Hand excavated french drains are the best offense and defense
The money spent on the installation of hand excavated french drains is without a doubt the best money you can spend on your home to protect the homes value and create a healthy living environment for your family. Hand excavated french drains are largely ignored as a critical step to health with respect to your homes environment and land stability. City and county planning departments seldom mandate the installation of hand excavated french drains, although french drains are highly recommended in some version or another. Many times city planners use the phrase french drains without any real knowledge of the logistics concerning their installation.
Do the research on home groundwater drainage and do not be fooled by incompetent city or county planners who have less than an adequate knowledge of what it really takes to make a french drain work properly.
I spent 25 years as a real estate broker and property developer prior to starting this drainage business over a decade ago. I watched city and county officials flounder around the edges of the subject of hand excavated french drains and home groundwater removal. I was selling land to developers during most of my real estate career, creating subdivisions and multi-family apartment environments as well as condo and town home projects. Many of my projects required platting and approving the improvements and land with developers as well as finding the appropriate land for them to develop to begin with.
Home groundwater issues were always part of the preliminary plat approval. The preliminary plat approval is the process that determines the length to which the developer must go to insure that proper groundwater drainage is achieved.
A partial list of groundwater drainage considerations would include low point drains, roads, drainage ditches, storm water retention ponds, french drains, culverts, barrier dams, creeks that move groundwater, as well as road stability with respect to subjacent and lateral support of the land being cut up to create roads, and other important infrastructure considerations that are all bundled into the preliminary plat approval process. These considerations and others should be resolved prior to the developer selling the lots and receiving the preliminary plat approval. Prior to the preliminary plat approval the developer can only sell reservations on the lots which are subject to preliminary plat approval.
I know of many subdivisions that I visit yearly that show evidence of poor planning with respect to groundwater drainage problems. If you are purchasing a lot in a subdivision on which to build your dream home, look carefully at the aspect of groundwater and potential or present land movement within the subdivision. Do not take it for granted that the powers that control this subject have it together. Many developers are highly connected and familiar with manipulating the home groundwater approval process with respect to home drainage problems.
The existence of a geotech report sanitizing the land as suitable for development does not mean that you will not endure slumping hillsides or other groundwater drainage problems with your land. Once the developer is done selling the land and the conditions of approval for the development of the subdivision are completed by the cities standards, your chance of getting any consideration or attention from the developer or city with respect to these land development issues is much harder to impossible in a practical sense. A stitch in time saves nine as they say. Caveat emptor folks. Let the buyer beware.
Just because you love that perch at the top of the hill or the one at the bottom of the hill for that matter, does not mean trouble may not be lurking with respect to home groundwater problems and land movement.
I sold a building site many years ago in a private gated community with a private 60 acre lake. The developer, a self professed seasoned veteran of development, did little to address home groundwater drainage concerns within the subdivision and the hillsides melted like the tops of warm ice cream sundays when the first huge storm hit. Whole hillsides slumped to the bottom of the hill. The developer brought the machines back in as the building sites were not sold yet. He simply pushed the dirt back up the hill and compacted it. The owners of those problem building sites still have home groundwater drainage problems that impact their land to this day.
My fishing buddy who bought the 2 acre site that I mentioned spent over $17,000. to stabilize the building site after the home was built and damage to land and home was already done. He has experienced no more groundwater flooding or geology based ground movement since the installation of hand excavated french drains. That was over 7 years ago.
Groundwater was flooding his crawlspace, washing away his terraces and roads as well as the retaining walls, washing out the lawn areas, and other major groundwater problems associated with the building site.
I have also completed 3 other projects within the same subdivision of million dollar plus homes since that time. Most all the home groundwater drainage problems were caused by the subdivision being platted and approved without adequate infrastructure with respect to groundwater drainage.
Simply not enough industrial sized rainwater-groundwater collection facilities completed to insure that groundwater does not run over roads onto nearby homeowners property creating groundwater saturation, erosion and hydrostatic pressure which causes slumping and ground movement. Builders add to the problem by constructing retaining walls without hand excavated french drains above and below the improvement to protect them from the saturation and hydrostatic pressure that causes groundwater drainage problems.