Huge Water Issue in Backyard

[slykelly]

Hi There!

We need help with ideas for a major problem in our back yard. We live in Wisconsin. Every spring and mid summer the back of our yard floods with all the rain/melting snow. Our house sits about 4 feet on a hill (which is also our septic tank) and then slopes down to a tree-line. Behind the tree line is a cornfield that also slopes towards the tree line. The trees and pretty much all of the yard up to our hill is complete water and mush.

Is there any way we can fix this problem without draining the water onto our neighbors property?

The photo attached it one we took when we first moved in 3 years ago - it seems to be getting worse every year for the past 4 years...

[Dominique]

What type of soil do you have: heavy clay, humus? Do you have a hard pan several feet below your soil? A hard pan does not necessarily mean a rock layer. It could be a compacted organic soil layer. If so, consider liquid aeration. That is a combination of powerful surfactants to break water tension, allowing the water to penetrate the soil. If you have clay soils, humus in combination with surfactants will provide aggregation, allowing the soil to breath. I recommend Super Aerate, because it has the highest concentration of surfactants that I know of.

[Chris]

What you need to do is think of a way to drain the tree line area. When the ground is frozen the water cannot sink in and it will go to the lowest point and sit if there is not a way for it to flow to a stream or river.

It could be that human activity in the area (such as road building) cut off the path of the water where it used to flow, so now it just sits.

Typically the solution is not cheap, you need to find a way to drain the water and that generally means putting in underground pipe to tunnel under whatever is keeping the water in place until it gets to a place where it can drain into a river or other lower elevation.

When this happens in a city with storm sewers typically a drain is put in the lowest part of the backyard (or frontyard, as the case may be) and underground pipe (black plastic stuff) is run out to the street where the water will then flow out and into a storm drain.

I'm guessing you live in the country without a storm drain nearby so you'd need to pipe to a river or stream or something. You're probably looking at several thousand dollars, but maybe the corn field owner would split it with you.