Amarillo sits on slow-drinking Pullman clay in playa country, and most of the year's rain shows up in a few hard summer storms. We design drainage that moves that water off your lot.
Tell us what the water is doing and we’ll call you back to set up a free on-site look.
What we do
French drains, surface inlets, sumps, regrading and repair -- chosen to match how water actually crosses your lot. We'll tell you which ones you need and which ones you can skip.
Pullman clay, playa basins, caliche and summer storms -- why Amarillo yards hold water.
Learn more →Gravel-and-pipe drains that pull water out of soggy clay and send it to a working outlet.
Learn more →Catch basins, channel drains, swales, and buried downspouts for yards that pond after storms.
Learn more →Gutters, grading, and perimeter drains that keep water from soaking the soil around your house.
Learn more →Pits and pumps for low lots with no downhill exit, including yards near playa basins.
Learn more →Regrading and swales that slope water away from your house and toward a working exit.
Learn more →Diagnosis and repair for clogged, crushed, or silted drains and buried downspout lines.
Learn more →Why Amarillo yards hold water
Four numbers from the weather service, the federal soil survey and the city explain most of the standing water we get called about.
Rain lands on Pullman clay loam, and a few inches down the subsoil runs 35 to 50 percent clay with slow permeability, so a summer cloudburst arrives far faster than the ground can take it in. Whatever can't sink in travels across the surface toward the nearest low point -- and around Amarillo the low points are playas, the shallow basins the city itself uses to hold storm runoff. If your yard sits between the rain and that low spot, it is part of the route. We trace all of it, from the 1889 storm that pushed the town to higher ground down to the clay under your grass, on Why Yards Flood in Amarillo.
How we think about it
On Amarillo clay, rainwater doesn't vanish into the yard. The Pullman subsoil takes it in slowly and swells as it wets, so a gravel pit buried in the low corner usually turns into a buried bathtub. The drains that hold up here are the ones that gather water and send it somewhere: perforated pipe in a gravel trench that falls steadily to an exit, a surface inlet piped toward the street where that's permitted, or a sump that lifts water out of a spot with no downhill.
So the first question on every job is where the water is allowed to leave. Answer that and the rest -- pipe size, trench depth, how many inlets -- follows. Skip it and even a neatly built drain has nowhere to empty, which is how a lot of expensive French drains end up full of standing water.
The visit
A free assessment starts with you telling us what the water does during a storm. Then we walk the property and answer three questions:
After that you get a written scope -- what we'd build, where it runs and why -- that you can hold up against anyone else's. There's no obligation. We don't price drainage over the phone, because the number depends on things we can only see standing in your yard.
Early warnings
Most drainage trouble in Amarillo shows itself well before water reaches a door. Watch for:
Where we work
We work across Potter and Randall counties and out to Canyon, Bushland, Panhandle, Hereford, Dumas, Borger, Pampa and the towns between. The Pullman series was first described in Potter County and its reference profile sits north of Hereford, so clay drainage isn't only a city problem.
Common questions
Amarillo's normal is 19.66 inches a year, but roughly 64 percent of that arrives between May and September, often in short, heavy storms. The Pullman clay under most lawns takes water in slowly, so a big storm outruns it and the excess runs to the nearest low spot. If that low spot is your yard, you get a pond in a dry year.
It can. Playas are the low points of small closed watersheds, and the city uses several of them to store stormwater. Land around a playa naturally tilts toward it, so lots on that slope can see runoff from neighbors and streets cross them on the way down. We look at where your lot sits on that slope before suggesting anything.
No. A drainage price depends on how far the water has to travel, how deep the trench runs, where it can legally discharge and whether a sump is needed. None of that is knowable from a phone call. We'll call you back to set up a free on-site assessment and give you a written scope after we've seen the lot.
Free on-site drainage assessments in Amarillo and across the Texas Panhandle. Call or send the form and we’ll set up a time to look.