Typical maintenance problems and activities for infiltration practices Typical maintenance problems and activities for infiltration practices

Typical maintenance problems and activities for infiltration practices
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Inspection Focus	Common Maintenance Problems	Maintenance Activity	Recommended Maintenance Schedule	Applicable Infiltration Practices1
Drainage Area and Drawdown Time	Clogging, sediment deposition	Ensure that contributing catchment areas to practice, and inlets are clear of debris	Monthly	1,2,3,4,5,6,7
	Erosion of catchment area contributing significant amount of sediment	In case of severely reduced drawdown time, scrape bottom of basin and remove sediment. Disc or otherwise aerate/scarify basin bottom. De-thatch if basin bottom is turf grass. Restore original design cross section or revise section to increase infiltration rate and restore with vegetation as necessary.	Upon identification of drawdown times longer than 48 hours or upon complete failure	1,2,3,4,5,6
Pretreatment	Pretreatment screens or sumps reach capacity	Remove sediment and oil/grease from pretreatment devices/structures.	Minimum yearly or as per manufacturer's recommendations	1,2,3,4,5
	Vegetative filter strip failure	Reduce height of vegetative filter strip that may be limiting in‐flow. Re‐establish vegetation to prevent erosion. Leave practice off‐line until full reestablishment.	Mow grass filter strips monthly. Restore as necessary	1,2,4,6
Site Erosion	Scouring at inlets	Correct earthwork to promote non‐erosive flows that are evenly distributed	As necessary	1,2,3,6
	Unexpected flow paths into practice	Correct earthwork to eliminate unexpected drainage or created additional stable inlets as necessary	As necessary	1,2,3,6
Vegetation	Reduced drawdown time damaging plants	Correct drainage issues as described above	Replace with appropriate plants after correction of drainage issues	2,6,8
	Severe weed establishment	Limit the ability for noxious weed establishment by properly mowing, mulching or timely herbicide or hand weeding. Refer to the MDA Noxious Weed List	Bi‐monthly April through October	2,6,8

¹1=Infiltration Basin; 2=Bioinfiltration Basin; 3=Infiltration Trench; 4=Dry Well; 5=Underground Infiltration; 6=Dry Swale with Check Dams; 7=Permeable Pavement; 8=Tree Trench/Tree Box