French Drains and Yard Drainage in Lenexa, KS

A city that plans for stormwater

Lenexa is known in the metro for how it handles stormwater at the city scale. Its Rain to Recreation program built detention and stream corridors into parks, and Lake Lenexa at Black Hoof Park is part of that system. What that program manages is public water: streams, basins and streets. What happens between your roof and the street is still yours, and the yards between 87th Street Parkway and K-10 collect water the same way they do anywhere with clay underfoot.

What we see in Lenexa yards

Older homes in the eastern part of the city, near the original town and Pflumm Road, tend to have settled grading and original downspout setups, so regrading and buried downspout lines are the usual fix. Newer neighbourhoods to the west, around Prairie Star Parkway and City Center, have larger lots on rolling ground where a rear yard slopes down to a common area and holds water along the bottom. That wet strip is a textbook case for a French drain outletting to the lower ground behind it.

Outlets and connections

Because Lenexa manages its stormwater system closely, any drain that would connect to a street inlet or public structure has to be allowed by the city first. Otherwise the outlet stays on the lot, as daylight on a slope, a pop-up emitter or a dry well. Utilities are marked through Kansas811 before any digging. Neighbouring Shawnee and Olathe share the same creek systems.

Lenexa drainage questions