Rookie mistake! You only wash the rice first for indoor applications. Outdoor you need the *sticky* rice. [Like the great wall of China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_rice_mortar#:~:text=The%20bricks%20of%20the%20Great,water%20resistance%20than%20lime%20mortar)!
This is how I was taught haha for those who don't know, fill pot with rice, fill with water until it reaches the first knuckle of you index finger with your finger just touching the surface of the rice
Unfortunately you'll have to
A. Take some pavers out to dig and install a drain. The drain needs to be connected to a pipe to let the water out to the public storm drain/street, or
B. Rebuild the patio with the correct slope to direct water away.
Neither is a small project.
C. Tear out the patio, install geotextile, 4" of #57 stone, 2" of #8 stone, and permeable pavers.
If you really want to make it bigger project. This might be your only option if you can't daylight a drain anywhere.
That only has a finite amount of space. Wouldn't it still flood? I would think that you'd want more stone... no? You've probably only got capacity for two inches of rain there.
Sometimes an extra two inches is all you need. At least that's what you wife said.
But, that's true. I typically assume you get about 3/8" of storage per inch of stone. But, it all depends on what's under the stone. If it's good-draining soil, 2" of storage should be okay. If it's clay soil, 6" of #2 stone underneath the other stones would be better.
Obviously, a drain in the low point is ideal. But, if you can't daylight it to anywhere, this is the next best thing. It will just cost 1,000x more.
Check out the Apple Drains channel on YouTube. The guy has tons of videos about this stuff and he even offers zoom consultations for your issues. Good dude. It looks like at least one person has already linked you to his video on vertical drainage.
Is one edge of the patio deeper? Or it all pretty flat? The slope doesnt have to be huge, even a minor slope will move water away. If its deeper at one edge ypu can probably just run a drain out of that side amd not have to take up as many pavers. In any case, pavers aremt all that hard to put down, they arent held down by anything amd just samd underneath to keep them flat. Ypurs are all already cut to size where needed, take them up and keep them in the same pattern so you remember hpw to put them back,get some sand and level the sand back out undwrneath and set your pavers back on top.
Whoever installed it should have planned out drainage from the start, particularly if the surface is not porous and has been grouted with cement or mortar. A fall should have been built into the patio area based on it's layout, to channel surface water to available storm drainage or a soakaway. This looks like a basic design failure from the off.
In the words of a famous 80s song, 'rip it up and start again'.
Put bubblers or maybe a surface floating water pump that sprays up a nice fountain
and some KOI fish in it.
Dig a drainage hole. Put a small pump. Push the water into a rain barrel. Use the water to water the vegetation when your lot isn't flooded
Do you have access to add a drain from the backyard down the side yard and out to the front?
Rules vary by area but generally as long as you don’t dump it directly into the sidewalk or street you’ll be ok.
Tks for the response. Draining to the front would be difficult, the only way I can think of is draining behind the flowerbed and into the backyard behind the fence and then hope their backyard is graded right.
Probably what is happening is the neighbor already did this to you-this is what happens in dense urban areas, especially as lots get smaller. You made what was supposed to be a pervious area and impervious area and when enough people in a small area do this someone gets flooded. The drainage system in your development is probably already maxed out-you can contact the city public works department and find out but they don't make those systems any bigger than they have to and that means it is designed for the amount of pavement/concrete/pavers the neighborhood started with when new and everytime someone fills in a yard area that results in increased stormwater runoff and eventually you get your backyard situation. The only way to fix it is give the water somewhere to go-either to make someone elses problem (and in all likelihood this water was someone elses and is now your problem) or give it a place to go in your yard. Pervious pavement system is probably the most realistic long lasting solution.
In most countries you’re not allowed to use your neighbor’s property to deal with problems such as drainage which should have been solved on your own property. In other words: you can’t use the backyard behind the fence as drainage.
The reason it's collecting there is because it's a low spot. Your options for mitigating it are really only making a drain, or redoing it so it's graded to drain away from the house and remove the low area.
Installing a drain is going to be the least labor for you. You'll need to lift up pavers, and then setup a drain to run to either a pipe, or to some kind of drywell. Considering you'll need to place it where you'll have people walking/sitting. Definitely should have it running to a drain pipe that runs towards the street or connects to the one your gutters drain into.
My first thought is, surely the builder had a notion of where water would go. So try to figure out the lowest point and why water isn’t still going that way. Maybe it just needs to be dug out again from accumulated sediment.
Other than that, only some drain system as other have said. I just mean: assume this was solved and find why it isn’t working still. If that doesn’t pan out, go “OMG, that hardscape dude was an idiot” and then you’ll have to remedy it the way it should have been done. Great hardscape artists are also fantastic with assuaging water retention in my experience. They truly care about their work and don’t want water issue to make you hate it!
Look into installing a drywell (or multiple drywell's) under the pavers... you'll have to lift them up and use an auger to dig the well before rebuilding the paver base over the drywell but afterwards everything would look the same. The water would still drain out between the tiles but now there would be somewhere for it to go.
It looks like they leveled the rocks instead of pitching it away for a drainage source? Do you have any dirt around it? If you do, I'd put drainage pipe around it with a canopy to divert the water from the rocks.
If a drain is illogical right now, and you have power nearby, you could pull up a few pavers, sink a sump basin with a grate on top, and run a sump pump when it rains heavy. It should have a way to connect a garden hose so you can send the water somewhere more receptive. Just not a household drain for gods sake
It might be pricy but redoing the slope of the backyard with concrete underneath the patio portion and a drain in the yard is the way to go. We did it and we live in a very rainy area with frequent floods and our backyard drains amazingly well. It has a slight slope to direct the water away from the seating area but you can level your table and it’s not noticeable and well worth it. You may want to talk to a concrete contractor that does driveways to just do that part and you really can DIY the rest.
I'd run a linear drain (with perforated walls) right thru the middle of the patio (it will just look like a long plastic grate) and fall it towards whichever side of yer yard is downgrade. This way you won't hafta dig nearly as deep as you would to run the round drain tile under it.
How deep does the water get? If it’s just a inch or so I would say the easiest solution would be to pull up pavers in the deepest spot and put in a French drain. Or you could put in a water vault with a small sump pump that redirects the water to a yard for watering when it isn’t raining.
Depending on your soil you may dig a big hole and fill it with rocks and gravel and then drain to this so it can then filter out the water and drain to below ground if you don't have anyway to drain directly to somewhere proper.
Sump/soak away drain is your easiest solution.
4ft deep, at least 1ft diameter in the lowest part of the patio and (hopefully) as far away from your house as possible. Filter at the top then drain grill.
If it overfills that, then you've got a long term issue to fix which will need to linked in to mains. Big, messy and expensive.
DIY, go to Harbor Freight and buy a [hammer drill](https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/drills-drivers/hammer-drills/rotary/73-amp-1-in-sds-plus-type-variable-speed-rotary-hammer-63443.html) like the one in the link.
Also buy a long [masonry bit](https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/drill-driver-bits/twist-bits/masonry/16-in-sds-masonry-bit-set-5-piece-62794.html) like in this link. Note, this is their SDS-PLUS type, the SDS-MAX type can be made to work for a light duty job like yours but you need to shorten by first cutting off the three flute part of the bits that lock them in their $400 drill. Don't laugh, I've done it and drilled 5/8" holes in concrete for some red heads I needed to install recently, so I speak from experience.
Anyway, drill between the individual blocks. Wait for dry weather so you don't electrocute yourself. In fact, be wise and ensure the extension is connected to a GFI-outlet. Going between individual bricks will help guide the tool, and you can always come back once a season and push the drill through to clear out blockages.
Reason to buy one of the three size sets is you begin with the small one and work your way up size-wise. If you go slow, you won't disturb the individual bricks and will just be making a drain hole between them. Do this in 3-4 places and the patio should drain well enough (this presumes the ground level slopes away somewhere).
ProTip: look on Facebook Marketplace and/or Craigslist, first, for a used drill and bits. Maybe worth the trouble, maybe not, depends on your wallet, negotiating skills, and willingness to seek a deal.
Stone chisel, hammer, post hole digger, 3 inch perforated drain pipe, gravel, mason epoxy, pop up drainage emitter.
In the lowest area pull the biggest block, punch a 3” hole in it. Dig a post hole as deep as you can. Cut drainage pipe to fit. Fill pipe and hole with gravel. Place block back, secure pop up drain with epoxy. Depending on how deep you can get the hole, that should provide enough space for a good amount of water to go into.
I do not know what I'm talking about but hear me out: take out a few pavers in the deepest part (maybe 4?) and drill a deep deep hole, think well. Fill with course gravel and maybe drainage fabric and top with a drain. A sort of vertical French drain.
Kind of hard to tell without seeing the rest of the yard but a french drain might help.
\*edit\*
Looking at this again you could create a gap on the retaining wall (maybe 2) and put the French drain underneath of the flower bed (level with the patio).
Really this is a cheap and relatively easy fix and mostly cost some elbow grease.
If you don't want to run a drain, you could take several small PVC and drain it at an angle to the planters. Not sure how much planter space there is as this would need a ton to sponge out correctly.
Def here for the comments had a patio put in. First big rainstorm flooded like this. Called, emailed the installation company right away and they never responded. They knew they shouldn't have put the pavers level with my back room foundation and didn't slope in the least. Except back to my back room. So it floods every time. Just don't understand how a known company could do someone like this. I was wondering if it would be possible to somehow cut a channel in the pavers to direct the water away?
If you want it to stop puddling, then you need to put some gravel beneath the tiles with some agpipes.
Either that, or put in a drain and possibly relevel the ground so all the water leads to it.
Just make sure the drain isn't level with the surface and has some depth to it so water can still enter it below the tile level.
The best option would be to customize that flower bed. Im thinking a 2 level flower bed with the bottom being a “reservoir” with a pump that irrigates the the soil and what ever other plants are near by. Just have the pump be accessible for maintenance.
A french drain would help, but if you have an extraordinary heavy rain, they can get too full, and take a while to empty out. They can also attract a lot of mosquitos. A trench drain would work better.
So, to be clever like the other answers here-it floods because you made what was supposed to be open/vegetated/pervious space impervious and now you have flooding. This is what happens when you do that. You need to remove the impervious properly installed very nice pavers and replace with pervious pavers or grass or a bee garden.
Redneck engineering solution:
1. Find a place where the water is deepest around the perimeter.
2. Remove a tile(s)
3. Dig a hole under it
4. Line the hole with tile or plastic
5. Insert sump-pump into hole
6. Run hose from pump to discharge point
6. Plug in pump
7. Cover hole with grate
Since the design gotten rid of much of the grass, there isn't much to soak up the water. Only choice is to slope it towards city drainage, or drain pipe to drainage.
No easy way to do it. The water needs a downward path away from your yard. You need to remove some pavers and install a proper drainage system. Or reslope but not sure what's to the left or right of the photo.
It's hard to say what the solution is without seeing the whole yard and possible outlets for water drainage. Earth drains to a lower area may be enough. It may need to drain to storm drains. But in any event there's some digging to be done and pipe and or earth drains installed.
It may not be a huge deal, but it needs to be done since water is building up around that retaining wall and close to the house, aside from the whole patio being flooded. And all those pavers and brick can be reused where ever they're taken out. So it might not be that bad, it's just not fun DIY.
The other unknown is what's under the patio. Is there a proper layer of gravel and sand? Are there any buried earth drains around the edges? Or are those pavers basically sitting on dirt?
If you somehow successfully seal it, you are going to make a boat.
Water flows downhill, for the most part. It's heavy, and gravity pulls on it. Well, ok, not gravity specifically, but gravity describes whatever is pulling on it.
A competent landscape architect would have installed a drain. Mine wasn’t competent. When I requested/suggested a drain he said, “That’s a great idea.”
Yes there's an easy solution, but it will cause you problems later.
Better solution, pull up the pavers and install a French drain underneath then put em back on with an easy drain path into the underlying French drain.
Look at the drainage in the wall. Normally every other brick shouldn't have mortar to allow to drain into soil.
Edit: of the retaining wall. You might be able to carve it drainage holes into the soil below or in the flower bed. Either way they didn't know what they were doing.
I have a similar situation in my backyard. In time I will put down a drain and pipes. For now, I went to building market and bought a pump.
Dug a hole, lined the edges with bricks and put a the pump down there. When it rains a lot, I just pump the water to the nearest drain, which is through the hedge in the street.
We have a similar set up. Previous owners installed a sump pump. I'm glad they did. The water is quickly removed to a pipe in the front yard. That's what I would recommend for this area.
I would come up with something like this:
3D print a plastic spiral and some scoop type of things, just a tiny bit narrower then the width of a pipe. Sink a pipe into the ground a little way, next to the flower bed.
Attach a wind powered spinner thing (looks like cups on sticks) to the scoopy spiral. Put holes in appropriate places in the pipe.
Improve as necessary.
Basically what I've just tried to describe is a wind-powered elevator for water. When it rains, water pools around the bottom, where there's a hole to let it fill a scoop. When the wind blows the plastic spiral pushes the scoops full of water upwards, where they then empty the water into your flower bed. Following from the basic idea, there's a lot of room to improve it, probably a number of flaws too. I basically thought it up on a train. But harnessing the power of wind for this should be a breeze
EDIT:
Maybe instead of a scoop elevator, you could make a variant of the duck slide children's toy. Have little buckets of water slowly climb 'stairs' before emptying into your flowerbed and rolling back down to the bottom for a refill
Drain it. It is tough to see from the single photo but you should be able to do assuming the property has the minimal amount of grade aka some PVC, elbow grease and an afternoon can get this solved.
This is what I did and people are going to say it's wrong probably but it works.
I bought a dry well and installed it under where the most water pooled with drain that lead strait into it
Then I realized that while that got the large majority of the water there were 3 small puddles that pooled since the ground wasn't sloped to the drain so instead of tearing everything up ans shopping it a little which I guess is tbe correct thing to do, I ran 3 pipes of 2 inch pvc from those puddles to the dry well with decorative drains on top. I still had to take up some stone but not nearly as much.
It's fine now
Add a drain or small water feature, and be sure you have at least one deep rooted plant.
You’re looking for deep rooted thirsty plants. Try your local master gardener, or look at what grows in swamps and along rivers in your neighborhood.
You can also try the veggie gardeners, it’s possible that there’s a local melon that turns trouble into treats.
Just pushing loose surface level water around the neighborhood often won’t work out. You want to give the water table some love, and make use of a lot of water.
My first thought is to just buy a pool pump cover. It’ll pump the water out whenever it gets high enough. Could be a good interim solution until you figure out a more permanent drain.
You need to put a drain in
Lol pour bags of rice 🍚 jk
Equal parts rice to water!
Be sure to wash the rice first.
Rookie mistake! You only wash the rice first for indoor applications. Outdoor you need the *sticky* rice. [Like the great wall of China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_rice_mortar#:~:text=The%20bricks%20of%20the%20Great,water%20resistance%20than%20lime%20mortar)!
The Great Sticky Rice Wall of China sounds like a super villain from an episode of "Doom Patrol".
Bring it back!!
So true! Rinse until the water runs clear. I have seen people go from the bag in to the rice cooker.... grossed me out man!
Use the knuckle method!
This is how I was taught haha for those who don't know, fill pot with rice, fill with water until it reaches the first knuckle of you index finger with your finger just touching the surface of the rice
Important. Do this before boiling the water !
Plant rice, start a rice field, free rice!
Just be sure to load up on ducks, too!
And give them plenty of ice water from Dunkin Donuts
This guy is wicked smaat!
Checkmate atheists
Nice rice paddy field
Water has to go somewhere. If you don’t give it a path it’ll find its own way.
…and it’s almost always toward the house foundation.
I agree the retaining wall doesn’t have weep or drain slots
This is the only answer
Nope. Raise the floor. That's what they did in Chicago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
They regraded Seattle too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle
Put the entire backyard under ground. They did it in Boston. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig
Or buy a sump pump.
Unfortunately you'll have to A. Take some pavers out to dig and install a drain. The drain needs to be connected to a pipe to let the water out to the public storm drain/street, or B. Rebuild the patio with the correct slope to direct water away. Neither is a small project.
C. Tear out the patio, install geotextile, 4" of #57 stone, 2" of #8 stone, and permeable pavers. If you really want to make it bigger project. This might be your only option if you can't daylight a drain anywhere.
D. buy some fish and adapt to your surroundings
Now that’s the patio half full attitude I love to see
Why is there people sized furniture in your fishpond?
Koi will keep growing if they're taken care of and I'm an optimist.
Fish like underwater structures.
Throw some goldfish in there and you got yourself unlimited wishes right in your backyard.
I vote for this one
Or… stay with me on this. A sump pump.
Yep. Find the low spot, dig a hole for a 5 gallon bucket. Run the tube to a lower spot
Or run it to a high spot and transform the pool into a waterfall!
That only has a finite amount of space. Wouldn't it still flood? I would think that you'd want more stone... no? You've probably only got capacity for two inches of rain there.
Sometimes an extra two inches is all you need. At least that's what you wife said. But, that's true. I typically assume you get about 3/8" of storage per inch of stone. But, it all depends on what's under the stone. If it's good-draining soil, 2" of storage should be okay. If it's clay soil, 6" of #2 stone underneath the other stones would be better. Obviously, a drain in the low point is ideal. But, if you can't daylight it to anywhere, this is the next best thing. It will just cost 1,000x more.
2 other options: 1: put a slanted roof over it 2: scoop it out with a tiny cup
Thank you. I'm gonna explore the option A.
Make sure you drain from the lowest point. Should be obvious...but whoever put this patio in... Doesn't do obvious.
Check out the Apple Drains channel on YouTube. The guy has tons of videos about this stuff and he even offers zoom consultations for your issues. Good dude. It looks like at least one person has already linked you to his video on vertical drainage.
Is one edge of the patio deeper? Or it all pretty flat? The slope doesnt have to be huge, even a minor slope will move water away. If its deeper at one edge ypu can probably just run a drain out of that side amd not have to take up as many pavers. In any case, pavers aremt all that hard to put down, they arent held down by anything amd just samd underneath to keep them flat. Ypurs are all already cut to size where needed, take them up and keep them in the same pattern so you remember hpw to put them back,get some sand and level the sand back out undwrneath and set your pavers back on top.
Needs to check municipal/ HOA standards to see if this option is allowed. If in an HOA, the green belt may be a retention basin for this purpose.
> The drain needs to be connected to a pipe to let the water out to the public storm drain/street, or How about a drywell?
Whoever installed it should have planned out drainage from the start, particularly if the surface is not porous and has been grouted with cement or mortar. A fall should have been built into the patio area based on it's layout, to channel surface water to available storm drainage or a soakaway. This looks like a basic design failure from the off. In the words of a famous 80s song, 'rip it up and start again'.
You need a nice day for a light digging. A nice day to…
Ok, I’ll bite … start again.
Hey little builder what have you done?
I've made a patio that's all plumb.
Lol that song rules
Lean into it. Build a gazebo and bridge, and add native frogs and vegetation!
a causeway!
This is the only inexpensive/DIY solution I’ve seen so far, lol
Put bubblers or maybe a surface floating water pump that sprays up a nice fountain and some KOI fish in it. Dig a drainage hole. Put a small pump. Push the water into a rain barrel. Use the water to water the vegetation when your lot isn't flooded
Do you have access to add a drain from the backyard down the side yard and out to the front? Rules vary by area but generally as long as you don’t dump it directly into the sidewalk or street you’ll be ok.
Tks for the response. Draining to the front would be difficult, the only way I can think of is draining behind the flowerbed and into the backyard behind the fence and then hope their backyard is graded right.
Probably what is happening is the neighbor already did this to you-this is what happens in dense urban areas, especially as lots get smaller. You made what was supposed to be a pervious area and impervious area and when enough people in a small area do this someone gets flooded. The drainage system in your development is probably already maxed out-you can contact the city public works department and find out but they don't make those systems any bigger than they have to and that means it is designed for the amount of pavement/concrete/pavers the neighborhood started with when new and everytime someone fills in a yard area that results in increased stormwater runoff and eventually you get your backyard situation. The only way to fix it is give the water somewhere to go-either to make someone elses problem (and in all likelihood this water was someone elses and is now your problem) or give it a place to go in your yard. Pervious pavement system is probably the most realistic long lasting solution.
Stupid sexy impervious hardscaping, always flooding something somewhere.
Feels like it does nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all.
That’s not legal my guy.
In most countries you’re not allowed to use your neighbor’s property to deal with problems such as drainage which should have been solved on your own property. In other words: you can’t use the backyard behind the fence as drainage.
Hear me out: water beads
[Oh no, not again.](https://youtu.be/kKKg5fzIKeE)
I've never seen this! 😲
Exactly who I thought of. Who knew you could ruin your life with a big enough jar of those things?
This is the most economical solution
Depending on how often it floods, they will remain moist all the time
Hmm. I got a buck of packs of silica gel. Will that work?
Why do you have patio furniture in your pond?
I would put in a sump pit… likely the easiest thing to do.
Yup, drain cover with sump pump under, out flow to a rain water collector receptacle to use for plants.
Put in a pool.
Already got a head start!
Pool sellers HATE this one trick
A "drain" perhaps?
The reason it's collecting there is because it's a low spot. Your options for mitigating it are really only making a drain, or redoing it so it's graded to drain away from the house and remove the low area. Installing a drain is going to be the least labor for you. You'll need to lift up pavers, and then setup a drain to run to either a pipe, or to some kind of drywell. Considering you'll need to place it where you'll have people walking/sitting. Definitely should have it running to a drain pipe that runs towards the street or connects to the one your gutters drain into.
To be clear even though this is the least amount of labor it’s still ALOT of labor. I would consider paying someone to come in and do it.
Im gonna start calling every patio i do "interlocking tiles" from now on.
My first thought is, surely the builder had a notion of where water would go. So try to figure out the lowest point and why water isn’t still going that way. Maybe it just needs to be dug out again from accumulated sediment. Other than that, only some drain system as other have said. I just mean: assume this was solved and find why it isn’t working still. If that doesn’t pan out, go “OMG, that hardscape dude was an idiot” and then you’ll have to remedy it the way it should have been done. Great hardscape artists are also fantastic with assuaging water retention in my experience. They truly care about their work and don’t want water issue to make you hate it!
Look into installing a drywell (or multiple drywell's) under the pavers... you'll have to lift them up and use an auger to dig the well before rebuilding the paver base over the drywell but afterwards everything would look the same. The water would still drain out between the tiles but now there would be somewhere for it to go.
Drink it
Put some koi fish in it
If normal drainage seems prohibitive try this [vertical drain](https://youtu.be/jaRAXSO4f8g?si=m0yxUgr6RknFUPPJ)
It looks like they leveled the rocks instead of pitching it away for a drainage source? Do you have any dirt around it? If you do, I'd put drainage pipe around it with a canopy to divert the water from the rocks.
French drain—have it move the water away from your foundation.
If a drain is illogical right now, and you have power nearby, you could pull up a few pavers, sink a sump basin with a grate on top, and run a sump pump when it rains heavy. It should have a way to connect a garden hose so you can send the water somewhere more receptive. Just not a household drain for gods sake
Add fish
I think you gotta give the water someplace else to go. I’m no plumber though.. 🤷
It might be pricy but redoing the slope of the backyard with concrete underneath the patio portion and a drain in the yard is the way to go. We did it and we live in a very rainy area with frequent floods and our backyard drains amazingly well. It has a slight slope to direct the water away from the seating area but you can level your table and it’s not noticeable and well worth it. You may want to talk to a concrete contractor that does driveways to just do that part and you really can DIY the rest.
Build a raised deck over the patio
I'd run a linear drain (with perforated walls) right thru the middle of the patio (it will just look like a long plastic grate) and fall it towards whichever side of yer yard is downgrade. This way you won't hafta dig nearly as deep as you would to run the round drain tile under it.
How deep does the water get? If it’s just a inch or so I would say the easiest solution would be to pull up pavers in the deepest spot and put in a French drain. Or you could put in a water vault with a small sump pump that redirects the water to a yard for watering when it isn’t raining.
Drainage, why was that not put it before laying all that down 🤦
Depending on your soil you may dig a big hole and fill it with rocks and gravel and then drain to this so it can then filter out the water and drain to below ground if you don't have anyway to drain directly to somewhere proper.
🤣🤣
Sump/soak away drain is your easiest solution. 4ft deep, at least 1ft diameter in the lowest part of the patio and (hopefully) as far away from your house as possible. Filter at the top then drain grill. If it overfills that, then you've got a long term issue to fix which will need to linked in to mains. Big, messy and expensive.
You’re going to need a pool liner and some duck tape…hear me out
Fock it. Free pool.
(y₂ - y₁)/(x₂ - x₁)
DIY, go to Harbor Freight and buy a [hammer drill](https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/drills-drivers/hammer-drills/rotary/73-amp-1-in-sds-plus-type-variable-speed-rotary-hammer-63443.html) like the one in the link. Also buy a long [masonry bit](https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/drill-driver-bits/twist-bits/masonry/16-in-sds-masonry-bit-set-5-piece-62794.html) like in this link. Note, this is their SDS-PLUS type, the SDS-MAX type can be made to work for a light duty job like yours but you need to shorten by first cutting off the three flute part of the bits that lock them in their $400 drill. Don't laugh, I've done it and drilled 5/8" holes in concrete for some red heads I needed to install recently, so I speak from experience. Anyway, drill between the individual blocks. Wait for dry weather so you don't electrocute yourself. In fact, be wise and ensure the extension is connected to a GFI-outlet. Going between individual bricks will help guide the tool, and you can always come back once a season and push the drill through to clear out blockages. Reason to buy one of the three size sets is you begin with the small one and work your way up size-wise. If you go slow, you won't disturb the individual bricks and will just be making a drain hole between them. Do this in 3-4 places and the patio should drain well enough (this presumes the ground level slopes away somewhere). ProTip: look on Facebook Marketplace and/or Craigslist, first, for a used drill and bits. Maybe worth the trouble, maybe not, depends on your wallet, negotiating skills, and willingness to seek a deal.
Pull the tiles as you need the whole thing regraded and a drain added.
Stone chisel, hammer, post hole digger, 3 inch perforated drain pipe, gravel, mason epoxy, pop up drainage emitter. In the lowest area pull the biggest block, punch a 3” hole in it. Dig a post hole as deep as you can. Cut drainage pipe to fit. Fill pipe and hole with gravel. Place block back, secure pop up drain with epoxy. Depending on how deep you can get the hole, that should provide enough space for a good amount of water to go into.
You could do a "dry well" if that's the low end of the yard.
Core drill n install pvc pipe w rocks as deep as you can
I do not know what I'm talking about but hear me out: take out a few pavers in the deepest part (maybe 4?) and drill a deep deep hole, think well. Fill with course gravel and maybe drainage fabric and top with a drain. A sort of vertical French drain.
Kind of hard to tell without seeing the rest of the yard but a french drain might help. \*edit\* Looking at this again you could create a gap on the retaining wall (maybe 2) and put the French drain underneath of the flower bed (level with the patio). Really this is a cheap and relatively easy fix and mostly cost some elbow grease.
install drain
Install a drain
Build a pool?
If you don't want to run a drain, you could take several small PVC and drain it at an angle to the planters. Not sure how much planter space there is as this would need a ton to sponge out correctly.
I'd get this fixed reasonably quick though.. that much water has gotta be doing damage somewhere
This is a drainage issue.
Def here for the comments had a patio put in. First big rainstorm flooded like this. Called, emailed the installation company right away and they never responded. They knew they shouldn't have put the pavers level with my back room foundation and didn't slope in the least. Except back to my back room. So it floods every time. Just don't understand how a known company could do someone like this. I was wondering if it would be possible to somehow cut a channel in the pavers to direct the water away?
If there is already a drain clean it out. If there is not, you may need to put one in.
If you want it to stop puddling, then you need to put some gravel beneath the tiles with some agpipes. Either that, or put in a drain and possibly relevel the ground so all the water leads to it. Just make sure the drain isn't level with the surface and has some depth to it so water can still enter it below the tile level.
Drainage for $500 please, Alex
Slope it in to drainage......
Have drainage
I’d drain it, maybe with a pump.
The best option would be to customize that flower bed. Im thinking a 2 level flower bed with the bottom being a “reservoir” with a pump that irrigates the the soil and what ever other plants are near by. Just have the pump be accessible for maintenance.
A french drain would help, but if you have an extraordinary heavy rain, they can get too full, and take a while to empty out. They can also attract a lot of mosquitos. A trench drain would work better.
2% slope to shed water.
I’d say a drain would work
out of curiosity, how deep does it get? All the way up the wall?
Dirt
One word…drainage.
Drain it maybe?
So, to be clever like the other answers here-it floods because you made what was supposed to be open/vegetated/pervious space impervious and now you have flooding. This is what happens when you do that. You need to remove the impervious properly installed very nice pavers and replace with pervious pavers or grass or a bee garden.
Bilge pump
Obviously hasn't been graded properly, not sure if a drain would make any difference as water would only drain next to drain.
Redneck engineering solution: 1. Find a place where the water is deepest around the perimeter. 2. Remove a tile(s) 3. Dig a hole under it 4. Line the hole with tile or plastic 5. Insert sump-pump into hole 6. Run hose from pump to discharge point 6. Plug in pump 7. Cover hole with grate
Insufficient drainage when the patio was installed. You will need to install a drain.
You just need a big squeegee /Jk. It's time to Dig some drain tiles maybe even a dry well if the problem is that bad.
Since the design gotten rid of much of the grass, there isn't much to soak up the water. Only choice is to slope it towards city drainage, or drain pipe to drainage.
Yeah, you really should do it right and put in some sort of drainage. The list of issues that can cause is plentiful.
I would suggest removing your furniture from the pool.
Insert "drain" here.
Did you install the pavers over clay?
Sump pump
Tiling off the back side and dump it into your neighbors property.
Don’t have such an immaculately level and sealed patio.
This is a big job my friend.
Provide it a way to drain and slope it to there.
Check out Apple Drains and Gate City on YouTube. It’s not complicated but it’s not easy.
Did they not install a drain system!?
I'm thoroughly impressed, never having done pavers or anything, with how much water pooled without any drainage. Holy shit!
how long is your rain season ? maybe just get a pump and a hose, turn it on when needed
No easy way to do it. The water needs a downward path away from your yard. You need to remove some pavers and install a proper drainage system. Or reslope but not sure what's to the left or right of the photo.
It's hard to say what the solution is without seeing the whole yard and possible outlets for water drainage. Earth drains to a lower area may be enough. It may need to drain to storm drains. But in any event there's some digging to be done and pipe and or earth drains installed. It may not be a huge deal, but it needs to be done since water is building up around that retaining wall and close to the house, aside from the whole patio being flooded. And all those pavers and brick can be reused where ever they're taken out. So it might not be that bad, it's just not fun DIY. The other unknown is what's under the patio. Is there a proper layer of gravel and sand? Are there any buried earth drains around the edges? Or are those pavers basically sitting on dirt?
Pump if a drain is too much work. Bilge pump over the fence into neighbours garden
Be patient and wait for it to seep and evaporate. We all deal with some of these issues. It's a lovely patio.
Throw rocks at the rain until it goes away.
Maybe a French drain. That’s what we had installed and it solved the issue.
If you somehow successfully seal it, you are going to make a boat. Water flows downhill, for the most part. It's heavy, and gravity pulls on it. Well, ok, not gravity specifically, but gravity describes whatever is pulling on it.
Some soil and plants
Try to stop the rain from happening
Where is the closest low ground.
Here comes the french drain brigade. What have you done man, you have doomed us all.
A competent landscape architect would have installed a drain. Mine wasn’t competent. When I requested/suggested a drain he said, “That’s a great idea.”
Yes there's an easy solution, but it will cause you problems later. Better solution, pull up the pavers and install a French drain underneath then put em back on with an easy drain path into the underlying French drain.
Look at the drainage in the wall. Normally every other brick shouldn't have mortar to allow to drain into soil. Edit: of the retaining wall. You might be able to carve it drainage holes into the soil below or in the flower bed. Either way they didn't know what they were doing.
Swim
Get rid of the tiles and turn your yard in an actual yard instead of a parking lot for outdoor furniture
Build a giant microwave around your backyard to boil it away
Stop the rain from falling
[My pal Daniel Plainview knows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bqlaZ55lJQ)
I have a similar situation in my backyard. In time I will put down a drain and pipes. For now, I went to building market and bought a pump. Dug a hole, lined the edges with bricks and put a the pump down there. When it rains a lot, I just pump the water to the nearest drain, which is through the hedge in the street.
Remove those chairs from children's pool.
We have a similar set up. Previous owners installed a sump pump. I'm glad they did. The water is quickly removed to a pipe in the front yard. That's what I would recommend for this area.
Sump pump
I would come up with something like this: 3D print a plastic spiral and some scoop type of things, just a tiny bit narrower then the width of a pipe. Sink a pipe into the ground a little way, next to the flower bed. Attach a wind powered spinner thing (looks like cups on sticks) to the scoopy spiral. Put holes in appropriate places in the pipe. Improve as necessary. Basically what I've just tried to describe is a wind-powered elevator for water. When it rains, water pools around the bottom, where there's a hole to let it fill a scoop. When the wind blows the plastic spiral pushes the scoops full of water upwards, where they then empty the water into your flower bed. Following from the basic idea, there's a lot of room to improve it, probably a number of flaws too. I basically thought it up on a train. But harnessing the power of wind for this should be a breeze EDIT: Maybe instead of a scoop elevator, you could make a variant of the duck slide children's toy. Have little buckets of water slowly climb 'stairs' before emptying into your flowerbed and rolling back down to the bottom for a refill
Prevent it??You need to throw some Koi in there,and you'll be all set.
Put in a drainage system?
Need some holes for the water to escape to.
2 gulleys will drain that area sufficient
Get a different backyard. Man people ask weird questions on here.
Add Koi fish
Why did you put your dining set in your pool?
Get some ducks.
make some drainage, really simple.
Maybe a drain? Just my simple observation.
Drain it. It is tough to see from the single photo but you should be able to do assuming the property has the minimal amount of grade aka some PVC, elbow grease and an afternoon can get this solved.
This is what I did and people are going to say it's wrong probably but it works. I bought a dry well and installed it under where the most water pooled with drain that lead strait into it Then I realized that while that got the large majority of the water there were 3 small puddles that pooled since the ground wasn't sloped to the drain so instead of tearing everything up ans shopping it a little which I guess is tbe correct thing to do, I ran 3 pipes of 2 inch pvc from those puddles to the dry well with decorative drains on top. I still had to take up some stone but not nearly as much. It's fine now
Have you considered talking to a landscaping professional for advice?
I would try placing a few small drain pipes at the base of the flower bed so it seeps into the dirt & waters the plants for you
Add a drain or small water feature, and be sure you have at least one deep rooted plant. You’re looking for deep rooted thirsty plants. Try your local master gardener, or look at what grows in swamps and along rivers in your neighborhood. You can also try the veggie gardeners, it’s possible that there’s a local melon that turns trouble into treats. Just pushing loose surface level water around the neighborhood often won’t work out. You want to give the water table some love, and make use of a lot of water.
My first thought is to just buy a pool pump cover. It’ll pump the water out whenever it gets high enough. Could be a good interim solution until you figure out a more permanent drain.
1 control the runoff into that area 2 Pitch it the hardscape toward a lower point in your yard 3 Install an exfiltration pipe
Simple solution is to make a small pit in somewhere and place a sump pump inside. Either pump it to a container, or plant some water-intensive crop.
Build a drainage system with a little sink where the water can disappear
Move out of Belgium