Does your home make the home drainage grade
Does your home make the home drainage grade? I am not referring to your “smart home” technology. I am talking about how the soil grade at the foundation is engineered, and to what degree the proper slope is used to prevent groundwater entry into your below grade areas, such as crawlspaces, or basements.
Whether you are building a new home, or have an existing home, the way that your foundation vents, foundation grade, ingress-egress windows, and window wells are placed and constructed makes all the difference with respect to the lack of moisture or groundwater below grade. This is priority one, to insure no groundwater intrusion below grade, and to have a clean, dry, mold free environment below grade.
This should be a no brainer, right? Planning departments, architects, as well as builders, should have this nailed, right? Well, you would think so, but that is not reality in many cases. These supposed gurus of home development are often your worst nightmare as they will overlook the basic factors of grade while remembering other less important issues.
The building code says in most cases that a sufficient grade away from the home, compacted and not dug up, is 6″ per 10 lineal feet away from the foundation for adequate home drainage. That does not mean that you are suppose to plant tomatoes in that area and loosen the soil. No trees with roots to grow along the foundation.
In a high number of newly constructed and existing homes, the grade winds up flat or sloping to the foundation, which is a smoking gun for a groundwater drainage problem.
To make matters worse, these professed pundits of home drainage don’t advise, or install hand excavated french drains in most cases. They may talk a bit about hand excavated french drains like they are an option, somthing like fancy fence post caps, or something closer to lawn flamingos.
I have said it before, but it needs to be repeated. Get with the architect in the beginning to discuss the placement in the foundation for window wells, ingress-egress windows, and foundation vents. Raise them up as high as possible in the foundation wall, or if not high enough, raise the foundation pour to give enough room. Make sure your foundation wall is poured at least 12″ higher than they think is adequate, to allow the raising of the grade and compacting with soil and clay, prior to installing hand excavated french drains.
If you want to have no home drainage problems, get the soil grade at the foundation right from the beginning. Once it is done wrong, few options exist for the best results in prevention of groundwater entry into below grade areas.