I'm looking for something but I don't know what it's called

16 years ago

I have a pesky drainage problem I need to solve and I know what I need, but I don't know the name of it so I have no idea how to search for it on the web or ask for it at a store. After wasting countless hours googling and coming up with nothing, I thought I might ask here.

What I need is a big corrugated plastic pipe - the sort of thing you'd make a culvert with. I need the pipe to have "headwall" type ends like a culvert, and I would prefer this to all be cast together as a unit. I've tried googling drainpipe, plastic pipe, catch basin, and culvert, but so far, haven't come up with the thing I need.

The problem I'm trying to solve is that our driveway was built over a ditch - on the uphill side of our driveway, the ditch is your regular roadside runoff ditch, maybe 1 ft deep. On the downhill side, though, it drops off to a 30 ft ravine. I have a feeling that our builder just filled in the ravine and ran a corrugated metal pipe under the driveway - not really what he should have done, but after a little finagling, we've gotten that workable (the pipe was undersized and water often overflowed across the driveway, but we solved that by modifying the flow coming down towards the culvert.)

The problem is that surface runoff off the driveway and street are eroding the downhill side of the bank that supports the driveway, to the point where there is now about 2 ft of the culvert pipe exposed. If we don't do something soon, our driveway is going to erode into the ravine. We had the county conservation people out and they're the ones who told me to find this corrugated pipe with the Y-shaped headwall attached to it - they explained exactly how to install it so that I'm channeling and catching the surface runoff at the low point and then taking it down over the embankment in a pipe. But they didn't tell me what the pipe was called or where to get it (well, they said Home Depot had it, but of course the guy at HD looked at me like I had two heads and said he'd never heard of such a thing.)

So does anyone have any idea what this thing is called or where to get one? Thanks!

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Comments (3)

DYH
16 years ago
Are you talking about a headwall with wingwalls, or an endwall system?

Here is a link that might be useful: endwall system
sue36
16 years ago
I had DH who is a civil engineer read this and he couldn't follow what you were talking about based on your description. But he said HD only sells small stuff, you need a larger pipe provider. Here is a link to a place that supplies large stuff.

DH said you also need riprap where the water comes out of the pipe to prevent erosion.

Here is a link that might be useful: Eliminator Systems
lkplatow
Original Author
16 years ago
Wonbyherwits - that is sort of like I was thinking - maybe a little bigger. Basically, the way the county people described it to me, I should be able to buy the big (10"-12" diameter) black corrugated plastic pipe with Y-shaped "wings" on the ends, that would sort of serve as a funnel to collect the runoff and channel it down into the pipe. But I would want the wings to be only off to the sides, not on the top or bottom, since this pipe has to sit flush on the ground (the ground is too unstable from erosion to dig into it).