There. I fixed it.

I spent the early part of this morning trying to figure out how I was going to get the front yard to drain away from the porch. The working criteria I had was, Spend less than $50, it has to work 100% of the time automatically, and it can't cause other problems.

Since I have DEMCO as my occasional electricity provider, an electric pump didn't satisfy the above criteria. Installing a French drain system would be over budget and installing a lip on the porch would work, but would not allow water out if any got in.

So I stared at the front of the house for a while and decided to get a hose and let water and gravity show me my problem.

I started the water running and watched what happened. I made the assumption, (correctly as it turned out), that the slab is actually fairly level, so that showed me that I have a decent slope off the the south along the front of the house.

As the water started to pool, I started cutting through the high spots until it pooled again and showed me another high spot. After I got the water flowing away from the house, I looked at how much the sod had over the years, with the assistance of some aggressive fire ants, risen across the front drain field.

I then decided to start stripping the drain field to get the path regraded properly.

Here is the semi-finished product after about a dozen wheelbarrows of mud and sod dumped into the open pit.

The St. Augustine should retake it this spring and then it should start looking a bit better, but now I have at least 2" of clearance on the porch opening when the water is flowing all the way to the driveway.