We bought this house a few months ago. The soil is mostly compacted and I wanted to get to work improving it, but I'm learning we should build a swale first. Now that we've had heavy rain it looks like we have a drainage problem around the garage. Our water from the driveway, backside of our roof, and backyard all flow towards this one corner of the garage, and it builds a puddle around the whole garage and eventually drains around the back and neighbor's side of the garage. This morning there was actually water in the garage from the torrent we got last night.

The goal is to build a swale that can drain water from the pavement by the garage. But the point where the swale meets the pavement will have to be about 5 feet in front of the covered patio. As you can see, the backyard slopes up a few inches away from the pavement. I'd have to dig the swale 4 or 6 inches below the pavement. I should also mention our sewer line runs in the dirt a few inches from the pavement, but I think I can dig around it.

I am considering three options:

1. Build a swale which starts at the pavement, 5 feet from the covered patio. This would be removing a lot of dirt from near the covered patio, and there'd be water draining underground near its foundation.

2. Build the swale towards the middle of the yard with a short dry river from the low point in the pavement. This would involve removing more dirt than option 1 but might be safer on the covered patio.

3. Build the swale towards the middle of the yard, but above the level of the pavement. I think this could be done without any dirt removal. I think this could capture about half of the water that runs toward the big puddle, but I don't know if that will solve the water in the garage problem.

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