Vernal is high desert, but water still causes plenty of trouble. Spring snowmelt and summer thunderstorms can send a lot of water across a property in a short time, and it always heads for the lowest spot. Too often, that’s a basement window well, a garage door, or the middle of a driveway where it freezes into a sheet of ice. Clay soils in parts of the valley don’t soak water up quickly, so it sits on the surface or runs along foundations.
We start by figuring out where the water comes from and where it’s going. Sometimes the fix is as simple as regrading so the ground slopes away from your building. Other times it takes a French drain, a swale, a culvert under a driveway, or a combination. Either way, the goal is the same: move the water off your property safely and keep it away from the things you care about.
We know how snowmelt, summer storms, and clay soils move water across properties in the Basin.
Excavators, graders, and compaction equipment to regrade, trench, and install drains.
We'll start with the simplest fix that works and tell you if a bigger solution is really needed.
We protect lawns and hardscape where we can and leave the site clean and finished.
The best drainage solutions start with a little detective work. Water on the wrong side of a property usually has one main source and a couple of helpers. It might be a downspout dumping next to the foundation, a neighbor’s lot draining onto yours, a driveway that funnels runoff toward the garage, or ground that settled after a build. Fix the symptom without finding the source, and the puddle just moves a few feet over.
We walk the property, look at slopes, check where downspouts discharge, and ask where you see water and when. Photos from the last big storm or snowmelt help a lot.
Vernal is dry most of the year, which is exactly why drainage gets overlooked. Then a few weeks of spring snowmelt or one hard summer thunderstorm push more water across a lot than it sees the rest of the season. Clay soils in parts of the Ashley Valley don’t soak that water up quickly, so it runs along the surface and hugs foundations. In winter, any water that sits on pavement freezes, and freeze and thaw cycles work it into cracks and under slabs.
That pattern shapes how we design. A drainage system here has to handle short, heavy surges, not slow, steady rain.
Most jobs use one or two of these tools. Which ones fit depends on how much water you’re dealing with, how much room you have, and where it can go:
Regrading is usually step one, and our grading work handles that before anything gets buried.
Commercial properties have a different problem: a lot of hard surface shedding a lot of water fast. Lots with flat spots or clogged inlets turn into ponds every spring, and those ponds freeze into slick patches that customers and employees have to cross. Standing water also softens the base under asphalt, and heavy oilfield trucks rolling over soft spots turn them into potholes in a hurry. Sorting out the drainage first gives any parking lot repair a much better shot at lasting.
Drainage isn’t totally set and forget. Swales fill in with windblown dirt and leaves. Culverts collect tumbleweeds, kochia, and debris after storms. Downspout extensions get knocked loose by snow shovels. A quick walk around the property each fall, and again after the first big spring melt, catches most issues while they’re small.
French drains last longest when they’re built right the first time, with clean gravel, fabric where it’s needed, and trenching dug to a steady fall so water never sits in the pipe. When a buried line stops draining, the cause is usually a crushed section or an outlet that’s been covered over.
Every drainage plan needs a safe, legal outlet. Pushing water onto a neighbor’s property or into the road just trades one problem for another. We look for outlets like existing ditches, open ground with room to soak in, or a low spot on your own property well away from structures. If your project needs approval from the city or Uintah County, we’ll flag it so you can check before work starts.
Give us a call at (801) 669-0512 and we’ll come take a look at where your water is headed.
We walk your property, trace where water comes from, and find where it's collecting.
You get a written quote with the recommended fix and why it will work.
We regrade, trench, and install drains or culverts to move the water away.
We walk the finished work with you and explain how the water will flow from now on.
