Hello,

I am having some drainage issues in my back yard. As of now my crawl space is dry and water is not entering the house yet. I already have leaks in my garage that I am trying to address.

My yard is excessively soggy, wet, and slippery. There are huge water puddles everywhere. I live in PNW so it is common to have wet yard but mine seems excessively soggy. Some pictures here (Imgur Album): Yard pics

From initial inspection and some research it seems to be a combination of multiple things:

• Yard is not graded properly for drainage. It is relatively flat overall but has lot of small ditches (rolling grades) where water seems to be collecting.
• The soil is completely saturated. The rain water that is falling on soil is unable to be absorbed by the soil. This could be due to type of soil and previous owners not taking care of the yard. It could also be that there is lot of clay in the soil.
• There is an existing French Drain that is partially working. Our french drains have raisers and when I look inside them some of them have flowing water and some of them have stagnant water.
• Our house is on a lower grade (4 -5 feet) than our neighbors house that borders our back yard. Seems like they have installed some kind of drainage where all the water flows into our yard. When it rains excessively we sort of have a waterfall from their yard into ours.

I called a few landscaping contractors to figure out a solution. Some folks suggested installing french drain while others suggested leveling the yard for proper drainage. I think I might need to do both. However, the quotes I got were a little shocking. They are charging upwards of 10K to install French Drain and another 3-5K for leveling the yard. These quotes scared us off from doing it but we have to address it sooner than later. We don't want these drainage issues to impact the foundation.

We have lived in rental apartments all our lives so we have zero handy man skills. However, French Drain installation seems DIY doable even for beginners. However, I am not able to find any good resources about how to level the yard for drainage. Any recommendations for blogs with pictures or videos? It seems scary to take up such a big DIY project for someone with no experience. Is it recommended to take up these type of projects as DIY?

Realistically, has any one does these type of projects by themselves? Any pitfalls/tips that I should be aware of before I decide to do it myself? Any things that could make the job easier? I am willing to put in effort to learn and do it myself if it saves me 15K but at the same time I have to have it done right so I can fix the drainage issues.

Thanks.