Talk:French drain

Image of French Drain
The image is poor in that the drain shown appears to be incomplete and does not seam to function correctly.. Gregorydavid 10:06, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Granted it is difficult to photograph something that is buried underground..

Gregorydavid 11:09, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

French drain has no pipes — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.11.73.250 (talk) 16:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Image of gutter and French drain
One image in the gallery does not appear to be a gutter connecting to a French drain. It appears to be a gutter ready to be connect to a "perforated drain pipe".


 * French drains are usually trenches filled from bottom to trench surface with porous material like rock: not with soil. I have a fairly good volume of text about French drains on the page Drainage Info - some concepts may be convenient for explanation in this article.Mdvaden 04:43, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

1859 Henry French
"It was invented in Concord [Massachusets] by the farmer/judge Henry French (Harvard Graduate). When surface water (such as heavy rain) is invading any given area where there is a serious drainage problem, this could be the key to recovering flooded areas.

The French drain first came into the public eye in the year 1859 when Mr. French first published his book on farm drainage, in Concord, Massachusetts. The whole beauty of his idea came from careful observation. For it was not his diploma in law that showed him the ways of the land, it was his keen eye for observation and the ways of Mother Nature. He knew, like all simple farmers do, that water runs downhill, and just loves to accumulate in the most inconvenient of locations. Suffering from constant flooding, Henry French kept paying attention to water behavior until he figured out the best way to make sure water would run in the direction he wanted, without trying to go against Nature’s natural laws. Thus he figured out the concept of what we now call a French drain.

Not only did Mr. French discover this interesting style of drainage he also came up with many other drainage solutions and strategies for an ongoing problem. But what makes the French drain stand out from all the others? The fact that it is a drain that needs little to no upkeep." He was also from France.



"You're all wet if you think French drains have anything whatsoever to do with France. In fact, they were invented in Concord by Henry French, father of sculptor Daniel Chester French, whom we must flood with congratulations for their effectiveness.

Henry French was a judge and farmer, and as the latter a veritable fount of information on drainage. He was a great local source to tap on the subject, one which farmers with wet fields, barns, and roads lapped right up. In fact, his knowledge was so deep and unsinkable, he wrote a lengthy book on the subject, one whose subtitle is so long it takes a moment to fully drink in:

Farm Drainage The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches and Espcially with Tiles< Including Tables of Rain-Fall, Evaporation, Filtration, Evcavation, Capacity of Pipes; Cost and Number to the Acre, of Tiles, Etc, Etc.

Published in 1859, one might anticipate this as being rather dry reading. And while there are sections which left this reader a tad parched, it is a surprisingly finely written work. Full of poetry, humor, allusions to and quotations from the great writers throughout history, it is pleasantly filled to the brim with smooth, flowing verbiage of high quality" -69.87.204.228 23:13, 22 September 2007 (UTC)


 * [2 ] This has a footnote for the book mentioned above, I suggest adding this reading and footnote to the article. 209.244.43.122 (talk) 05:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The reference at Henry_Flagg_French will be expanded into a bio article by the Exeter, NH historical society. Ahazred8 (talk) 00:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Physics of a french drain
Increasing depth would increase water flow out of the earth, more inclination would make greater the speed of water through the length of the trench. The ground water drains from the surface of the dirt into the gravel, this water does flow through the gravel slowly but the addition of a perforated pipe acts like a "highway" removing water from the trench faster, and the less water there is in the trench at any one time, the faster the rate of liquid removal from the soil.

Would someone find a reference for this so that an editor may add this information to the article? Also, the other material in the article may need more sources. 209.244.43.122 (talk) 05:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

History section useless
The History section is very poorly written. Besides, it gives no information about the history of French drains, only about the origin of the name. Therefore it would be better labeled Etymology, but then it hardly merits a separate section. I'm going to remove it and change the name of Construction to History and Construction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim10701 (talk • contribs) 17:18, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

"Foundation" section
First time Wikipedia commentator! Just wanted to write that the "Foundation" section seems needlessly promotional, almost like a contractor who installs French drains wrote it. Case in point, the last paragraph:

French drain has evolved significantly from its origins- starting off as a hand-dug ditch, moving on to ceramic tile, PVC pipe, and eventually to the new French drain innovations on the market like WaterGuard and Grate Channel. Each new system is able to address weaknesses of the old as the French drain continues to improve and evolve. For example, whereas Henry French used chippings of tree bark to provide anti-microbial properties, an anti-microbial additive can now be included in the material of the plastic channel.

Specifically mentioning WaterGuard and Grate Channel—promoting the two as improvements, evolutions, and solutions to past weaknesses—is a blatant advertisement hidden inside this article. The paragraph as a whole also provides next to no relevant information to someone interested in learning about French drains. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.4.220 (talk) 00:17, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

The french drain was named after Henry French? Seriously? They have this thing called "Google" now. Third item in a Google Books search limited to the Nineteenth Century was a description of a "french drain," no capitalisation, in a book published in 1814. I'd be more definitive, but that would involve more than sixty seconds of searching.24.85.225.118 (talk) 21:14, 28 August 2012 (UTC)Erik Lund


 * I agree that the term French drain was in use before Henry French's time such as on page 146 of this book from 1803. The article curently says Henry French described and popularized the term which may be true but it is easy to jump to the assumption that the drain is named for Henry French. I have not found solid evidence for the origin of the name French drain but there is at least one reference (p. 186) to this drain being developed in France thus Mr. French's name is a coincidence. Jim Derby (talk) 01:06, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

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"French's own drains"
claims French's own drains to have been of one specific type using roofing tile, yet his book describes several, including some with purpose made drain tile:

Is the phrase "French's own drains" intended to mean just the drains at his own farm?— Theodore Kloba (☎) 14:16, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Original French Drain - NO PIPE
Back in College in 1960's (civil engineering and landscape architecture class freshman year) we were taught that a French Drain was a trench with just rock no pipe. (I got this wrong on test that is why I remember it so well). Now it appears everyone thinks it includes perforated pipe. I called NDS and talk to the guy who wrote NDS's guidebook and he said yes it is 4" perforated pipe under the rock. So I asked how big do yoiu cell perforated pipe, he said (if I remember correctly) up to 36" so I asked is a trench with 36" perforated pipe a French Drain - he id not know what to say.

The term 'french drain' did not start being used to include pipe until the internet and Wikipedia because coincidentally an engineer by the name of French in the 1800's had written a book about farm drainage using pipe (the old clay pipe) and people thought that is were the term came from. Well no it came from construction in France 300 - 400 year ago. At least that is what they taught in th e1960 and in teh 1930's when my teach had gone to school. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:80:4100:C1E0:B130:E117:F6D5:9A16 (talk) 17:24, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Anyone willing to merge Weeping tile into this article?
Both articles cover the same topic (this one literally starts "A French drain or weeping tile"), and this one's longer than Weeping tile is. Stephen Hui (talk) 23:19, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 11:54, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Etymology
I love it when things are named after people in ways that you wouldn't expect, but I'm having some trouble with the assertion that the French drain is named after Henry F. French. French was born in 1813 and published Farm Drainage in 1859, but a quick Google Books search shows that the term "French drain" was used for this sort of drain as early as 1738. Here are English records from 1808 describing contracts to build "French drain"; here's a citation from Ohio from 1851; here are some Canadian records from 1853. I also haven't found any 19th century citations that use the term "French drain" and explicitly mention French or his book. I hesitate to remove mentions of French entirely, but I really find it hard to believe that he had much of anything to do with the development or popularization of such drains in the absence of any contemporary sources in support of such claims. Roland Crosby (talk) 02:17, 29 February 2024 (UTC)