Picture it. It’s one of those glorious, Florida afternoons. The sun is shining, you’re floating free as can be in the Pool. You’re loving every minute of it. Then the thunder rolls and the lightning cracks and suddenly you’re scrambling out of the pool and into the house in order to beat the rain. And when it rains, it really rains — and keeps raining and raining and raining. Until suddenly, you notice that your pool’s water is gradually increasing with every drop until it’s spilling over! Where will all that access water go? Will the pool water hurt your soil? Will it flood and damage your lawn and plants?

There are hundreds of questions that go hand-in-hand with pools, how to keep them draining properly, and what you can do to ensure the health of your lawn isn’t going to be affected by a flooded pool. Luckily, we’ve been in the Florida landscaping business for two decades – that’s two decades worth of pool-flooding-the-lawn experience – and in that time, we’ve established some pretty clever, efficient landscape tricks to keep your lawn happy and healthy.

We get that, in Florida, pools can be a pretty necessary landscape feature, so nowhere in this article will you find us advising that you avoid adding a pool to your property. We will, however, gift you with some of our landscaping knowledge in order to help you best provide Drainage options for your pool to avoid any unwanted flooding. Read on for more!

Why Do I Need to Implement Drainage Into my Landscape if I Have a Pool?

Before you put in a pool, it’s likely you spend a ton of time working out position and location in order to avoid drainage issues. You probably look at slope, levels, and natural draining. Why? Because water only runs downhill, right, so if your pool is situated at an incline, on a slope, or higher than your house or lawn, any excess water is going to run downhill. That being said, you can’t always plan for your pool to be in the ideal spot, and you’ll need a drainage system to ensure that your house isn’t going to flood if your pool overflows. In less extreme cases, you could drown your landscape, plants, and trees if your pool is flooding, so you’ll want to ensure you have a drainage system in place in the event (which, honestly, is fairly likely in Florida) a monsoon amount of rain hits your pool.

But drainage issues can affect more than just the health of your plants, it can make pool water issues plausible, too. If the water is flooding and overflowing into plants, grass, and other areas of your landscape, it could possibly loosen the soil and dirt surrounding those areas and wash back into your pool. Sure, this sounds messy, but it could also be a chemical nightmare for your pool water if you use fertilizer in your lawn or on your plants.

There are hundreds of reasons that pool drainage systems built into your landscaping could be helpful. If you’re curious what can be done to your landscaping area in order to better allow your pool to drain, we’ve got good news – we’re here to help. Check out a few of our favorite drainage options below.

What Kind of Drainage Options am I Looking At?

When it comes to drainage problems, there are plenty of different solutions that we, as Landscapers, can provide you and your yard with. We’ve laid out a few of our favorites below:

French Drains

These types of drainage systems are also known as strip drains and are essentially large troughs that are built into your land that can handle a large volume of off-flow. This type of drain is typically dug deep into the ground, has a long, narrow gate, and collects water underground in order to funnel it somewhere else. Often, we will place French drains around the deck of the pool, in the ground, or blended into the deck floor of your pool. These types of drains are good solutions if your pool is on a slope with the decline leading toward your home or your plants. The water will run off into the French drain, collect underground, and funnel somewhere else instead of drowning your plants or flooding your home.

Reshape or Regrade the Land

Though this process is pretty involved, it’s one of the best ways to guarantee that your drainage issues are going to be a thing of the past. Consider reshaping or regrading the land with swales and dirt removal. You can remove bushes, level the area, dig out plants, and reconstruct the area entirely in order to provide a level foundation that wont allow water to drain downhill into your home or plants.

Creek Beds

Consider installing creek beds near your pool deck to let overflowing pool water and storm water be moved to the surface. A man-made creek bed is exactly what it sounds like – a creek bed you install in your yard with river cobble, weed fabric, boulder, and more in order to control the flow or overflowing pool water or rain water across your landscape. Not only does this add aesthetic value to your pool area, it’s incredibly functional, channeling the overflow of pool water away from your home and other areas.

Proper Sidewalk Slopes

It’s important to ensure that your paved surfaces are doing more than just providing aesthetics – they should be functional, too. We can help to make sure that your solid surfaces (sidewalks, pool decks, terraces, et. Cetera), have the proper slope. This can happen by either properly grading the area when you’re looking to install the pool, and also by installing retaining walls to aid with drainage issues.

Was our pool landscape conversation helpful? Did it help you get a better idea of what you might be missing in your landscape? At Landcrafters, we want to help you as much as possible, and if that means coming in to assess your pool drainage problems, you better believe we’ll be over in a flash to help. To schedule an appointment, work out a quote with our office, or just chat about the problem plaguing your pool, give our office a call at (727)-201-3947.  Want more inspiration, advice, and tips and tricks that might not be pool related? We can help there, too. Check out our blog on our website for more landscaping information!