- 6 hours ago
There is a piece of concrete between your house and the street that is the single biggest reason your yard cannot drink. It is your sidewalk. And underneath it, hidden in plain sight, is a path to thousands of gallons of free water that is being routed past your property every time it rains.
In this video, I walk you through exactly how to redirect that water onto your own land — what it costs, who to hire for the part you cannot do yourself, and what the finished system looks like in the ground. The whole project runs between five hundred and twelve hundred dollars, all in. It pays itself off in two seasons. It works for the next fifty years.
I also share something my grandfather taught me when I was eight years old, with two clay flowerpots and a single bean in each. He never explained what he was showing me. He did not have to. Once you see it, you cannot un-see it, and you will start noticing every storm grate, every downspout, every flat featureless lawn for what it really is.
Walk out to your sidewalk during the next hard rain and watch where the water goes. Then tell me in the comments where you live, what your sidewalk looks like, and where your downspouts point. I read eve
In this video, I walk you through exactly how to redirect that water onto your own land — what it costs, who to hire for the part you cannot do yourself, and what the finished system looks like in the ground. The whole project runs between five hundred and twelve hundred dollars, all in. It pays itself off in two seasons. It works for the next fifty years.
I also share something my grandfather taught me when I was eight years old, with two clay flowerpots and a single bean in each. He never explained what he was showing me. He did not have to. Once you see it, you cannot un-see it, and you will start noticing every storm grate, every downspout, every flat featureless lawn for what it really is.
Walk out to your sidewalk during the next hard rain and watch where the water goes. Then tell me in the comments where you live, what your sidewalk looks like, and where your downspouts point. I read eve
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Right now, somewhere in this country, it is raining.
00:04Tens of thousands of gallons of clean, soft, free water are falling on the roof of a house.
00:10They are running down the gutter, splashing into a downspout,
00:14washing across a driveway, flowing past a sidewalk,
00:18and disappearing into a storm grate at the curb.
00:21That water is gone.
00:24It is not feeding the soil.
00:26It is not watering the trees.
00:28It is not soaking into the ground around the house.
00:31It is on its way to the nearest river, and from there to the ocean.
00:36And the same week that water leaves, the man who lives in that house
00:41is going to walk out into his dying yard with a garden hose in his hand
00:45and pay the water company to give him back water that the sky already gave him for free.
00:53My name is Elias Yoda.
00:55I am Amish.
00:56I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
00:59I have not paid a water bill in my life.
01:02My pasture stays green in August, when my English neighbor's lawns are the color of straw.
01:09My corn yields better than the farms on either side of mine,
01:13and I have never once stood in a field with a hose or a sprinkler or any kind of irrigation
01:19rig.
01:20The reason has nothing to do with luck and nothing to do with the weather.
01:25It has to do with what my great-grandfather did to this land in 1879,
01:30what my grandfather added to it in 1923,
01:34and what my own father taught me to keep doing every spring of my life.
01:40I want to show you something today that almost nobody outside of my community knows about,
01:46and there is a piece of concrete between your house and the street that is the single biggest reason your
01:53yard cannot drink.
01:54It is your sidewalk, and underneath it, hidden in plain sight, is a path to thousands of gallons of free
02:03water that is being routed past your property every time it rains.
02:08I am going to show you exactly how to redirect that water onto your own land.
02:14I am going to walk you through what it costs, who you need to hire for the part you cannot
02:19do yourself,
02:20and what the finished system looks like when the dirt goes back in place.
02:24Stay with me. This one matters.
02:27By the end, you will understand why your yard is dying when it should not be.
02:32You will know how to fix it in one weekend,
02:34and you will understand the part that should make you uneasy,
02:38which is that an entire industry has been built around selling you the cure for a problem the sky was
02:45already solving for you,
02:47free of charge, every time it rained.
02:50Let me start with what most folks do not understand about water,
02:54because if you do not understand this, none of the rest of what I say will help you.
02:59Water does not belong to the water company.
03:01The water company sells it to you, yes.
03:05They pump it out of the ground, and they treat it,
03:07and they push it through pipes to your house, and they bill you for it.
03:11But they did not make the water.
03:14The water came from the sky.
03:16The sky has been giving it away free for as long as there has been a sky.
03:21In a single year, a roof the size of an average house,
03:25say 2,500 square feet, will catch somewhere between 30,000 and 70,000 gallons of rainwater.
03:33I am not exaggerating.
03:34You can do the math yourself.
03:37One inch of rain on 1,000 square feet of roof produces about 620 gallons of water.
03:43The numbers add up faster than most folks realize.
03:47In a normal year, the roof of your house alone catches enough water to fill a backyard swimming pool.
03:53Twice, the same week that water washes off your roof,
03:57you turn on your hose and pay the utility company $200 to water the same yard the rain just rolled
04:04off of.
04:05I want you to sit with that for a moment.
04:07Because once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
04:12Every gutter on every house in your neighborhood,
04:15every storm grate at every curb is a leaky faucet.
04:19Free water pouring away while your neighbor stands in his dying grass with a hose in his hand,
04:25wondering why his water bill keeps going up.
04:28When I was a boy, maybe eight years old,
04:31my grandfather Daniel took me out to the kitchen garden one morning in April.
04:35He was carrying two clay flower pots, both the same size,
04:40both filled with the same garden soil.
04:42He set them down on the porch rail.
04:45In the first pot, he mounded the soil up into a little hill in the middle,
04:50smooth, rounded, like the top of a baby's head.
04:53In the second pot, he pressed his thumb down into the middle of the soil
04:58and made a shallow bowl, a little dip,
05:01the way you would shape soil if you were about to plant a tree.
05:05Then he handed me a single bean from his pocket.
05:08He told me to push it down into the top of the little hill in the first pot.
05:13He handed me another bean and told me to drop it into the bowl in the second pot.
05:18We covered both seeds with the same amount of soil.
05:22Then he said,
05:24Every morning before breakfast, you bring a cup of water out to this porch
05:28and you pour half on each pot.
05:31Same amount, same time, same place.
05:34We will see what we see.
05:37I did this for three weeks.
05:39I never missed a morning.
05:41The bean in the hill never came up.
05:44Not once.
05:45The soil on top of that little mound stayed dry as bone every day,
05:51no matter how much water I poured on it.
05:53The water just rolled down the sides of the hill and ran off the lip of the pot.
05:59The bean in the bowl came up on the eighth day.
06:02By the end of the third week, it had two leaves.
06:06By the end of the month, it had four.
06:08By July, it was climbing a stick.
06:12My grandfather did not explain what he was teaching me.
06:15He did not need to.
06:16He pointed at my neighbor's yard across the lane,
06:20flat, smooth, sloped slightly away from the house toward the road,
06:25and he said,
06:26That yard is the hill in the pot.
06:29And he pointed at our garden,
06:31which was terraced and pitted and shaped,
06:34and he said,
06:35This one is the bowl.
06:37I have never forgotten it,
06:39and it is the single most important idea in this whole video.
06:43The shape of your yard determines whether it drinks the rain
06:48or whether it sheds the rain.
06:51That is the entire game.
06:54A yard shaped like a smooth, sloping hill,
06:57which is what almost every house in America has,
07:00because builders bulldoze the lot flat
07:03and then slope it slightly away from the foundation,
07:06and they pour a sidewalk and a curb on top of it,
07:09that yard cannot drink.
07:11The water hits the roof,
07:13runs down the gutter,
07:15hits the driveway,
07:16hits the sidewalk,
07:18hits the curb,
07:19and the entire system is designed to move it away from your house
07:23as fast as possible.
07:25Your builder did not give you a yard.
07:28He gave you a roof tilted out toward the road,
07:31with a series of concrete barriers between the rain and your soil.
07:36And the biggest of those barriers is your sidewalk.
07:40Your sidewalk is the choke point.
07:42It is the wall between your yard and the place the water is going.
07:46If you put one small hole through that wall,
07:49a four-inch pipe set in concrete,
07:51sloped so water flows from the street side back into your yard,
07:55you change everything.
07:57Now when it rains,
07:59the water that would have run past your sidewalk into the storm grate
08:02gets diverted underneath the sidewalk,
08:05back into your yard,
08:06into a system you have built
08:08to catch it and soak it into the ground.
08:11Free water.
08:13Thousands of gallons a year.
08:15On to your own property.
08:17This is what I want to walk you through.
08:19The first thing you have to know
08:21is that you cannot cut the sidewalk yourself.
08:24In almost every town in America,
08:27the sidewalk is technically public property.
08:30Your town is going to have rules about who can cut it
08:32and how it has to be put back.
08:35You hire a sidewalk contractor.
08:37They have the saw,
08:39they have the city permit,
08:40and they know the rules.
08:42In most towns,
08:43it will run you somewhere between $500 and $1,000
08:46to cut a section,
08:48embed the pipes,
08:49and pour the concrete back.
08:51That sounds like money.
08:52It is money.
08:54But it is one payment,
08:56one time.
08:57And after that,
08:58you have a system that catches free water
09:00for the next 50 years.
09:02If your community will not let you cut the sidewalk,
09:06you can do almost the same thing
09:08by cutting through the curb instead.
09:10A curb cut,
09:11where the water from the street
09:12is allowed to flow directly into a depression
09:15you have dug in your front yard.
09:17Same idea,
09:18same result.
09:19Either way,
09:21the goal is to get the water across the line.
09:24When the contractor comes,
09:26you tell him this.
09:27You want two 4-inch PVC pipes
09:30set into the new concrete,
09:32running from the street side
09:33to the yard side,
09:35sloped about 2 inches downward
09:37toward the yard.
09:38Two pipes,
09:39not one,
09:40so if one clogs with leaves,
09:42the other one still works.
09:44The pipes need to stick out a little
09:46on both sides of the sidewalk
09:47so you can connect to them later.
09:50That is the only part you pay someone else for.
09:53The rest,
09:54you do yourself with a shovel.
09:56On your side of the sidewalk,
09:58the yard side,
09:59you are going to dig a trench.
10:01The trench runs from the ends
10:03of those two PVC pipes
10:05back into your yard,
10:07sloping gently downhill.
10:08It does not have to go far.
10:1010 or 15 feet is plenty for most lots.
10:14At the end of that trench,
10:15you are going to dig
10:16the most important hole
10:17in your whole yard.
10:19We call it a soaking pit.
10:21The English have started calling it
10:23an infiltration basin.
10:25Same idea.
10:26We have been digging them
10:27since before there was a word for them.
10:29A soaking pit is a round hole
10:32about 3 feet across,
10:33about 3 to 4 feet deep.
10:35You line the bottom
10:37with about a foot of coarse gravel,
10:39the kind with big chunks,
10:40the size of your thumb.
10:42On top of that,
10:43you put a layer of smaller stone,
10:45pea gravel size.
10:47The whole thing acts like a sponge.
10:49Water pours into it,
10:51sinks down through the gravel,
10:53and from there,
10:54it has nowhere to go
10:55but sideways into the soil.
10:57The plants and trees
10:59within 30 feet of that pit
11:01are the healthiest plants
11:02on the whole lot.
11:04The two pipes from under the sidewalk
11:06come into the top of that pit.
11:08When it rains,
11:09water flows from the street,
11:11down the gutter of the road,
11:12into the pipes,
11:13under the sidewalk,
11:15down the trench,
11:16and dumps into the soaking pit.
11:18From there,
11:19it spreads sideways underground,
11:21feeding everything growing nearby.
11:24There is no standing water,
11:26no mosquito breeding ground,
11:28no swamp in your yard.
11:29Just gravel under sod,
11:31with the entire output
11:33of one good rainstorm
11:34sitting underneath it,
11:36being slowly drunk by the soil.
11:38I had an Englisher
11:39who lives down the road from me
11:41try this last summer.
11:42He has a big maple tree
11:44by his front porch
11:45that was dying,
11:46leaves browning in July,
11:48branches dropping.
11:50He paid a contractor
11:51$600 to cut his sidewalk
11:53and set two pipes.
11:55He dug the trench
11:56and the pit himself
11:58in one Saturday afternoon.
11:59That fall,
12:00the tree leafed out late
12:02and looked thin.
12:03By the next summer,
12:05the same tree was full and green
12:07and putting out new growth.
12:09He told me
12:09he had not watered it once.
12:11He just stopped
12:12letting the rain run away from it.
12:14That is what one weekend of work
12:17and one contractor's invoice
12:19will do for your yard.
12:21Now I want to take it
12:23one step further,
12:24because the system
12:25I just described is good,
12:26but you can make it better.
12:28And this is the part
12:30my grandfather built
12:31into our farmhouse in 1923,
12:33which has been feeding water
12:35to my kitchen
12:36and my wife's garden
12:37for 100 years.
12:40Above ground,
12:41between the sidewalk
12:42and the soaking pit,
12:43you can put a barrel.
12:45A barrel set in the trench
12:47with the two pipes
12:48from the sidewalk
12:49feeding into it
12:50from one side
12:51and an overflow pipe
12:52out the other side
12:53going to the soaking pit.
12:55The barrel acts like a buffer.
12:58Most of the water
12:59that comes through the pipes
13:00during a rainstorm
13:01fills the barrel first.
13:03The overflow,
13:04only the excess,
13:06goes on to the soaking pit.
13:08Now you have stored water
13:10you can use directly.
13:12You put a tap
13:13on the side of the barrel,
13:14low down.
13:15You hook a garden hose
13:17to that tap.
13:17When you want to water
13:19your tomatoes
13:20or your wife's flower bed
13:22or fill the chicken's water dish,
13:24you do not turn on the spigot
13:26connected to the water company.
13:28You turn on the tap
13:29on the barrel.
13:30Free water,
13:31gravity fed,
13:33no pump,
13:34no electricity,
13:35no bill.
13:36A 55-gallon plastic drum
13:39will run you about $30
13:40at any farm supply store.
13:43A larger plastic tank,
13:45300 gallons,
13:46500 gallons,
13:48runs $400 to $600.
13:50Whichever you choose,
13:52it pays itself off
13:53in about one season.
13:55Now under our kitchen,
13:57the cistern my grandfather
13:58built in 1923
14:00is the same idea,
14:02just bigger and underground.
14:04It is a brick room
14:068 feet deep,
14:0712 feet long,
14:08lined with hand-laid stone.
14:10It holds 9,000 gallons.
14:13The gutters of the house
14:15pour straight into it.
14:16A hand pump
14:17on our kitchen counter
14:19draws water up from it.
14:21And from a tap
14:22on the south wall
14:23of the house,
14:24a gravity fed pipe
14:25runs out to the garden
14:27so my wife can water
14:28her tomatoes
14:29without ever touching anything
14:31connected to a water company.
14:34Cisterns like ours
14:35are not exotic.
14:37100 years ago,
14:38almost every house
14:39in America had one.
14:41There is a neighborhood
14:42in Columbus, Ohio
14:44called German Village,
14:45and if you walked it today
14:47and looked underground,
14:49you would find
14:49a brick cistern
14:51buried beneath
14:52nearly every property.
14:53The same is true
14:55in old parts of Philadelphia,
14:57of Baltimore,
14:58of any city
14:59that grew up
14:59before municipal water lines.
15:02People knew
15:03the sky was the source.
15:05They built to catch it.
15:07Then the water companies came.
15:09The cisterns
15:10got filled in with dirt.
15:12The gutters
15:13got pointed
15:13at the storm sewer.
15:15A generation later,
15:17nobody remembered
15:18there was a brick room
15:19under the kitchen.
15:20I want to take a moment here
15:22because this is the part
15:24that I think matters most,
15:25and because the people
15:26who watch this channel
15:28deserve the truth
15:29about why this knowledge
15:31was lost.
15:32Think about who profits
15:34when your rain runs
15:35into the storm sewer.
15:37The water utility profits.
15:39Every gallon of rain
15:41that washes off your roof
15:42and disappears down the street
15:44is a gallon they get
15:46to sell you back.
15:47A typical American household
15:49uses 30 to 50 percent
15:52of its water
15:52on outdoor irrigation.
15:55Lawns, gardens,
15:57flower beds,
15:58washing the car.
15:59All of that water
16:01is being purchased
16:02from a utility,
16:03billed at a utility rate,
16:05when it could have been free
16:06and on site.
16:08Multiply that across
16:10a hundred million households
16:12and you are looking at
16:13billions of dollars a year
16:15in revenue
16:15that exists entirely
16:17because nobody
16:18is catching their rain.
16:20The lawn care industry profits.
16:23A yard that cannot drink
16:25the rain that falls on it
16:26needs constant irrigation,
16:28constant fertilizer,
16:30constant treatment.
16:32Every dollar you spend
16:33on sprinkler systems,
16:35lawn services,
16:36weed killer,
16:37soil amendments,
16:38that is money
16:39you would not be spending
16:41if the shape of your yard
16:43let it drink for itself.
16:44The landscaping industry profits.
16:47Flat lots are cheap to build
16:48and easy to mow.
16:50Shape lots are slower to build
16:52and require more thought.
16:54Builders standardized on flat
16:56because flat is fast
16:58and the consequence
16:59that your yard
17:00cannot hold water
17:01was not their problem.
17:03Even the stormwater bond market profits.
17:06Towns and cities go into debt
17:08to build bigger and bigger pipes,
17:10bigger tunnels,
17:12bigger flood control systems,
17:13all to handle the runoff
17:15from yards that were never designed
17:17to hold their own water.
17:20Underground storm tunnels
17:21in some cities
17:22now cost a billion dollars apiece.
17:25That debt is held by bondholders,
17:28paid back by your tax dollars,
17:30and the entire premise
17:31that water must be moved away
17:33as fast as possible
17:35was never questioned.
17:37I am not telling you this
17:38to upset you.
17:39I am telling you because
17:41once you see it,
17:42you cannot stop seeing it.
17:44Every storm grate,
17:46every downspout
17:47pointed at a sidewalk,
17:49every flat, featureless lawn,
17:51that is a system designed
17:53to take a free resource
17:55and turn it into
17:56someone else's revenue.
17:58We did not lose
18:00this knowledge by accident.
18:01We lost it
18:02because somebody benefited
18:04from the loss.
18:05We kept it on Amish farms
18:07because we had to.
18:09When you do not have
18:10a water company,
18:11you have to catch
18:12your own rain.
18:13When you have caught
18:15your own rain for 200 years,
18:17you do not forget how.
18:19So here is what
18:20I want you to do.
18:22Walk out to your sidewalk
18:23during the next hard rain.
18:25Stand on it and watch.
18:27Watch where the water
18:29from your yard goes
18:30when it hits the concrete.
18:32Watch where the water
18:34from the street goes
18:35when it runs down the gutter
18:37past your house.
18:38Watch the storm grate
18:40at the corner,
18:41take everything in.
18:43That is the water
18:44you are losing.
18:45That is the money
18:47you are paying
18:47to replace it.
18:49Then make a plan.
18:51Call a sidewalk contractor.
18:53Get a quote
18:54on cutting one section
18:55and setting two
18:56four-inch pipes through it.
18:58While you are waiting
18:59for the work to be scheduled,
19:01dig your trench
19:02and your soaking pit.
19:04Buy a barrel.
19:05The whole project
19:06costs somewhere
19:07between $500 and $1,200
19:10all in,
19:11depending on whether
19:12you add the barrel
19:13and how big a tank
19:15you choose.
19:16It pays itself off
19:17in two seasons.
19:19It works for the next
19:2050 years.
19:22If your town
19:23will not let you
19:24cut the sidewalk,
19:25do the curb cut instead.
19:27If you cannot do
19:28the curb cut,
19:29run a four-inch
19:30flexible pipe
19:31from your downspout
19:33straight to a soaking pit
19:35in the middle
19:35of your yard.
19:36Any of these work.
19:38Any of these
19:39get you free water
19:40out of the sky
19:41and into the soil
19:43where it belongs.
19:44Tell me in the comments
19:46below where you live,
19:47what your sidewalk
19:48looks like,
19:49where your downspouts point.
19:51I read every one
19:53of these.
19:53And tell me
19:54if you do the work.
19:56I want to hear
19:56how it goes.
19:58Next time,
19:59I'm going to take you
20:00down into the brick cistern
20:01under my kitchen,
20:02the inside of it,
20:04the hand pump,
20:05the gravity feed pipe
20:07that runs to my wife's garden,
20:08and I'm going to walk you
20:10through what it would
20:11actually cost
20:12to build a smaller version
20:14of the same thing
20:15in your own basement.
20:17You will not believe
20:18how affordable it is
20:20when you stop letting
20:21other people
20:22sell you the water
20:23that the sky
20:24is already giving you
20:25for free.
20:26Until then,
20:28walk your land,
20:29watch the water,
20:31and remember,
20:32the people who built
20:33this country
20:34with their hands
20:35knew things
20:36we are only
20:37just starting
20:38to remember.
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