippia and or Carex praegracilis are appealing - I would like to have a ground cover that can be walked on for the kids - especially to kick the soccer ball around or play catch on. There are surface area drains/buckets that run along the side where the grass meets the concrete but these drains don't sufficiently catch all the water - it pools up behind and around the buckets and on the concrete (there's about 2-3" of space between the buckets and concrete - not sure why they installed them this way). And part of the drain is completely disconnected (bottom-right in the pic where that hole is that I dug out - I found the disconnected sections there). We definitely need to figure out a better drainage solution back here that wraps around to the side and back towards the catch basin and front. I'm not sure what kind of drainage system to leverage here though.

 

[Marck]

The small foundation strip near the house is small and appears to be under eaves. The amount of water that falls there would be minor. Especially if you have roof gutters directing the roof runoff elsewhere.
Even if you witness some puddling immediately after a heavy rain, how long did the puddling persist?

Is your property in a swale or dip where you feel that there will be a lot of storm runoff from offsite locations uphill?
If not, then probably no cause for worry.
If so, other stakeholders, public or private, may need to be involved in planning the area's hydrology.

Amend, plant, and mulch the foundation beds so that any water there will be either used by plants or percolate more deeply into the soil. Often foundation beds are an area that may actually require some extra irrigation in Winter.

 

[jplee3]

The small foundation strip near the house is small and appears to be under eaves. The amount of water that falls there would be minor. Especially if you have roof gutters directing the roof runoff elsewhere.
Even if you witness some puddling immediately after a heavy rain, how long did the puddling persist?

Is your property in a swale or dip where you feel that there will be a lot of storm runoff from offsite locations uphill?
If not, then probably no cause for worry.
If so, other stakeholders, public or private, may need to be involved in planning the area's hydrology.

Amend, plant, and mulch the foundation beds so that any water there will be either used by plants or percolate more deeply into the soil. Often foundation beds are an area that may actually require some extra irrigation in Winter.

Actually, there are no eaves that overhang. We have Spanish clay tile roofs and there are gutters in the front and back of the home but not the sides. There are tile rakes that overhang the sides so *most* water that hits the roof top, in theory, should drain into the gutters. But the water that hits the rakes and sides (and we did have a bad wind/rain storm in December) will just drip down the sides of the house. We actually had water intrusion in the windows and caused wet/damp spots in the drywall around the frames (they are retrofit windows and haven't been sealed/caulked in a long time. The original flashing is probably failing and/or insufficient too). This area in the side is pretty heavily shaded as well (due to our neighbor's 2-story home being about 8' away) so water ends up pooling there and taking longer to dry up. I had to buy a hand bilge and also use our wet/dry vac to suck water out where it had pooled during that bad storm - it rained heavy soon after we had the weep screed repairs done so fortunately we were OK but they had pulled back several inches of dirt for those repairs and we never got to backfilling so it looked like a moat after it rained those days!

So the home is located on a slope/hill (also the area of foliage behind is hilly and there's a drainage channel back there) - we have no neighbors directly on the north side of our home. The run-off of water occurs downhill in southwest direction:

 

[Marck]

Okay, the photos help a lot with understanding the situation, though now I'm not sure how the the diagrams shown earlier relate to the house.

One of the best places for a bioswale would be in the middle of that open landscaped area with the low groundcover (Acacia redolens maybe?). I guess that is an area of communal land in your subdivision.

So in a heavy rainstorm, offsite water may runoff into your property, though most of it will continue downslope.

A flooded depression after a rainstorm may look more dire than it is. The December 2021 Storm was a rare and exceptional event with 6+ inches of rain falling on 24 hours. Still, if the soils is so compacted that there is absolutely no percolation, then perhaps excavate the foundation bed deeper and replace with a mixture of organic matter and coarse sand. Yes, you may want to put culverts under the pathway if it is acting like a dam for a lot of trapped water, but I'm not certain it is completely necessary.

If you are interested in a living surface that you can walk or play on, you may want to keep the grass lawn. A lawn's tolerance of foot-traffic one of it best justifications.

 

[jplee3]

So that open area to the left of the home is all owned by the city - our lot line starts where the wall is. I've marked it with the red line:

We do need to do something about that side of the home because there's a concrete alley back there (also where the AC condenser is located) and water ends up pooling in various spots in that alley after it rains, and has nowhere to drain... but that's probably another portion of the project to address at a later time.

The main reason we are considering the turf removal is for the rebate. We can get up to $2648 back (662sq ft of turf @ $4/sq ft). The caveat is that we aren't going to get that flat amount back in full - it only comes back in the form of reimbursements for what we *actually* spent on the drought-tolerant/friendly landscaping. That said, I believe if we incorporate water retention features *outside* of the actual areas of turf removal/replacement, those will count towards the reimbursement (for example, this could include any PVC piping we purchase to address the drainage issues along the side of the house *as long* as those sections of PVC are leveraged somehow for water retention/sustainability; so if they run to a drywell or redirect water to the area with native plants, etc...this is what prompted my original question). For the turf replacement, we have to plant 3 native plants ever 100sq ft. So we'll need at least around 20 or so native plants to add in.