NRCS has a soil series called Dumas, and it drains reasonably well. The clayier soils mapped alongside it across the northern Panhandle are where Moore County yards get into trouble.
Tell us what the water is doing and we’ll call you back to set up a free on-site look.
NRCS has a soil series called Dumas, and it drains reasonably well. The clayier soils mapped alongside it across the northern Panhandle are where Moore County yards get into trouble.
The official NRCS description of the Dumas series is a very deep, well-drained loam with moderate permeability, formed in windblown sediment on the plains of the northern Texas Panhandle. On slopes under 1 percent, its runoff is rated negligible. Rain mostly soaks in.
The Sherm series -- NRCS names Dumas among its geographically associated soils -- behaves another way entirely. It's a silty clay loam with slow permeability, and when it dries out, cracks run down through it past 50 centimeters -- roughly 20 inches. NRCS notes Sherm soils used to be lumped in with the Pullman series.
Which one is under your house? You often can't tell from the grass. That's why we dig before we design anything, and why two French drain jobs on the same Dumas street can look nothing alike.
Cracking clay sets a trap. After a few dry weeks, a yard on Sherm-type soil can look like it's swallowing a storm whole, because the first water pours straight down the cracks. Then the clay swells, the cracks close, and the rest of the rain has to run off or stand. Homeowners often see that as a drain that worked fine once and quit -- the soil changed, not the drain.
The same swelling and shrinking works on whatever sits on top of it. Water that pools against a slab during wet spells and disappears in droughts keeps the soil under one edge of a house moving more than the rest. Getting runoff away from the perimeter is the simplest way to break that cycle.
The full range of fixes, chosen for what your lot is actually doing — start with why yards here hold water:
Dumas was platted in 1891, about five miles south of South Palo Duro Creek, and nearly emptied out after a grasshopper plague in 1893 and a severe winter in 1893-94. Real growth waited for the 1926 oil and gas discovery and the railroad that finally arrived in 1931. The population went from 2,117 in 1940 to 6,127 in 1950, and past 12,000 by 1980.
Every one of those building waves had its own builders and its own idea of finished grade. A single Dumas block can hold houses from several decades side by side, each sloped (or not) to a different standard, and the water doesn't care where one lot line stops.
Across the county, the Handbook of Texas describes nearly level prairie cut by Grapevine, Plum, South Palo Duro, North Palo Duro and Big Blue creeks, all running west to east toward the Canadian River. Average rainfall is about 18.3 inches a year.
In town, though, you're on the level part. A yard in Dumas has to move its own water to the street or an alley, and on slow clay that means giving it a defined path -- a graded swale, a buried downspout line, or a drain that collects water below the surface and carries it off.
By 1965, the Handbook notes, deep-well irrigation was helping drive the Dumas economy, and plenty of lawns in town run on sprinklers too. Overspray and heads set against the house add water to the exact strip of soil you most want kept steady, so we look at the irrigation layout along with the downspouts.
Dumas sits about forty-eight miles north of Amarillo. We serve it as part of a wider Panhandle territory, not from an office in Moore County. If you've got water at the foundation or a yard that ponds, call (806) 606-0904. Someone will phone you back to arrange a no-cost visit to your Dumas lot -- no obligation.
Free on-site drainage assessments in Dumas and across the Panhandle. Call or send the form and we’ll set up a time to look.