Ok, we we sure we were doing the right thing, and spent over $1500 to do it, but now I'm worried.
I live in Louisiana where we get TONS of rain in light hurricane season, and weeks of DELUGES during a busy hurricane season. Our back yard does not drain well for a variety of reasons, which I will not bore you with here. My Hermann's tortoise, Elsa, lives in a large (18 x20) outdoor enclosure walled by cinderblock. When we get heavy, intense downpours, parts of her enclosure can get over 4 inches deep and stay that way for several hours. The higher parts of her enclosure don't get underwater at all, but if she's in the low end when the rain starts really dumping, she seems to panic and can't find her way to the high end.
We have a sump pump in the back yard that pumps water out to the front ditch, which worked fine for a few years but the pump failed last year. We decided to replace the pump and have a French drain put in Elsa's enclosure. Therein lies the problem. They told me a French drain is a perforated pipe buried underground, covered with some sort of protective drain cloth, then the trench is "covered up." I ASSUMED they would just cover it back with the dirt they dug out to make the trench, but they covered it with gravel and topped it with sand. I didn't know this until we came home and it was all done.
The sand-covered pipe runs the entire inside perimeter of Elsa's enclosure, and that's EXACTLY where she walks so much of the time. I often see her with sand on her legs and sometimes on her face, and that's what worries me, although I always feed her on her terra-cotta saucer which is several feet away from the sand. I am considering laying down some pine straw mulch all around the perimeter to keep her off the sand, and hoping that won't interfere with the drain.
Any thoughts would be welcomed. Photos to follow.
I live in Louisiana where we get TONS of rain in light hurricane season, and weeks of DELUGES during a busy hurricane season. Our back yard does not drain well for a variety of reasons, which I will not bore you with here. My Hermann's tortoise, Elsa, lives in a large (18 x20) outdoor enclosure walled by cinderblock. When we get heavy, intense downpours, parts of her enclosure can get over 4 inches deep and stay that way for several hours. The higher parts of her enclosure don't get underwater at all, but if she's in the low end when the rain starts really dumping, she seems to panic and can't find her way to the high end.
We have a sump pump in the back yard that pumps water out to the front ditch, which worked fine for a few years but the pump failed last year. We decided to replace the pump and have a French drain put in Elsa's enclosure. Therein lies the problem. They told me a French drain is a perforated pipe buried underground, covered with some sort of protective drain cloth, then the trench is "covered up." I ASSUMED they would just cover it back with the dirt they dug out to make the trench, but they covered it with gravel and topped it with sand. I didn't know this until we came home and it was all done.
The sand-covered pipe runs the entire inside perimeter of Elsa's enclosure, and that's EXACTLY where she walks so much of the time. I often see her with sand on her legs and sometimes on her face, and that's what worries me, although I always feed her on her terra-cotta saucer which is several feet away from the sand. I am considering laying down some pine straw mulch all around the perimeter to keep her off the sand, and hoping that won't interfere with the drain.
Any thoughts would be welcomed. Photos to follow.
