When the winter winds blow and old man winter comes knocking at your door, visiting with groundwater running into your crawlspace or basement, you will wish you had installed hand excavated french drains last summer.
If you had been fortunate enough to have had them installed by a professional who is used to getting results with engineering and grade, you deserve to feel warm and cozy.
Construct and plumb hand excavated french drains about 18″-24″ from your foundation wall with a compacted soil grade sloping away from the foundation. Creating a better grade at the foundation may not be possible when your homes siding is too low to the dirt already or when window wells or foundation vents are below grade where groundwater can run right along the foundation wall from the outside when it rains hard.
When homes in snow country experience a snow melt, they really get it going, in most cases. This groundwater must be removed, and hand excavated french drains will not freeze up. They will vent that groundwater as the snow melts, preventing your crawl space or basement from being soaked again.
When the ground is frozen and you hit a few of those warmer than average winter or spring days during already frozen conditions the groundwater will run off quickly on the frozen surface towards your foundation if the soil grade has not been engineered, as per code in most cities in the U.S. to slope away from the foundation. When gutters are frozen solid with ice and a heavy warm rain follows this will often produce runoff that will pool and saturate the foundation in no time at all when the whole roof is adding to the equation.
When the winter winds blow and you are snug and warm in your home, sitting by the fire watching it snow or rain, you will have the peace of mind you deserve knowing that winter and spring groundwater will not be running below grade into your crawl space or basement damaging your foundation, your health and your peace of mind.
When I was growing up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota, I remember a home that our family owned that could have been the poster child for hand excavated french drains.
We had over 2 feet of water in that basement most of the time in the spring. Most often due to the spring snow and ice thaw as well as the rains.
We had no french drains. My dad didn’t know about hand excavated french drains, and in his defense few people still understand hand excavated french drains.
As kids we had a ball pretending to fish in the basement. We would literally have around 18″-24″ of groundwater in that basement. In time, many weeks later, on humid warm summer nights, fire flies would spin and flash in the filtered evening light at the edge of huge oak tree woods.
Dad got real tired of this drama getting worse every year, and without a plan or light at the end of the tunnel to solve the groundwater problem, the home was sold.
We could have solved the groundwater problem with hand excavated french drains, from what I know now. It would have been a better thing for us all in the long run.
I now know, as well, that with that much groundwater in your basement or crawl space there is likely at least one downspout feeding it as well as ground water, with massive amounts of roof water added to the groundwater.
So the home would have required new rain drain discharges as well, in all probability, which would have been installed with solid 3″ abs and 3″ flex solid ads pipe laid on the bottom of the hand excavated french drain these days, which would also contain a perforated 3″ ads pipe for groundwater removal speed, installed on the bottom of the hand excavated french drain as well.
The times have changed, but the same home drainage problems remain. We are just getting smarter as we get older.