Per-foot pricing works for a straight run through open lawn and stops working for everything else. What moves the number is whether the ground takes water at all, and whether there is a legal, downhill place to send it. Both are properties of the site, not of the length.

How much of the ground here sheds rather than drains

74% of the mapped ground in Clinton takes water in rather than shedding it, and at its fastest it moves water down at 13 inches an hour. That is unusually good, and it is the one condition under which a per-foot rate is close to honest: the run can often end in a soakaway on the property rather than being carried to a boundary. Ask for the infiltration rate the design assumed, because the whole saving rests on it.

The reasoning behind that

Yard drainage is priced per foot when the work is uniform: same depth, same soil, same surface, one outfall. Real yards are rarely uniform. A run that crosses a driveway, passes a mature tree, or changes depth to keep fall is three different rates in one length.

The bigger variable is the destination. Water has to arrive somewhere. On a sloping lot that somewhere is often free. On a flat lot it is a dry well sized to hold a storm, and the sizing is set by how fast the surrounding ground can absorb what is put into it.

A quote worth comparing states the depth, the pipe, the stone, the fabric and the outfall separately. Two per-foot numbers from two firms are not comparable unless those five match.

More on this: Yard and Lawn Drainage in Clinton, UT.

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