How to Start a Yard Drainage Installation Business

How do you start a yard drainage installation business from scratch?

Register the business, check your state contractor threshold, buy general liability with underground coverage, rent a trencher instead of buying, learn slope and outfall on three practice jobs, then quote wet backyards.

This trade has an unusually low floor. Because labor is 70 to 80 percent of what a drainage job costs, you are mostly selling your own hours, and the iron can be rented by the day until the calendar is full. A single 100 foot roll of ADS 4 inch perforated pipe is $136.00. That is what materials look like here.

The order below matters. The insurance step comes before the first dig, not after it, because the fastest way to end a new drainage business is a trencher through a buried gas line on a policy that quietly excludes underground damage.

• Pick your lane. French drains, buried downspout runs to pop-up emitters, catch basins and surface drains, dry wells, swales and regrading are all the same skill set. Downspout burials at $800 to $2,000 are the easiest first sale. Whole yard systems at $2,145 to $7,162 are where the money is.
• Form an LLC, get an EIN, then check your state dollar threshold. California requires a license at $1,000 or more in combined labor and materials, raised from $500 by AB 2622 effective January 1, 2025. Maryland is $500, Virginia $1,000, North Dakota $4,000, Tennessee $25,000. Texas has no statewide license at all.
• Buy general liability before you touch a shovel. Coded as landscaping it runs about $45 to $85 a month. Coded as excavation the average is about $127 a month. Ask for the endorsement list in writing and hunt for anything excluding explosion, collapse or underground property damage.
• Rent the digging iron. A Ditch Witch 24 inch walk-behind trencher is $219.99 a day. A 1 to 2 ton mini excavator is about $200 to $250 a day. Both Sunbelt and United Rentals charge one day of rate from Friday morning to Monday morning, so a weekend job gets three days of machine for one day of money.
• Set up material supply two ways. Buy pipe and basins at the box store to start, but find your local quarry. #57 washed gravel was $21.50 a ton picked up at the pit as of January 1, 2026, against $40 to $75 a ton delivered plus $50 to $150 per load in delivery.
• Do three practice jobs before you charge full price. Your own downspouts, a relative's wet side yard, and one free job in the neighborhood you want to work. You are learning to hold fall over a long run, find a legal outfall, and see how your local soil behaves when it is wet.
• Call 811 before every single dig, including the free ones. Wait out your state's notice period. This is not optional and it is not the customer's job.
• Book the first paid job the week after a heavy rain, in the lowest street in your zip code, and plant a yard sign the moment the trench is backfilled.

How much does it cost to start a yard drainage business?

A lean start with rented iron runs $2,500 to $5,000. Owning a mini excavator, a trailer and a truck rated to tow pushes you to $25,000 to $60,000. Material is the smallest line either way.

The whole spread is the machine. Rent it and your startup number is a few thousand dollars of pipe, stone, hand tools, insurance and paperwork. Buy it and you are financing $13,900 to $37,999 for a used Kubota KX018-4, which averages about $25,488 across market listings.

Rent longer than feels comfortable. Rental math is friendly: a week runs about 3 to 4 times the daily rate and a month lands near 10 to 12 daily rates. At $200 to $350 a day, a machine has to be working most weeks before owning beats renting.

What licenses and insurance do you need to install yard drainage?

There is no federal license. Many states require a contractor license once a job passes a dollar threshold. General liability runs $540 to $1,020 a year in the landscaping class.

Requirements vary by state, and in Texas by city, so treat this as a map and confirm with your own board before you quote. The pattern is a dollar threshold. Below it you are unlicensed and legal. Above it you need a card, and in some states the classification you pick changes what you are allowed to touch.

There is no national certification that says drainage installer, and you should be suspicious of anyone selling you one. The closest thing to a real drainage exam is in Oregon, where the Landscape Contractors Board exam set includes an open book Design, Grading and Drainage test. Oregon also requires two credentials at once: the individual holds the Landscape Construction Professional license and the business holds the Landscape Contracting Business license.

The insurance detail that actually matters in this trade is XCU, which stands for Explosion, Collapse and Underground. Under the current ISO general liability form, underground property damage is not excluded by the form itself. Carriers bolt on an exclusionary endorsement, and they attach it specifically for excavation, demolition, shoring, tunneling and work near utilities. So you can hold a full looking general liability policy and still be uncovered the day a trench takes out a buried line. General contractors and municipalities often require XCU by name in bid documents.

• California: $1,000 or more in combined labor and materials triggers a license. A pure drainage operator is choosing between C-27 Landscaping, which covers drainage and grading performed as part of a landscape contract, and C-12 Earthwork and Paving, which names drainage system installation and erosion control. C-27 requires 4 years of journeyman level experience plus the Law and Business exam and a trade exam. Fees are about $450 to apply, $200 for a sole owner license or $350 otherwise, and $49 to $59 for fingerprinting.
• Oregon: drainage is explicitly inside the scope of licensed landscape installation work, alongside irrigation, retaining walls and low decks. The bond is $20,000 and the liability minimum is $500,000 with the board named as certificate holder.
• Florida: the Underground Utility and Excavation Contractor license covers storm sewer collection systems. Whether your yard work rises to that scope depends on what you are tying into, so ask before you bid anything connecting to a public system.
• Utah: there is no dollar threshold, so unlicensed contracting is not permitted at any job size. The earthwork classification is S310 Foundation, Excavation and Demolition.
• Texas: no statewide general contractor license. Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio each require their own contractor registration. The state only licenses specialty trades like electrical, HVAC and plumbing.
• Higher thresholds worth knowing: North Carolina at $30,000 for landscape work on a single site inside 12 months, Tennessee at $25,000, Arkansas at $50,000 commercial and $2,000 residential, Louisiana and Mississippi at $50,000 commercial, Alabama at $100,000, North Dakota at $4,000.
• Insurance classification is a real lever. Priced as landscaping, general liability is about $45 to $85 a month. Priced as excavation, the average is about $127 a month or $1,522 a year. Same work, different class code, hundreds of dollars a year. Do not lie to a carrier, but do describe the work accurately and shop it.

How much should you charge for yard drainage work?

Most residential yard drainage prices at $15 to $40 per linear foot. A whole yard system runs $2,145 to $7,162, and a single dry well lands near $3,000.

Price by the foot, quote by the job. Published per foot numbers disagree hard on French drains: $10 to $25 on the low end, $20 to $40 from contractor side quotes, and outliers up to $65 or even $100 a foot. Use $15 to $40 a foot as your defensible residential band, then let depth, soil and access move you inside it. Drainage of all types averages $10 to $50 a linear foot.

WORKED EXAMPLE: Ramona quotes a wet side yard in a clay soil subdivision outside Charlotte. The plan is 80 feet of 4 inch perforated pipe in a trench 12 inches wide by 18 inches deep, one catch basin at the low corner, and a solid pipe run to daylight at the street. She prices at $32 a foot, so 80 feet is $2,560, and the basin and tie-in add $450, for a $3,010 ticket. Now the material. One 100 foot roll of ADS sock wrapped pipe is $161.70. One roll of solid pipe for the outfall costs about what bare perforated does, $136.00. The plastic basin is $60. The trench is 120 cubic feet, so 4.5 cubic yards of #57 stone, roughly 6 tons, at $21.50 picked up at the pit, is $129. That is $486.70, call it $560 once fabric and fittings are in the truck, or 19 percent of the ticket. The one day mini excavator rental at $250 plus $150 delivery is $400. What is left is $2,050 for two days of her own work, about $128 an hour inside the $50 to $150 band.

Two upsells belong on almost every quote. A sump pump install runs $1,200 to $1,800 for a complete professionally installed system, with the full spread $650 to $2,500. Burying that sump discharge instead of leaving it above ground moves it from $150 to $400 up to $250 to $2,000. Interior basement French drains are a different business at $40 to $85 a foot, or $4,000 to $17,000 installed.

Do not price the pretty version and the plumbing version the same. A drainage swale as bare earthwork is $5 to $15 a foot. Add soil amendment and plantings and the same swale is $15 to $35 a foot. A dry creek bed with river rock and fabric is $30 to $60 a foot, and a 25 foot creek bed lands at $1,200 to $2,000. Customers who want the yard to look good will pay for it if you show them both numbers.

How do you get your first yard drainage customers?

Work the streets that flood. Door hangers after heavy rain, a yard sign on every job, Google Business Profile photos of standing water before and after, and referrals from gutter installers.

Drainage marketing has a trigger that most trades do not get: weather. The 48 hours after a hard rain is when a homeowner is standing at the window looking at a puddle they have ignored for three years. Everything you do should be timed to that window.

WORKED EXAMPLE: Dev spends $300 on 1,000 door hangers and walks the two lowest streets in his zip code the week after a heavy rain, hitting the houses where he can see standing water from the sidewalk. Ten people call, four let him walk the yard, and two sign: a $1,450 buried downspout job and a $2,900 French drain. That is $4,350 of booked work from a $300 print run and three evenings of walking, and a one percent call rate is what targeting the wet houses buys you over a blanket drop. The yard sign on the French drain job then keeps selling all summer to every neighbor who walks past.

Referral partners matter more here than paid ads. Gutter installers, roofers, landscapers who only mow, and basement waterproofing companies all get asked about yard water and all decline the work. Bring each of them a stack of cards and pay a flat finder fee on anything that closes. One good gutter company can feed a solo drainage operator most of a season.

• Set up a Google Business Profile the first week and load it with before and after photos. Standing water, then dry grass, in the same frame from the same angle. This is the single highest converting asset in the trade because the problem is visual.
• Shoot a 30 second phone video on every job showing water entering the basin and coming out the outfall. Post it. Nothing sells drainage like water actually moving.
• Walk the low ground. Drive your service area during a downpour, note the addresses with ponding, and hit exactly those doors two days later.
• Do the walk-through with a garden hose and a line level. Run water at the downspout, let the customer watch where it actually goes, then shoot the fall from the wet spot to the outfall you are proposing. Most of your close happens standing there with the water moving.
• Answer the phone during the storm week. Drainage calls arrive in a two day cluster and the homeowner is dialing three companies off the same search, so first one in the yard usually books the $2,145 to $7,162 job.
• Ask for the review before you leave the driveway, with the customer looking at dry grass, not two weeks later by text.

What tools and equipment do you need for drainage installation?

You need a way to dig, pipe, stone and a level. Rent the trencher or mini excavator at $200 to $350 a day until the calendar is full.

Know your machines by name and class, because customers and rental counters both notice. The Ditch Witch RT45 is a ride-on trencher, not a walk-behind, and calling it a walk-behind marks you as an outsider on day one. Sunbelt lists a 3,500 pound mini excavator with a 12 inch bucket and an 11,000 pound mini with a cab and a 24 inch bucket. Neither Sunbelt nor United Rentals publishes flat online pricing, so you call.

Match the machine to the trench, not to the day rate. A trencher cuts a narrow slot fast, which is right for buried downspout lines and tight runs along a fence. A 12 inch wide trench with a full stone envelope around the pipe is bucket work, so whole yard systems get the mini excavator and the trencher stays on the small stuff. New operators rent the cheap trencher for a French drain, then hand widen the slot for two days.

The most argued about $26 in this trade is the filter sock. ADS 4 inch by 100 foot perforated pipe is $136.00 a roll, and the same pipe wrapped in a sock is $161.70. That is $25.70, about 19 percent, per 100 feet. In clean sandy soil the bare pipe with a proper stone and fabric envelope is fine. In fine silty soil the sock is cheap insurance against a line that silts shut in five years and becomes a warranty callback.

What should the first 90 days of a drainage business look like?

Weeks one and two are paperwork, insurance and a quarry price. Weeks three to six are three practice digs and your first paid jobs. Weeks seven to twelve you raise prices and book two jobs a week.

The milestone column is the point. Activity is easy to fake and a milestone is not. If week six ends with no money collected, the problem is selling, not digging.

What mistakes kill new yard drainage businesses?

The killers are trenching with no fall, no legal outfall, quoting per foot before checking depth and soil, skipping the 811 call, and carrying general liability that excludes underground damage.

Most of these are free to avoid and expensive to fix, because fixing a drainage mistake means digging up work the customer already paid for.

• Selling a system with nowhere for the water to go. Find the outfall before you quote. A daylight point, a dry well at $1,300 to $5,200, or a legal storm connection. A perfect trench that ends in a low spot is a $3,000 hole you will dig twice.
• Never tie yard drains into a sanitary sewer, and never point an outfall at the neighbor's property. Both create legal problems that outlive the business. Check your local rules before the first job in each municipality.
• Quoting per linear foot over the phone. The $15 to $40 band swings on depth, soil and access. A 60 foot run at 4 feet deep in clay with a fence you have to hand dig past is not the same job as 60 feet at 18 inches in sand, and the low quote eats two days of labor you cannot bill.
• Forgetting that labor is 70 to 80 percent of the cost. New operators price off materials, see about $550 of pipe and stone on an 80 foot run, and quote $1,200. The number that has to work is your hours, at a real billable rate of $50 to $150 an hour.
• Not pricing spoil. Digging 80 feet of trench produces cubic yards of dirt that has to go somewhere. Haul off, dump fees and turf restoration all belong on the quote before you sign.
• Guessing on the filter sock. Sock pipe is $161.70 a roll against $136.00 bare. Twenty five dollars is nothing next to returning in year five to a line silted shut in fine soil, and adding a sock does not save you from a bad stone and fabric envelope.
• Buying a $25,000 mini excavator in month two. Rental is $200 to $350 a day with a weekend trick that gives you Friday to Monday for one day of rate. Own the machine when the calendar forces you to, not when you want to feel like a contractor.
• Assuming your general liability covers a cut line. Carriers attach underground exclusions specifically for excavation work. Ask for the endorsement list and read it before you dig, not after.

Is a yard drainage installation business worth it?

Yes, if you can sell. Two jobs a month at a $3,000 average ticket is about $72,000 in year one, with material near a quarter of each ticket.

Run the arithmetic yourself rather than trusting an income claim. Completed drainage jobs average $2,145 to $7,162, with a simple fix as low as $800 and complex work up to $15,000. Take a conservative $3,000 average ticket. A solo operator closing two jobs a month bills about $72,000 in the first year. Three a month is closer to $108,000. Those are arithmetic, not survey results, and the variable is entirely how many wet backyards you get in front of.

The margin picture is unusually clean because of that 70 to 80 percent labor share. On a $3,000 job, material lands near $600 to $900, which is the 20 to 30 percent that is left over. A rented machine with delivery, $300 to $650, comes out of the labor side of that split rather than on top of it, which is why renting instead of owning is what protects year one. What is left converts your own hours into money near the top of the $50 to $150 an hour band instead of the bottom.

The ceiling comes from crews, not from working harder. A two person crew that finishes one $3,500 job a week runs near $180,000 a year in billings. A second crew doubles it, at which point you are paying excavation class insurance at roughly $1,522 a year, workers compensation, and a real truck and trailer. The adjacent ladder is interior work at $40 to $85 a foot, or $4,000 to $17,000 a basement, which is a bigger ticket and a bigger liability.

When is yard drainage work busiest during the year?

Drainage sells when water shows up. Spring thaw and fall storms are the peaks. Frozen ground stops trenching up north in winter, so sell site visits, spring contracts and interior work then.

Unlike mowing, this trade is driven by rain events, not by the calendar. Your busiest week of the year is whichever week it rains hardest, and the smart move is to have door hangers printed and a machine reserved before the front arrives.

Northern operators lose real weeks to frost. You cannot cut a clean trench or set proper bedding stone in frozen ground, so winter turns into selling time: site visits, grade shots and signed spring contracts with deposits. Stone prices also move with fuel, quarry supply and haul distance, so reprice your stone before you honor a quote you wrote three months earlier.

How do you compete with basement waterproofing franchises?

Do not fight them on interior systems that run $4,000 to $17,000. Sell the outside fix first at $15 to $40 a foot and win on price, speed and honesty.

The big waterproofing companies sell inside the house. An interior basement French drain is $40 to $85 a foot, or $4,000 to $17,000 installed, and their sales process is built to get to that number. You are the operator who shows up, points at the downspout dumping against the foundation, and says the outside fix might be $1,500.

That is a real competitive position and it is honest. A lot of wet basements are yard problems: gutters discharging at the wall, negative grade toward the house, no functioning surface drain. Fix the outside first for $800 to $2,000, tell the customer plainly that if it still leaks the interior system is the next step, and you have both a paid job and the referral to the next three neighbors.

Their weakness is speed and their strength is financing. Do not try to out-market them. Be the second opinion. When a homeowner has a $9,000 interior quote sitting on the counter, a free walk-through and a $2,500 exterior alternative is the easiest sale in this trade.