How to drain a waterlogged lawn

I have several areas on my lawn that just gets waterlogged after rain, takes ages to drain, and stays squelchy and muddy for a while.

Attached is an image of one area, right outside my front door. I dug a hole to see if I could reach the bottom thinking something is blocking water from draining, and somehow break through, but I cant find anything. I've dug about a foot deep, then can manage to push my crow bar even further down, another half a foot. But not far away the water drains OK.

In the image I have removed some water myself, it was right up to the top over the top of the soil as it is a big puddle there, and the surrounding water didn't rush in when I removed water like I thought it may, but does slowly go into it. I wondered if anyone has an idea why it would be water logged, is it clay soil, or something under the ground. I am not familiar enough with soil to know if its clay and thats the issue. My lawn is at the top of the street which is a slight hill, and the houses behind mine are like 2m lower so I cant imaging it being the water table.

Anyone have any ideas, and therefore how to fix it? I am starting with this patch, and if I can fix it I could do the same to other areas on the lawn.


Thanks

 

You'd want to dig that hole lower to really see what's going on.

And can you dig a drain to somewhere lower?

 

I'm going to wait until it drains before digging more.

Here is another area on my lawn. I just removed two plants. I think the soil is clay. The puddle on the left is not draining into the hole where the plant was right next to it. I guess the soil is the barrier itself. You can see how muddy it gets from a walking on it a few times. I had my wheelie bin on there too.

 

@Voobwm - is your lawn pretty flat all across are there any noticeable slope?

As at @kindredspirit spirit mentioned, it would be worth digging deeper than a foot to see if there's anything else buried under there. Compacted hardcore/rubble underneath heavy clay soil is often a cause of waterlogging.

 

It's flat. I'll keep digging then.

 

Keep digging.

 

So I dug further still not found anything. But... in the other part of the lawn where water is not even passing into the hole next to it, why dig down when it looks like the clay is the barrier itself? If I dig down and manage to open it up to drain, only the water above it will drain and the water logged areas next to it may not as it's not passing through the clay into it. Hope you know what I mean.

 

Is there a lower area of the garden where you could drain water to? For drainage to work, the outflow must at a lower level than that of which you are draining. If the water in your lawn won't drain downwards because of an impervious layer of clay, then you'll have to go sideways somewhere. Can you drain through your border to somewhere else? Have you a picture of the larger area other than that of your grass. All things can be solved.

 

no its flat. if we did horizontal drains I was thinking taking them to a part of the garden that does drain, or into top borders like you mention where we dont walk on. Can they go into the rainwater drain?

 

Is the rainwater drain connected to a Storm Water Drain or does it just go into a pile of stones sunk in a hole? If it's a Storm Water Drain, then Bob's Your Uncle and away you go.

 

One thing to be careful of if it is heavy clay soil; I have an ancient drain on my property and on that side of the garden the lawn is nice and dry. On the rest of the lawn it is a swamp. So a couple of years ago I dug and installed a drainage pipe to get the water to the drain and what I find now is that the water does not appear to be able to get into the drain due to the heavy clay soil. I performed a mason jar soil test and it appears that I have over 95% clay in my soil. I am currently planning on how to sort this out. My current thoughts are to use an auger to drill down about 3ft and fill this will a mix of gravel and sand to try to clear some of the standing water. Then install drainage channels to get the water to the ancient drain and then from there plough/rotavate the soil and incorporate sand and organic matter into the soil. Not too sure if that will work or not or if it will be a long term solution however as it is I do know that a drainage pipe on its own did very little.

Best of luck with it