Installing a sparkling* drain near our house

I installed a sparkling drain* near our house, here is a time-lapse video, description below the fold:

* you may be more familiar with the name French drain, however, that is only correct if it is made in France
When it rains, water tends to pool up under the downspout at this corner of the house.  I put a rain barrel there, but it usually overflows.  To help keep the basement dry and hopefully preserve the foundation I decided to add a French drain to carry the water away.  Note that the room with the sliding door is not over the basement - it is a later add on (before us) on a concrete slab - so moving water towards it is still moving away from the basement. 

Here's what I did:

1. excavated a circular ~2 ft diameter hole under the downspout; from this dig a trench from that hole downhill, diagonal away from the house (towards the corner of the add on)
1. Trench is 1 shovel blade (~9") wide
2. As carefully as possible I cut out the existing sod and saved it next to the trench for replacement later
3. The hole and trench started about 15" deep and got deeper as I went to maybe 18-20" at its deepest
2. At the other end excavated a circular hole, again about 2 ft in diameter but much deeper (3 feet at deepest)
3. Fill with layer of coarsest stone - 1.5" - to a level 9" below top of the trench
4. Tamp down with a sledgehammer head (the width of the head almost perfectly matched the width of the trench
5. Added next most coarse stone - 0.75" - to a level 4-5" below the top of the trench
6. tamp down with sledgehammer head
7. Add 3/8" stone to a level 2" below of top of the trench
8. replace the sod
1. it didn't fill the trench; I started at the upper end and moved down the trench and ran out of sod at the lower hole FYI

Tested by dumping out 2/3 of rainbarrel (~33 gallons) at the upper end (right onto the gravel) - there was no pooling, it all drained away very rapidly!  Will try to capture a video during a heavy rain storm soon to see / show how it is working.