Home drainage problems can most always be prevented, if I get there first, and can install french drains for home groundwater damage prevention, instead of doing groundwater removal first, and reduction of leaking and hydrostatic pressure. The prevention part is not lost, but only revisited from a practical standpoint after everything dries out again following the french drain installation.
Your home is often the most expensive item you will likely ever buy, in your entire lifetime, if you are the average American.
The cavalier nature with which some homeowners treat home drainage problems however, is simply amazing sometimes.
The importance of maintaining homeowners massive home investment doesn’t really need to be driven home. Or perhaps it does.
Homeowners spending money on sump pumps, that are not home drainage solutions, and do not stop groundwater from entering below grade, rather than first installing home drainage are losing lots of money in the end.
Once home drainage prevention with french drains is ignored, the groundwater damage repairs as well as the new french drain installation costs sky rocket, as the home drainage problem always gets worse, making the damage also get worse.
Homeowners naturally want for shirk the problem, find another doctor, forget it all together, take a nap, go somewhere to forget about it, install a sump pump, or some other brain child act of self destruction. It is natural to want to run away and hide.
What these types of homeowners believe to be thrift, no doubt, is in fact their own undoing from a financial standpoint.
Which was to rationale for not doing anything, or the wrong thing, to begin with.
Sometimes, in their defense, it is simply that these homeowners are just broke. Aren’t we all sometimes? But not over and over, year after year. Decade after decade.
If they are that broke, these homeowners are over their heads in a big way, and owning a home probably should not be part of their plans until they can afford to own one.
They should sell the home while they still have a home that does not require large amounts of cash, which they don’t ever have, apparently.
Home drainage with french drains is simply not going to be a priority over fun, education, travel, sports, cool cars and other would be priorities and hobbies, for these types of home drainage problem procrastinating homeowners.
We all know the importance of not letting your home rot into the ground from groundwater laying under it. Few practice prevention with professionally installed french drains.
Arguing over which method of groundwater removal to install, after it is late in the prevention game, is really dumb home ownership.
Just sell the home then, and move into an apartment again.
When hydrostatic pressure, caused by groundwater accumulating next to the homes’ foundation, or within the crawl space, begins to break up the concrete foundation, homeowners seldom see it happening.
The concrete damage has happened, slowly, over and over, before they know it, or face it.
Prevention of groundwater saturation next to your foundation, with french drains is necessary to outlast time, rain, snow, and what ever mother nature can throw at you.
The most common problems I find, in my work as a licensed, bonded and insured drainage and masonry contractor in the Portland, Oregon area, are as follows.
1. The homes foundation shows evidence of undermining of the foundation footing.
A common fact pertaining to this home drainage problem, is that the foundation was most likely poured without the base of the foundation footing being formed deep enough, and it gets undermined from running rain water on the surface during hard rains, and against the foundation walls.
The groundwater flows under the foundation footing, and carves out a passage under the foundation footing during hard sustained rains. Groundwater runs into this hole.
This is a common problem that leads to groundwater in the crawl space when it rains hard over a sustained period of time, to start it all off, and then over and over with each rain, getting worse.
2. A common foundation home drainage problem exists where the low point drain is not installed properly, and is not effective.
The low point drain is a length of 3″ abs solid pipe, that is installed into the foundation form, and poured into the base of the foundation stem wall, just above the foundation footing, if there is a crawl space>
This is completed at the time the foundation is originally poured.
The low point drain is supposed to be poured in the lowest part of the interior of the crawl space.
Sometimes the original building contractor did not choose the correct low point location for the low point drain on the floor of the crawl space.
The reason that a pipe functions as a drain, when properly constructed, placed and vented, is that the pipe is glued to a device on the interior of the crawl space that is placed at grade level, and has a fitting within the device that contains a “backflow flapper”.
This flapper, in theory, is designed to stay open when the groundwater starts to flow out of the crawl space, and should close when the groundwater starts flowing back into the crawl,space, which they seldom do.
That is one very possible reason for failure of the low point drain as well, and should be investigated.
The low point drain installation should be installed at a grade that slopes away from the interior of the crawl space. Tilted away from the home. Not flat. Not sloping back towards the foundation wall and back into the crawl space.
The low point drain “backflow device” is supposed to be a backflow preventer.
The low point drain, is however, many times just a piece of 3″ black abs pipe poured into the concrete foundation stem wall, and does not vent to anything at all. It is often flat as well.
Just dumb. Very often, from my experience in crawl spaces, the low point drain pipe was just backfilled with dirt on the outside of the foundation wall, vented to nothing, and was never made to work at all.
Many times, when the foundation is constructed, the low point drain was installed properly, and the floor joists for the home were not yet installed however, naturally.
Prior to the floor being completed, it rains, and the workers compact the crawl space below the grade of the low point point drain, as they walk around between the floor joists, installing the blocking and joists.
Workers pack it down below the grade that was originally intended. And boom. It is over before it started.
The fact then remains that the low point drain will never work, until a few inches of groundwater has already accumulated within the crawl space, if it even works then.
By that time the sump pump is installed, it is too little, too late.
A comedy of errors.
3. A third common home drainage problem, with respect to home foundations and home drainage issues, is as follows.
Foundation vents are poured too low in the foundation wall during the homes construction.
Foundation vents should be designed higher in the foundation pour, to allow the passage of air through the foundation in the summer months when they are opened, while still allowing enough concrete foundation wall left above ground, after to raising and compacting the soil grade against the foundation wall, for additional rain sun off, in the form of a hand compacted splash block.
This dries out the crawl space area and removes smells that can accumulate in the crawl space.
Many homes have foundation vents, or siding, that is constructed at, or very near ground level.
With the addition of dirt, barkdust or other debris, the foundation vents wind up too low in the foundation wall.
They are constructed below the dirt grade level, and are made to become rain traps when it comes hard.
The rainwater overflowing the gutters, and the groundwater runs into these below grade foundation vents, which are just big holes in the homes foundation.
The foundation vents contain a flapper door that can be closed, but even when closed, the vent cover will not prevent the entry of groundwater.
Contractors and architects should know better, but many do not practice the due diligence of designing a finished grade, taking professional home drainage standards in to account for the protection of their clients.
Foundation vents need to be poured high enough on the exterior foundation wall to allow enough room for soil to be backfilled and compacted, against, and away from the foundation wall.
The grade code wants is a compacted grade of approximately 6″ per 10 lineal feet away from your foundation wall. Code requires this in most cities, such as Portland, Oregon. We prefer, and install them at a greater grade than that if possible. We live in rain country.
The installation of french drains, installed approximately 18″-24″ from the foundation stem wall is a priority for hoe drainage success. Not an option. A requirement.
Find somewhere else to grow your tomatoes homeowners, and stop loosening the soil at your foundation wall, just because it is the south side of the home, when you know now it will cause groundwater problems, from the additional saturation and hydrostatic pressure, next to your foundation walls.
Grow in large containers instead. Very large ones.
If you are stuck with low foundation vents, a better foundation grade can be raised along the home after the installation of a window well.
The window well will not keep the groundwater out, especially as it rains right into the top of the window well, but will allow the soil grade to be raised with compacted dirt around the well and the foundation wall, creating a better runoff. Cover these window wells for run off and not run in.
If the foundation vent was poured too low into concrete foundation wall, the best you can do is to construct and plumb the french drains, and raise the soil grade with the use of a window well, installed with masonry screws and covered with a small shed roof type plywood cover, to prevent rain from raining into the new step out, the window well, that allowed you to raise and compact a higher grade at the foundation wall around it.
Got it?
4. Water enters crawl spaces where the building contractor roto-hammered through the foundation, to run abs sewer discharge pipes, and did not have the masonry skills, or brain juice, to realize that the holes created would simply leak groundwater when the hydrostatic pressure on the foundation was increased during rains.
These holes must be sealed with a hydrolic cement by your mason-drainage contractor. Find them. Seal them.
Cracks or rock pockets in the foundation, that exist as loose or missing areas in the exterior foundation wall must be chiseled out to the point where the crack or air space stops. Wire brushed clean and sealed first.
They must be filled with a hydrolic cement by your home drainage contractor/mason, to seal these areas, and to prevent further deterioration of your foundation or basement walls.
Prevent groundwater entry into the basement or crawl space.
Masonry reconstruction is often required on the inside and outside of the foundation, if the crack is visible on both sides of the foundation wall. If not, a repair on one side of the wall will solve the problem.
Have your mason-home drainage contractor inspect these areas for damage.