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South Africa, Pretoria
1 Level
742 Review
48 Karma

Review on NDS FWAS24 50 Gallon Flo Stormwater Dry Well System Kit with Three Side Panels & One Cover, Black by Brian Henley

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Used 3 of these for my garden; in heavy rain no more water collects! Share some rcvd installation ideas from others.

Installed 3 of these in my garden. Uses one for each of the 3 gutters as well as the underground French NDS drainpipes. It has rained a few times and we no longer see puddles of water in large areas of the yard. I did a lot of research beforehand and checked many other brands as well as other methods. This was the solution I chose and it worked great for us. I also used an NDS surface intake on each of them. The top of this dry well can be covered with a drainpipe, but this should generally not be done to allow for the shifting of the ground over the years (e.g. earthquakes, etc.). I didn't seal mine. I have read many articles in other people's reviews on the internet, so I hope the following pointers will help others. I read a lot, had to cut out small drain holes and couldn't knock them out as instructed. In fact, I read the instructions and they mentioned that each of the fountain's curved walls should be placed on a solid support such as concrete blocks. I did this and they all popped out easily except for one (ours with 3 wells, 9 wall sections total). I tried without block support and of course it didn't work, reading the instructions helped! It is mentioned that larger holes for connecting pipes must be cut before they are "pushed out". Several online reviewers also mentioned that wall sections sometimes fall apart when being handled or installed. One of the tips mentioned by some people (which I followed and did) was to use a waterproof sealant when joining the sections. It worked absolutely perfectly. I built each well before digging each hole so it had time to set several hours. Bottom. There are several scenarios where a floor may be desirable, e.g. B. if you connect several of these together and want them to drain into other dry wells or just through pipes. I have seen where to buy the floor for such scenarios. I had to read a lot about how to drain it because we don't have space to remove excess water. So our solution was a bottomless dry well. Also, I lined the outside of each dry well with fabric recommended for French drains and dry wells. By the way, this fabric is not a typical landscape fabric. I won't go into detail, but a lot of people on the internet wrote that they just used regular landscape fabric. From what I've read (including engineers etc on the subject) I don't recommend it for long-term use. I also used a drainage cloth to line up each of the holes in the drying wells. Hope this helps others.

Pros
  • Easy to read control panel
Cons
  • Not the best