In my opinion you absolutely need to regrade. If the builder is still in the picture, bring him in to fix it. You might ask your county if they have an inspection process which should have covered the finish grading.

You have a swamp in the making. Standing water will kill off the beneficial soil microbes which normally live in a landscape leaving those microbes which live in swamps. You'll have swamp grasses and nothing else.

Thanks dc, any chance the baby shampoo thing will help the water get absorbed faster? The home was built in 1980, I'm not sure if the lawn has settled recently. The back area has swampy gowth already and immediately behind the house there are spots where there is a lighter colored grass that is 3x's the length of the normal lawn grass, I am assuming these are wetland type grasses. I have a couple friends who do drainage and grading work so i'm going to see what the bill is going to be prior to looking for additional recourse to fix it. If it's a couple hundred bucks I'll just swallow it and get it done.

I had a grader come look at the lawn yesterday and he said grading was not really an option for me. He said it could be done but would be a massive undertaking and probably cost in the 4-5K range. He said better to trench some drainage pipes for the problem areas. I think I'm going to try doing a few baby shampoo treatments just for the heck of it prior to digging the drainage but I'm sure I'll have to at least run a couple pipes. Not the worst thing in the world, it just going to be a lot of shoveling on my part. I'll probably build an A-Frame level to make sure my line is running downhill and then just dig, put pipe and crushed in, cover with fabric and then topsoil over top. I'm going to bring in the topsoil I use to fill over the pipe because my clay is so thick I think it will almost defeat the purpose if I put it back in over the pipe.

Before giving up on regrading, call a couple landscapers. If they propose using a Skidsteer or Bobcat to regrade, keep calling. Those are not the tools to use. What they need is a tractor with a box blade. Here's a picture.

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A good driver should be able to do your yard in an hour. With a Bobcat it might take a week to do the same job.

Do they have to remove the sod first? That was what the "grading" guy told me.

Another thing I was thinking was getting a long 1" or so auger bit and trying to create drainage holes deep enough to get under the clay. I have no idea how deep that is but I would imagine I could eventually get to some other material and then just fill the holes with coarse sand. I realize this would probably involve drilling out a lot of holes but say the clay only went down 3 ft - that would be pretty quick work to drill out a couple dozen holes in the low areas and fill with sand. I could then work on topdressing with lots of OM each season to gradually try to improve the pore spaces in the soil at large. Of course, I don't know if I'm on a water table or not so it might not work either. Or I might have 6 ft of clay or worse. I have another landscaping company coming in tomorrow to look.

I think proper grading of your property is an important thing. Done wrong and you will have water in your basement or a pseudo swamp in parts of your backyard forever. I liken it to having a good roof on your house. It's just something that needs to be done right.

Personally, I would do a little research and find someone reputable to give you the real facts on what needs to be done to make it right, not just a "duct tape" solution. If money is an issue, I'd save up or add to the house financing or whatever in order to get it done right.

Couple more questions as I am continuing to do research. My Mom came over to my new house and we have sulfur water, or at least what I thought was sulfur water, she said she thinks it might be magnesium because that is what they had at their first house and we had the same conditions, smelly water and thick clay soil that didn't drain. So if it is just a case of too much magnesium in the soil, can I flush it out with Gypsum and viola, have my lawn drain properly? Or will it only work down so far? I don't know how deep the clay soil goes.

I was also considering getting one of those small bulb planting auger bits that you see on late night TV. Try to punch holes in the clay and get to whatever ground is below the clay and then fill the holes with very coarse sand. I would go to some of the real low spots and just sink like 10-15 2 inch holes and fill with sand. I would think that would allow the water to slowly drain out after a good rain event. Just throwing more ideas out. I think I'm going to get a soil test done before I do anything though to see if it might be corrected with some topdressing amendments.