French Drain Installation in Homeland

French Drain Installation questions from Homeland customers

Where can a French drain outlet if there is no storm drain on my Homeland street?

Homeland's built drainage is partial. Riverside County's general plan appendix on disadvantaged unincorporated communities records that one improvement recommended in the 1982 Homeland Master Drainage Plan, Line 2, was constructed and completed in 2012. Where no district line runs, a gravity trench has to terminate at a surface outlet on the same parcel or at a frontage connection built to county road standards.

Does the trench itself need a permit in unincorporated Homeland?

Riverside County Building and Safety lists excavation, clearing and grubbing and stockpiling among the operations requiring a grading permit, so the trench, not only the finished drain, is regulated work. Homeland is unincorporated, so the county rather than a city building division issues that permit, and county road standards rather than a municipal detail govern what a frontage connection may look like.

My lot fronts Highway 74 — can a drain line be run out to it?

Not without state authorization. The county's area plan describes Homeland as having a strip of commercial uses along State Route 74, and the general plan appendix locates the community off SR 74 between Hemet and Romoland. Caltrans defines an encroachment under Streets and Highways Code sections 660 to 734 and lists drainage facilities among frontage improvements requiring a permit, which does not transfer when a property sells.

Can a French drain daylight toward the next lot in a mobilehome park?

No. California Code of Regulations Title 25 section 1116, which governs grading in mobilehome parks, states that drainage from a lot, site, roadway or park area shall be directed to a surface or subsurface drainage way and shall not drain onto an adjacent lot or site. The same section requires park areas and roadways to be graded so that surface water does not stand in depressions.