Any progress on this issue? Do not add any soil to you property until you have a full drainage plan! ÃÂ Getting an engineer involved is advisable, but expensive, I know, I am one. :-) ÃÂ Consider these issues: 1. Drainage should take water away from the house, as quickly as possible, w/o flooding or causing erosion to you or others. Water near the house can cause many problems: ÃÂ movement near the foundation can move soil, which could cause the house to move. More immediately is the dry rot the moisture will cause to the wood of the house. Mold can form ÃÂ Maintaining any vegetation is a problem. Mosquitos will love it.ÃÂ 2. Adding fill material improperly could make matters worse.ÃÂ 3. Water always flows downhill. So, where is the water going. Try to follow it. The best way is to get the elevations of your property surveyed. I love the ability of a contour map to communicate slope of the ground. And water will follow the slope.ÃÂ 4. Decide on the outlets for water from your property. ÃÂ Drain water to the street, if possible. ÃÂ If not, build dry wells, but check percolation rates carefully. ÃÂ Be very careful about draining water on to neighboring property.ÃÂ 5. Find the sources of the water.ÃÂ 6. ÃÂ Create drain paths from (or near) sources to the outlets: There are several options to do this: (a) ditch, which needs a slope of at least 1%, 3 % is recommended; (b) Underground drain, such as a French Drain, which needs no slope, or a mini-storm drain pipe, which only it needs at least 0.1% slope, or combine French Drain and pipe; (c) pressure pipe,collect the water at a central spot and then pump the water. There are a lot of pages about all of these issues on the Web. This can be a big job.ÃÂ Good luck!

Old topic but wanted to share my input. I'm growing hydroponic tomatoes (various strains) at university in a lab setting (indoors under HID lights) and outdoors in a greenhouse. In one of my greenhouse NFT systems, i recently had a similar problem on 1 tomato plant (total 9 plants that share the same res and tubes). But im gonna try to diagnose your issue by mentioning what others missed out on. 1 major cause of leaf curl is compaction of root system (i.e. roots are compressed or dont have enough space to expand). This risk is exacerbated in hydroponic systems that use tubes. This was the problem i had and had to replace tubes with square tubings that have a liftable top. Once you have access to roots, you must seperate them strand by strand (i.e. so they arent sticking together). In your setup, this risk will further be exacerbated because you filled the entire pvc tube with hydroton (right?). Remove hydroton from tube and place the plant in a net cup with hydroton. Nitrogen burns usually cause browning/yellowing of leaves (similar to sun/heat burn) and not purpling. Test your solution for each chemical if possible, or use a commonly employed aggregated measuring device that shows total concentration in ppm (dont let it exceed 2500). In my system, only one plant was affected. Coincidentally, it was the largest of all plants with the most root mass. I let another normal one grow to its size to see whether it would undergo the same problem, and it did. Viral and bacterial infections that cause leaf roll usually cause it to roll up. Same with the physiological roll. If your leafs roll down AND if your stems bend, this is caused by a diminishing turgor pressure (read: not enough water reaching afflicted area). Mist several times when lights are off (no photosysnthesis) and observe increasing turgor pressure (unbending). Or, untangle roots and remove hydroton from from pipes. I tested various growing methods including fully and partially submerged roots. They all work but a submerged root cannot intake oxygen; it has to borrow oxygen from another part of the plant (i.e. a root part that isnt submerged or above ground stem). This requires energy for transportion and isnt the most efficient (optimal) way for growth and cellular processes. Lastly, an airstone in the reservoir is useless unless the reservoir is completely airtight all the way up to the plant holes. Better to keep small airstones in the pipes right under the plant roots. Those that say aerating the res prevents bacterial development.. is false. If you dont have air in res, you will get anaerobic bacteria (they grow/accumulate slowly but acidify the solution); if you have air in res, you get aerobic bacteria (not acidifying but grow extremely fast). Most bacteria prefer aerobic environments for optimum growth.

Abiotlegesse, As the OP who lived through this the last couple of years, my first thought to your post was RUN. For us, our problem only got worse until serious and expensive interventions happened. "Grading" and "scraping" our back and front side yard (done by the builder as a solution to my complaint) DIDN'T work. The developer did nothing to correct our problem - there was a lot of talk, but nothing was actually done by him. The builder tried the scraping and grading. But, by the time we got another heavy rain that proved it didn't work, our one year builder warranty was expired. However, I will say that French drains (multiple) did finally work for us. Late last summer, our neighbor to the west of us put in French drains that wrapped all the way around his back yard and emptied into his and my front yard, with our permission (he did this because his backyard was starting to flood so badly that it was coming into his house). Since a good deal of our water flows downhill from his house (and the houses west of him) his French drains helped the flooding on the west side of our backyard a bit. But, his French drains could't help the water that also was flowing from the houses behind us (south of us) into our backyard. Late this spring, my husband installed French drains along the middle and east side of our back fence line and down the east side of our backyard up to the front yard all the way to street. He also hooked into our western neighbor's French drain that was emptying into the west side of our front yard and he extended that out to empty into the street as well. Since then, we've had two very heavy (days long) stints of rain and I'm happy to say that our flooding problem is gone. We still have some minor puddling issues on the west side of our yard behind our shed (where we didn't install a French drain). But, we no longer have a river flowing through our backyard. And, even better, we no longer have the resulting lake sitting our backyard that then stays for several days to weeks before finally evaporating. I can't say whether or not they would be able to bring legal action against you if you backed out at this time. However, I will say that if you move forward with buying the house, before closing, you should try very hard to get the drainage issue documented in writing, detailing what the developer and/or builder has done so far to correct the issue, the fact that the issue is still not completely corrected, and that the developer and/or the builder will take further actions to ensure the issue is corrected to your satisfaction. Buying the house without some sort of written agreement about the specific existing issue will only make it that much harder for you to get them to correct later. For me, it was clear that we would need to take our developer to court if we wanted him to pay to correct our drainage issues. After a lot of debate and thought, we decided to spend our money on just fixing the problem ourselves versus legal fees that might get the developer to pay to fix our problem. We've certainly learned quite a bit about home buying the hard way with this experience (and it wasn't our first house buying experience). On the bright side, since we don't intend to retire here, we can use what we've learned to hopefully make the next buying experience much better.

Do you know why it's collecting there in the first place? Do you know what the development/county/city plan is for the surface drainage of your property and the surrounding property? If so, you should drain to there. As for calculating gravel needs for a french drain, it's pretty much length * depth * width, minus the volume of the drainage pipe. Your edges aren't going to be perfect, so add in some extra for that. However, a french drain may not be the right solution, and even if it is, you'll still need a way to keep silt and debris from building up inside it and/or a way to clean it out. Drainage is complicated, and I would recommend either a ton of reading or consulting a professional if you want it done right. This is one of the best comprehensive writeups that covers drainage. Don't be put off by the fact that it says it's written for golf courses. Drainage Systems for Golf Courses Dr. Ed McCoy Ohio State University