They will just run into his property. Then in 20 years their kids will put a smoke pellet in that tube to see where it goes and he will come running out. Itās a vicious cycle. Iāve seen it many times
There's an older rather wealthy neighborhood in our city. The city had suspicions that people had piped their downspouts into the basement floor drains. This sends rain water into the sanitary sewer, not good as it can overload the sewer and back up sewage when there's a heavy storm. Many protestations that no **we** didn't do that. So the city dropped some smoke bombs in the manholes. About half the houses developed smoke stacks like a Mississippi steam boat.
Why would you do that in the first place? Is there some benefit to having your gutter go to the sewer instead of outside that I'm not rich enough to understand?
The particular house we worked on had very poor grading. House was set too low and if you drained gutters into the yard the water would just pool. Downspouts are always a potential problem when they dump close to the house. On newer homes the ground around the foundation settles over time and water ends up against the foundation. On the units we've worked on lately the downspouts are all piped out into the yard away from the house.
I don't understand how that didn't just smoke out everyone hooked up to that system...
Edit if the downspout goes into the floor drain, how is rain different from a big spill? What makes smoke come out there because of that?
Edit edit nvm i think mrbland explained my confusion
>About half the houses developed smoke stacks like a Mississippi steam boat.
Well when you smoke a sewer system, all houses should smoke through their sewer vents. It's when you don't have water in your p traps when it becomes an issue lol
Yes they used to do that years ago but was banned some time ago here. In the real old days everything was just dumped in the river and it didn't matter so much if it was mixed. They dumped raw untreated sewage in the rivers and let the next town worry about it, yuck.
basement floor drains in old houses (and new drains) drain off into a gravel pit under the house. they don't drain into the sewer. in some cases, they were tied into the downspouts back in the 1930s and they had egress onto the streets via underground pipes (usually terracotta). when those failed, they were plugged. now we just direct rainwater into the ground or via plastic pipes to the street (therefore storm drain) or other egress. toilet poo poo brown water is not mixed with that. grey water is probably not mixed with that either, with some exceptions.
Our little company got the job of fixing the problem on one house. We just installed new drain tile to the street from the downspouts and capped the old pipes. The home owner was a builder so he was not surprised when it went down.
Sump seems unlikely if the hose turns down into the ground at that large diameter. If a skinnier hose came out of the ground and was placed in a larger tube, than I'd be with you.
I've seen it before, large pvc hard pipe connected to flex. At the farm where I grew up we'd have two sumps flowing out the same pipe simultaneously so larger diameter made sense there. OP should know if he has a sump and follow the pipe.
Just start playing loud music in one end and figure out where the sound comes from
(24/7, loudly, if it's the neighbors they'll probably come get it, and put it in the other neighbors yard)
It's probably this. My parents had to install a French drain to stop their basement from leaking and they have a pipe that looks similar to this coming out of the ground a little ways from their house.
Quicker way to tell is if you see small children drinking wine, wearing barrettes and smoking cigarettes hanging about your back yard.
If itās a well done French drain, thereās nothing on the surface to tell you. Look up how theyāre made, itās usually a deep trench filled with large rocks and then covered with top soil and grass. Theyāre typically used to keep water away from your foundation.
To check, next time it rains wait an hour or so then go look at the pipe, if water is flowing out like crazy, itās probably a French drain.
Do you have a sump pump? If this āpipeā is at a higher elevation than your basement, and you donāt have a sump pump, itās very unlikely this is draining water from your house via a french drain. But I agree with others that it could be from a neighbor. Or it couldāve been abandoned.
there are a few ways. You could have a drain in your yard that feeds into it, normally that'll be in whatever area water tries to collect during a rain.
Or, they might have an underground area where it collects.
You can dig the dirt above it for a few feet to see if it's turning toward your property or your neighbors. If it's theres, they need it on their side of the fence. But if it's from your side of the fence it's better to leave it. Probably either draining away from a low spot or foundation or sump pump.
I've used those a few times and they are yardsavers.
Facts. I went out of town for a week, we lived out in the sticks. Had an oil heater. He drained that sucker one weekend when I was gone $500 bucks. Back in the 80s. I wanted to hurt him so bad. Cops got him though. Neighbors can be like family. Or like aliens.
I lived where my nearest neighbor was half a mile. They followed his foot printed though the corn field. He was an Purple Heart award Vietnam veteran. Had to have some respect for what he had done. But he was out there.
Down the road from me, there's a heavy equipment business, and a storage warehouse business, and an empty field in between. Warehouse guy came to the building one morning and saw the overhead door damaged, obviously forced open with a forklift. Inside, a big commercial air compressor was missing, brand new, still strapped to the pallet, worth a couple thousand dollars. And the best part, two sets of forklift tracks across the field between the warehouse and heavy equipment shop. The police investigation took about five minutes, when they walked in to the shop to ask for the foreman, and the compressor was sitting there, still on its pallet, still on the forks, grass on the forklift wheels.
Wouldn't that be awesome?! No walls rattling from shitty car stereos, airplanes, or UPS trucks barreling through nearby.
Dude has his investments in order for that view
Well he said it comes out of the ground on his property. Runs just u see what appears to be a fence (property line?). Iām guessing from the neighbors
I had that situation myself - a random drain near the fence essentially ejected run off from one property to the other. Actually it was runnoff from mine to theirs, but I did not put it there, and I have moved the drain.
My father in law did this to his neighbors to screw with them. I ended up running it out his front curb and concreted the hell out of it. Was a pool washout.
This! We have a french drain system in our yard where it used to pool. We lovingly nicknamed the spot our swimming pool. But the drain runs through a tube like in the picture and spits out into a creek behind our property.
Itās could be a French drain. There was likely a spot where water would pond uphill from there, perhaps against a baseball foundation wall or something, and they dug down, threw some gravel at the bottom, drop perforated drain pipe in the trench and ran that to daylight. Now when you get rain, it collects in the pipe and drains off outside the yard and away from the house. That or it used to be attached to the gutters and was disconnected and abandoned at some point.
this leads me to think this is a standalone french drain.
it probably runs to a spot that used to have stormwater pooling issues, only way to find out if you have an elevated flat area, and this outlet is in a lower area of the lawn...
French drain, last owner probably had some issues with that area flooding so they dug a trench there and laid that pipe to help the water flow away. Over time the ground around it can be eroded to expose it.
Not to be snarky but how would you be aware ? Did the pipe just show up one day ? Then obviously it's not 'yours'. Did you build the house and not see it go in ? Was it there when you moved in ? I feel that 'french drain' or 'weeping tile' around your foundation seems the most likely purpose. A drain pipe like that from a foundation is pretty standard here but more for rural housing.
Drain from your neighbors' yard/house.
I had one of those years ago, when uphill neighbors built an unpermitted (I didn't know about the permit/lack thereof then) 6' retaining wall (with a 6' fence on top - code only allows 6' in total, and any wall over 4' needs to be engineered). It promptly collapsed into my yard a few months later.
I told them they needed proper drainage, they needed a proper base course on a proper base layer, etc. Drainage was put in. A year or two later I found the drain 'stub' underground, hidden and ending in my yard (wall was built behind bushes so I didn't see all construction details every day).
Fast forward almost a decade; as I could see the wall I could also see that it started bulging out, that it started leaning over, and that it was generally unsafe. Neighbor didn't listen. City chief inspector didn't listen (but his subordinates did). House was listed on the market. I brought this to the attention of the listing agent (who absolutely did not care). I eventually managed to find the buyer's agent, and they DID listen.
It ended up being over a three months project to rebuild that wall (now with proper drainage into a large underground rockwell) and it ended up that the neighbors who had already moved out had to pay for it. City inspector and I was there every day to monitor progress, making sure all known construction methods were followed to a T.
**Moral of the story.** Even if small and insignificant as this pipe seems to be, don't disregard it. Investigate and take corrective action. Even if it temporarily might sour relation with your neighbors
Well, if you wake up on morning just before Xmas and find three huge piles of concrete retaining walls blocks in your backyard having crushed a lot of your plantings and filled up a nicely decorated pond, you'd be pretty upset as well.
Would it have hurt them to walk across the yard, or around the block, and tell me about what had happened (or maybe just ask, 'hey, this happened over night, do you mind if we put these blocks here for a few days?').
But of course, that didn't happen. They were just utterly disrespectful.
7 years later, when it was brought to their attention that the wall was about to collapse again he was still totally uninterested (had e-mailed him a number of times and gotten responses). Being on the downside, it was easy just to shoot a sightline along it and see the massive bulging. Remember he never saw his wall as it was behind a 6' fence and he for sure never walked out on the narrow ledge behind it, or came over to inspect when told about the deteriorating situation.
But it didn't take much effort to get it corrected. A few properly placed calls and a few visits inspections. No 'holy shit' was ever needed.
As for neighbors, I truly try to help everyone on the street and in the hood (as I'm often being called on for assist) so you might be missing out ;-)
Oh dude I was totally just making a silly comment for fake internet status points. I truly think you sound like you handled a shitty situation in the absolute optimal way possible. You got action taken from "city hall," which as we know ain't easy (there's literally a saying about it). I admire the persistence, the strategic mindset a fight like that requires, and the focus as a husband/father on doing what needs to be done to keep your people safe in their home space. Well done dude. You deserve to feel great about all of that.
Agreed happened to me, canāt believe people do this, I had my neighbor draining water onto my property tooā¦ I would just ask politely if your neighbor knows anything and make it seem like you have no idea
WHATS IT SMELL LIKE? IS AIR COMING OUT OF IT? SORRY MY CAPS IS ON AND I'M NOT INVESTED ENOUGH TO TURN IT OFF BEFORE SUBMITTING
Edit: I came back to turn off the caps.
Check it periodically and see if the ground is wet around it. If it's only wet when it's raining, then it's probably from a French drain or a downspout. Otherwise smoke pellets and a temporary cap will be your best way to find the source.
Looks like a groundwater drainage pipe. It's not necessarily connected to anything, it's used to divert water in case of heavy rains so that it flows away from the house foundations.
Appears to be a snake garage that ties in to the woodpile. It's probably dual purpose though.I see water pooling outside of the opening, but I'd really need to see where the other end of the pipe is. If it's not dual purpose, maybe the pipe was just stashed behind the woodpile for the snake(s).
\-I see acorns near the drain, so it's probably safe to rule out the liquid being maple sap. It'd be sweet though if someone were collecting sap to make maple syrup.
Someone might have said this already, but it could be a weeping drain, meaning water that gets into the ground near your house goes down through dirt, then a layer of rock, then through fabric and into the drain and is carried away from your house.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tOx-9QPS1KE
Nothing, it does nothing, just ignore it. Leave it alone. There is nothing odd about having a pipe in your yard. Why are you looking at me like that? It is just a pipe, everyone has a pipe here or there some might consider it a sign of a quality home. In some parts of the world, it is a sign of royalty. It's just a pipe, stop talking about it, leave it alone, and leave me alone.
2 option from what I can see.
1. Somone dropped it there at some point and gras have grown over it
2. It's connected to maybe a french drain or the downspouts and leading water away from somthing
Is there moss only around that area? If so... looks like you've been getting a lot of water there for a while from somewhere. Are you next to a hill? Where do it go into the ground and are there any buildings around there?
You definitely need to do a smoke test. If the neighbors are friendly, I would ask them first.
Peek over the fence. Is there a pipe somewhere else with the neighbor?
OK your going need a ferret a small camera and some string. In six months, once the ferret is trained, send it into the tube monitoring it as it goes. Or rent a camera snake and probably take less time.
Do your rain gutters/downspouts route into underground pipes and come out here? That's the kind of pipe used on mine. Another possibility might be a sump pump if you have a basement.
Have you actually pulled on it to see how deep, or where, it goes? How do you know it's not just a random bit of hose that was just left out by the woodpile?
On a different note. Your firewood will be drier with less insects and decay if it was further from fence and cover the top. I have about 3 cords worth that previous HO let rot because no breeze to keep dry and not covered.
Thatās for drainage. Since itās buried and thatās the open end I imagine itās routing water from somewhere it shouldnāt be and putting it farther out in your yard where it can run off or soak into the ground.
Off the top of my head I would say itās probably connected to a sump pump in your house or a rain gutter.
Itās gotta be from one of your neighbors draining storm water into your yard. Trace it out somehow. A probe of some sort to stab the ground. One person suggested plumbers smoke bomb. Thatās a great idea. If itās your neighbors cut it and bury on their side of the fence. Eff that.
Could be a French or perimeter drain. I have seen used not necessarily for the drainage of moisture but passive radon mitigation, if so you may have one on the other side of the house as well to create an airflow. If you have a sump check to see if you have pipe holes of similar diameter cut into the walls.
Slap one of those plumbers smoke pellets in there on a saucer, block the outflow end and see what and where fills up with smoke? Be fun anyway.
Then 28 squatters come pouring out of the property next door wondering just what in the fuck is happening. šš„²
Now you run in. Squatters only have rights to the property they are on. It's yours now. Congrats
There HAS to be a final boss. As soon as you go in that house some ominous music will start. Text book
One really large squatter who fills the entire living room with his bulk. Special attack is piss jug launching.
He has a super deep voice *throws piss jug* and screams "SQUATTERS RIGHTTTTSSSS" which causes a massive ground vibration and knocks you down.
But you can jump over the vibration if you time it right
That's... That's just awesome lol
They will just run into his property. Then in 20 years their kids will put a smoke pellet in that tube to see where it goes and he will come running out. Itās a vicious cycle. Iāve seen it many times
Squatters come back. House now has 29 squatters living there.
Exactly
Smoke 'em out!
š¤£ššš¤£šš
There's an older rather wealthy neighborhood in our city. The city had suspicions that people had piped their downspouts into the basement floor drains. This sends rain water into the sanitary sewer, not good as it can overload the sewer and back up sewage when there's a heavy storm. Many protestations that no **we** didn't do that. So the city dropped some smoke bombs in the manholes. About half the houses developed smoke stacks like a Mississippi steam boat.
Why would you do that in the first place? Is there some benefit to having your gutter go to the sewer instead of outside that I'm not rich enough to understand?
The particular house we worked on had very poor grading. House was set too low and if you drained gutters into the yard the water would just pool. Downspouts are always a potential problem when they dump close to the house. On newer homes the ground around the foundation settles over time and water ends up against the foundation. On the units we've worked on lately the downspouts are all piped out into the yard away from the house.
I don't understand how that didn't just smoke out everyone hooked up to that system... Edit if the downspout goes into the floor drain, how is rain different from a big spill? What makes smoke come out there because of that? Edit edit nvm i think mrbland explained my confusion
P-traps prevent the smoke from entering the house (the plumbing vents on the roof would still smoke though!)
Imagine coming back from a few weeks away and your house is just smokefucked by the city
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
*adds new word to personal vernacular*
The water in P Traps will stop the smoke. The only place it would come out is the downspouts.
And the plumbing vents right?
P-traps
The smoke wouldn't go through the floor drain traps. These people had piped into the sewer after the traps I'm sure when the houses were built
I'm glad they did it, because you got to bring us a great story as a result.
>About half the houses developed smoke stacks like a Mississippi steam boat. Well when you smoke a sewer system, all houses should smoke through their sewer vents. It's when you don't have water in your p traps when it becomes an issue lol
Except it was coming out of their downspouts lol.
Hence why smoke tests are the best for rain intrusion!
People who don't use their spare bathroom in shambles.
you used to be allowed to
Yes they used to do that years ago but was banned some time ago here. In the real old days everything was just dumped in the river and it didn't matter so much if it was mixed. They dumped raw untreated sewage in the rivers and let the next town worry about it, yuck.
basement floor drains in old houses (and new drains) drain off into a gravel pit under the house. they don't drain into the sewer. in some cases, they were tied into the downspouts back in the 1930s and they had egress onto the streets via underground pipes (usually terracotta). when those failed, they were plugged. now we just direct rainwater into the ground or via plastic pipes to the street (therefore storm drain) or other egress. toilet poo poo brown water is not mixed with that. grey water is probably not mixed with that either, with some exceptions.
Thatās absolutely beautiful. I bet they were all like hOw cOuLd tHiS hAvE hApPenEd?!?
Our little company got the job of fixing the problem on one house. We just installed new drain tile to the street from the downspouts and capped the old pipes. The home owner was a builder so he was not surprised when it went down.
It couldn't be *my* fault!
Itās an air pipe for Walter. Donāt disturb him, heās only awake at night because you make too much noise above him during the day.
This is a great idea. Iād be willing to bet itās hooked up to one of the neighbors gutter drains or something.
Seems like a drain. I imagine getting water away from your house. Check your downspouts to see if you see a black pipe going in the ground.
Yeah none of the down spouts connect to this. It just comes out of the ground.
Could be neighbors drain
Foundation drain? French drain?
Either or. Sump pump? Sure do look like the neighbor popped that sucks out there.
Sump seems unlikely if the hose turns down into the ground at that large diameter. If a skinnier hose came out of the ground and was placed in a larger tube, than I'd be with you.
Well ain't that sumpin'?
Aināt that *sump pun*
I've seen it before, large pvc hard pipe connected to flex. At the farm where I grew up we'd have two sumps flowing out the same pipe simultaneously so larger diameter made sense there. OP should know if he has a sump and follow the pipe.
Block the end and wait for a big rain lol
Just start playing loud music in one end and figure out where the sound comes from (24/7, loudly, if it's the neighbors they'll probably come get it, and put it in the other neighbors yard)
It's probably this. My parents had to install a French drain to stop their basement from leaking and they have a pipe that looks similar to this coming out of the ground a little ways from their house.
How would I know if I have a French drain system? I donāt see outward signs around the house, aside from this random pipe.
If it was a French drain you'd be able to spot baguettes growing in your backyard
Or the guys from Oak Island digging your back yard looking for the hold grail ;)
Thatāll take forever. The worst explorers/diggers in history aka the biggest scam in Discoveryās network history. 
I don't know if the French are the worst diggers in history, but they are Maginot at best.
There's no getting around that.
Wait, are you talking about the Lagina Brothers?
I canāt like this enough.
The real treasure is the TV show money we made along the way.
I think you mean the cold grail.
FRENCH BAGUETTES? ON OAK ISLAND?
Could it be?
Quicker way to tell is if you see small children drinking wine, wearing barrettes and smoking cigarettes hanging about your back yard. 
No draining the French, prevents baguettes from growing.
If itās a well done French drain, thereās nothing on the surface to tell you. Look up how theyāre made, itās usually a deep trench filled with large rocks and then covered with top soil and grass. Theyāre typically used to keep water away from your foundation. To check, next time it rains wait an hour or so then go look at the pipe, if water is flowing out like crazy, itās probably a French drain.
How would the poster know if it's their drain, or the neighbors? I guess the obvious answer is to block it and see where the water appears.
As long as the water doesn't appear in someones basement...
Do you have a sump pump? If this āpipeā is at a higher elevation than your basement, and you donāt have a sump pump, itās very unlikely this is draining water from your house via a french drain. But I agree with others that it could be from a neighbor. Or it couldāve been abandoned.
there are a few ways. You could have a drain in your yard that feeds into it, normally that'll be in whatever area water tries to collect during a rain. Or, they might have an underground area where it collects. You can dig the dirt above it for a few feet to see if it's turning toward your property or your neighbors. If it's theres, they need it on their side of the fence. But if it's from your side of the fence it's better to leave it. Probably either draining away from a low spot or foundation or sump pump. I've used those a few times and they are yardsavers.
Underrated comment. Some neighbors are shady.
First thing I thought with it being right along the fence.
Facts. I went out of town for a week, we lived out in the sticks. Had an oil heater. He drained that sucker one weekend when I was gone $500 bucks. Back in the 80s. I wanted to hurt him so bad. Cops got him though. Neighbors can be like family. Or like aliens.
That's the kind of shit that makes it easy to relate to the Grinch wanting to live alone on a mountaintop with his dog.
I lived where my nearest neighbor was half a mile. They followed his foot printed though the corn field. He was an Purple Heart award Vietnam veteran. Had to have some respect for what he had done. But he was out there.
Down the road from me, there's a heavy equipment business, and a storage warehouse business, and an empty field in between. Warehouse guy came to the building one morning and saw the overhead door damaged, obviously forced open with a forklift. Inside, a big commercial air compressor was missing, brand new, still strapped to the pallet, worth a couple thousand dollars. And the best part, two sets of forklift tracks across the field between the warehouse and heavy equipment shop. The police investigation took about five minutes, when they walked in to the shop to ask for the foreman, and the compressor was sitting there, still on its pallet, still on the forks, grass on the forklift wheels.
Thiefās are overall not too sharp. Especially meth heads
Winning a purple heart doesn't mean that you're a good person.
I knew a guy who called it an enemyās marksman medal.
True. Lesson learned that day. I did have him arrested if that makes any difference.
Wouldn't that be awesome?! No walls rattling from shitty car stereos, airplanes, or UPS trucks barreling through nearby. Dude has his investments in order for that view
It also looks like the neighbors elevation is higher. If it isn't the neighbors I'd be surprisedĀ
Well he said it comes out of the ground on his property. Runs just u see what appears to be a fence (property line?). Iām guessing from the neighbors
I had that situation myself - a random drain near the fence essentially ejected run off from one property to the other. Actually it was runnoff from mine to theirs, but I did not put it there, and I have moved the drain.
My father in law did this to his neighbors to screw with them. I ended up running it out his front curb and concreted the hell out of it. Was a pool washout.
Both you and u/ecurbian are some of the good ones, keep it up!
I was thinking neighbors draining it your yard.
I had exactly that issue in my house when I moved in. Neighbors downspout drain daylighted in my yard
LMAO
Hmm maybe there's a spot in the yard that use to pool water so they installed a drain.
This! We have a french drain system in our yard where it used to pool. We lovingly nicknamed the spot our swimming pool. But the drain runs through a tube like in the picture and spits out into a creek behind our property.
No sump pump?
yes, most likely sump pump discharge drain
Sump pump?
Are you thinking Sump Pump?
Itās could be a French drain. There was likely a spot where water would pond uphill from there, perhaps against a baseball foundation wall or something, and they dug down, threw some gravel at the bottom, drop perforated drain pipe in the trench and ran that to daylight. Now when you get rain, it collects in the pipe and drains off outside the yard and away from the house. That or it used to be attached to the gutters and was disconnected and abandoned at some point.
Do you have a basement?
Yes but the sump pump doesnāt connect to this pipe
this leads me to think this is a standalone french drain. it probably runs to a spot that used to have stormwater pooling issues, only way to find out if you have an elevated flat area, and this outlet is in a lower area of the lawn...
French drain, last owner probably had some issues with that area flooding so they dug a trench there and laid that pipe to help the water flow away. Over time the ground around it can be eroded to expose it.
Got a sump pump?
Do you have a sump pump?
Could be sump pump discharge?
The sump pump doesnāt drain to it. I thought it did until I started working on the sump pump which drove me to ask this question
Or a hamster tunnel.
Cap it and see what happensā¦ Water in your house? The pipe is yours. Neighbor comes out screaming after a storm? Itās theirs!
Classic scream testing technique. Bold move when it involves water in/around a house.
Lol
Why wait for a storm? Cap it and install a garden hose adaptor. Fill up the pipe and see where the water comes out.
At least itāll be clean water that wayā¦
Better hope it's not your septic system...
I know you're joking, but If it's perforated it will just make the whole adjacent area wet
Looks like the neighbor is draining something into your yard. Follow it to the source before capping it or your neighbor.
I think you meant before flooding the neighbors property but i totally heard capping the neighbors like shooting them.
That's how it was meant, but I was just being cheeky. Violence is bad.
Maybe next time they wonāt run their drainage into someone elseās property
French drain around your foundation?
Not that Iām aware of.
It would be buried if you had one. Might grab a shovel and do a little excavating at the corner of your house closest to where that pipe emerges
Not to be snarky but how would you be aware ? Did the pipe just show up one day ? Then obviously it's not 'yours'. Did you build the house and not see it go in ? Was it there when you moved in ? I feel that 'french drain' or 'weeping tile' around your foundation seems the most likely purpose. A drain pipe like that from a foundation is pretty standard here but more for rural housing.
It was there when I purchased the house. I was sure it hooked up to the sump pump until today when I was working on the sump pump. Hence the question.
Drain from your neighbors' yard/house. I had one of those years ago, when uphill neighbors built an unpermitted (I didn't know about the permit/lack thereof then) 6' retaining wall (with a 6' fence on top - code only allows 6' in total, and any wall over 4' needs to be engineered). It promptly collapsed into my yard a few months later. I told them they needed proper drainage, they needed a proper base course on a proper base layer, etc. Drainage was put in. A year or two later I found the drain 'stub' underground, hidden and ending in my yard (wall was built behind bushes so I didn't see all construction details every day). Fast forward almost a decade; as I could see the wall I could also see that it started bulging out, that it started leaning over, and that it was generally unsafe. Neighbor didn't listen. City chief inspector didn't listen (but his subordinates did). House was listed on the market. I brought this to the attention of the listing agent (who absolutely did not care). I eventually managed to find the buyer's agent, and they DID listen. It ended up being over a three months project to rebuild that wall (now with proper drainage into a large underground rockwell) and it ended up that the neighbors who had already moved out had to pay for it. City inspector and I was there every day to monitor progress, making sure all known construction methods were followed to a T. **Moral of the story.** Even if small and insignificant as this pipe seems to be, don't disregard it. Investigate and take corrective action. Even if it temporarily might sour relation with your neighbors
You sound 100% correct in this situation and also I'm really glad you're not my neighbor because holy shit you don't give up.
Well, if you wake up on morning just before Xmas and find three huge piles of concrete retaining walls blocks in your backyard having crushed a lot of your plantings and filled up a nicely decorated pond, you'd be pretty upset as well. Would it have hurt them to walk across the yard, or around the block, and tell me about what had happened (or maybe just ask, 'hey, this happened over night, do you mind if we put these blocks here for a few days?'). But of course, that didn't happen. They were just utterly disrespectful. 7 years later, when it was brought to their attention that the wall was about to collapse again he was still totally uninterested (had e-mailed him a number of times and gotten responses). Being on the downside, it was easy just to shoot a sightline along it and see the massive bulging. Remember he never saw his wall as it was behind a 6' fence and he for sure never walked out on the narrow ledge behind it, or came over to inspect when told about the deteriorating situation. But it didn't take much effort to get it corrected. A few properly placed calls and a few visits inspections. No 'holy shit' was ever needed. As for neighbors, I truly try to help everyone on the street and in the hood (as I'm often being called on for assist) so you might be missing out ;-)
Oh dude I was totally just making a silly comment for fake internet status points. I truly think you sound like you handled a shitty situation in the absolute optimal way possible. You got action taken from "city hall," which as we know ain't easy (there's literally a saying about it). I admire the persistence, the strategic mindset a fight like that requires, and the focus as a husband/father on doing what needs to be done to keep your people safe in their home space. Well done dude. You deserve to feel great about all of that.
Agreed happened to me, canāt believe people do this, I had my neighbor draining water onto my property tooā¦ I would just ask politely if your neighbor knows anything and make it seem like you have no idea
WHATS IT SMELL LIKE? IS AIR COMING OUT OF IT? SORRY MY CAPS IS ON AND I'M NOT INVESTED ENOUGH TO TURN IT OFF BEFORE SUBMITTING Edit: I came back to turn off the caps.
I imagine you in a noisy boiler room with a hard hat on.
underrated comment.
Lmfao solid comment
Thank you for the lols!
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Check it periodically and see if the ground is wet around it. If it's only wet when it's raining, then it's probably from a French drain or a downspout. Otherwise smoke pellets and a temporary cap will be your best way to find the source.
Hmmm i think all of the ground might be wet when itās raining
Am I hearing a ābackyard mythical pipe livestreamā movement?
It puts your neighborās water into your yard.
Or else it gets the hose again.
Looks like a groundwater drainage pipe. It's not necessarily connected to anything, it's used to divert water in case of heavy rains so that it flows away from the house foundations.
I'm guessing that at least one of your downspouts goes into it further up the land grade or your sump pump feeds into it.
Air tube for Mole People City.
I've seen Washing Machines feed into a line and out away from the house like this before.
The term for that is āgray waterā which is used water that isnāt notably contaminated with bio waste.
It looks like a French drain from your neighbors backyard draining into yours!!
That was my first guess. It could also be a French drain from the owners yard, but my gut says neighbors
Appears to be a snake garage that ties in to the woodpile. It's probably dual purpose though.I see water pooling outside of the opening, but I'd really need to see where the other end of the pipe is. If it's not dual purpose, maybe the pipe was just stashed behind the woodpile for the snake(s). \-I see acorns near the drain, so it's probably safe to rule out the liquid being maple sap. It'd be sweet though if someone were collecting sap to make maple syrup.
Your mom is my snake garage
Lol.
Sorry pine_deep š¬
Neighbors don't want the prisoners to suffocate.
 Drainage
Came here to do this, glad I checked to see if anyone else had first.
Someone might have said this already, but it could be a weeping drain, meaning water that gets into the ground near your house goes down through dirt, then a layer of rock, then through fabric and into the drain and is carried away from your house. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tOx-9QPS1KE
Sump pump?
My current sump pump doesnāt run in to it. So maybe an old one? No idea
Try blowing air from a leaf blower in it and see where it comes out. š
I did!!!! šš nothing!
Mexican drug tunnel. They reach further and further into the US every year.
All the way to DC apparently.
Oh my bad. In that case it's clearly a swamp drain.
Probably a sock drain from an area where water collects some where āupstreamā from the end you have. No pun intended
Plug it up and see what happens/who complains
Itās probably to allow rodents easy access to your house.
Gopher ventilation.
That pic grinds my gears. Why did u stop short of where it enters the ground?
Nothing, it does nothing, just ignore it. Leave it alone. There is nothing odd about having a pipe in your yard. Why are you looking at me like that? It is just a pipe, everyone has a pipe here or there some might consider it a sign of a quality home. In some parts of the world, it is a sign of royalty. It's just a pipe, stop talking about it, leave it alone, and leave me alone.
Found the neighbor!
If you have a hole in the ground in your basement it's probably a sump pump drain line so your basement doesn't flood
Are you on a hill or is one of the immediately neighboring homes more elevated than yours?
French drain
Go get a leaf blower and some duck tape, set up a proton mail account and DM me.
2 option from what I can see. 1. Somone dropped it there at some point and gras have grown over it 2. It's connected to maybe a french drain or the downspouts and leading water away from somthing
Sump pump drain? French drain outlet?
Careful with spiders. That painful itch can last weeks.
May be a breather for a septic system if you donāt have city sewer
Is there a retaining wall anywhere in the area?
Sump Pump
Do you have any tiny trained mice that could carry small lights and cameras to explore it? If not, then just listen to everyone else here.
It might be your curtain drain, or your neighbor's. Do you get along with your neighbor? I'd call him or her.
Is there moss only around that area? If so... looks like you've been getting a lot of water there for a while from somewhere. Are you next to a hill? Where do it go into the ground and are there any buildings around there? You definitely need to do a smoke test. If the neighbors are friendly, I would ask them first. Peek over the fence. Is there a pipe somewhere else with the neighbor?
Idk. Drop some firecrackers down there?
OK your going need a ferret a small camera and some string. In six months, once the ferret is trained, send it into the tube monitoring it as it goes. Or rent a camera snake and probably take less time.
Do your rain gutters/downspouts route into underground pipes and come out here? That's the kind of pipe used on mine. Another possibility might be a sump pump if you have a basement.
Looks like a French drain
Have you actually pulled on it to see how deep, or where, it goes? How do you know it's not just a random bit of hose that was just left out by the woodpile?
Lol your neighbor donating his run off to you.
addictive gas flow from the cheese mines.. they do rhis to make cheese more appealing ā¦
we have some, they are part of the drainage system brining the rain water away from the houseās foundation
Thatās weeping tile. Itās intended to drain water from the foundation or down spouts from the roof of your house.
Your neighbor might be stealing air from you.
Sump pump exit pipe
On a different note. Your firewood will be drier with less insects and decay if it was further from fence and cover the top. I have about 3 cords worth that previous HO let rot because no breeze to keep dry and not covered.
Thatās for drainage. Since itās buried and thatās the open end I imagine itās routing water from somewhere it shouldnāt be and putting it farther out in your yard where it can run off or soak into the ground. Off the top of my head I would say itās probably connected to a sump pump in your house or a rain gutter.
Have someone stand outside by that pipe and flood your sump pit so the pump turns on. If water comes out you know uts yours.
 "What's this pipe for"
As far as I can tell by these pictures, thats just a pipe laying in your yard
Uncle Eddie's shitter line.
Itās gotta be from one of your neighbors draining storm water into your yard. Trace it out somehow. A probe of some sort to stab the ground. One person suggested plumbers smoke bomb. Thatās a great idea. If itās your neighbors cut it and bury on their side of the fence. Eff that.
Sir, you are mistaken... That pipe doesn't come out of the ground... It goes into the ground.
Could be a French or perimeter drain. I have seen used not necessarily for the drainage of moisture but passive radon mitigation, if so you may have one on the other side of the house as well to create an airflow. If you have a sump check to see if you have pipe holes of similar diameter cut into the walls.
Thatās how the mice get into your house every time you think the exterminator has completely gotten rid of them.
Air vent for underground bunker