The good news is that the flooded area is small and clearly at the low spot of my side yard. I was thinking about building a dry well to drain the water.

Any suggestions around how to do this? Is it as easy as just digging a hold 4 feet deep, filling it up with crushed stone, and putting a drain pipe into the middle of it just below the level of the grass?

Does this method work pretty well or are there more sophisticated approaches? Anything you can buy pre-built that makes it easier?

My soil is not clay so I think it should work.

Thanks a lot for your advice!
-Dave

You are missing the point or area of entry for that water to enter the drainage stone. One choice is to put in a catch basin for the water to enter the system at the lowest point of the swale. It would be important to put a silt fabric over the stone and then at least 6" of soil for your lawn to survive over the stone.

Another option is to make a trench that is filled all the way to the surface with drain rock. You would be looking at the drain rock, so you would probably like to make it look more interesting like a dry creek bed. You would not need a pipe with that method.

Also, how much water ponds at a time(a couple of inches, a foot, etc, and over how large an area?), and how long does it take to disappear in a typical rainfall event. Under heavy rainfall situations and without an impermeable layer to be broken through to a more permeable soil layer below, a dry sump is unlikely to make any difference in high rainfall events, unless it is sized sufficiently to handle all the water.

Might it make more sense to treat this area as a boggy planting area and lose the lawn, and plant water loving plants?