Shreveport · NW Louisiana Guide
Louisiana clay is what makes drainage in Shreveport hard. What actually works — and what doesn't — on the soils under this whole metro.
The soils across the Shreveport/Bossier metro are dominated by heavy plastic clays — Yazoo, Perry, Portland, Susquehanna series — with high shrink-swell potentials (plasticity index typically 30-50+). These soils are close to impermeable when saturated, they swell when wet and shrink when dry, and they don't play well with drainage assumptions borrowed from Texas sand or Florida shell. Every drainage decision here has to start from the reality of the soil.
Dry wells sized for sandy percolation — they saturate on the first rain and never dewater. Pea-gravel French drains — the gravel is packed so tight the water can't move through it, and clay fines invade the voids immediately. Perc-based septic drain fields — the reason aerobic septics have replaced conventional systems in most of NW Louisiana. Landscape-fabric wraps as geotextile — the fabric plugs in a season under clay pressure. Corrugated black pipe under any load — deforms and crushes.
Rigid pipe (SDR-35 or schedule-40) that resists the pressure. Coarse washed stone (#57 or #67) that keeps its void space. Real geotextile (woven monofilament or high-flow non-woven) that stays porous under load. Aggressive slope (2% is much better than 1%). Legal daylight discharge — because infiltration is unreliable at best. Sump-and-pump on flat or downstream-tight lots — since gravity discharge is often not available. See French drain installation.
Clay's swell-shrink cycle is what makes foundation drainage a first-tier concern in Shreveport, not an add-on. A slab surrounded by seasonally wet clay is a slab that will move, crack, and eventually need underpinning. A foundation drainage plan — regrade, downspout burial, curtain drain — is the cheapest structural insurance on a Louisiana home. See foundation drainage.
A simple percolation test — dig a 12-inch hole, saturate overnight, measure drop per hour — tells you a lot about what's under your yard. In most of Caddo and Bossier Parish the answer will be 'nearly zero,' which pushes designs toward discharge-based solutions rather than infiltration-based ones. Any contractor talking about dry wells without a perc test result is guessing.
A local coordinator will do a site walkover and provide a written itemized quote — no pressure.
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