Crawlspace and basement french drains with sump pumps
Crawlspace french drains and sump pumps are seldom required and are always a last resort and not a first home drainage solution plan. Groundwater that enters below grade into basements and crawlspaces must be collected and vented on the outside of the building with hand excavated french drains in order to stop the groundwater saturation and hydrostatic pressure that causes the leaking.
If you do not have properly installed hand excavated french drains and rain drain discharges on the outside of the home, you are advised to install these systems properly prior to consideration of any crawlspace or basement french drain groundwater collection system, which is usually installed in conjunction with a sump pump to evacuate the groundwater.
Well folks, that is the laundry list of what not to do or buy into with respect to sound home drainage solutions and expectations. I hope this will raise your groundwater removal consciousness to the level that you will understand the terminology, scams, eventualities, possibilities, pitfalls, persuasions, and motivations behind every home drainage pitch and proposed technology. Learn to see a bear behind every tree, and you will be better prepared to ask questions of home drainage contractors and have the ability to undermine their shallow tactics based on greed and the need to make easy money at your expense.
The hand excavated french drain is installed about 18″ from the foundation, it is approximately 12″ in width, and contains a 3″ perforated pipe, weed cloth about 4 inches from the top layer of the rock in the hand excavated french drain, and a completely clean engineered grade of 2″ per 10 lineal feet, with a compacted grade splash block away from the exterior foundation wall.
If you are not approaching your groundwater problem from the correct perspective, you will not achieve professional results.
Crawlspace and basement groundwater problem areas with home drainage systems installed are limited in their scope of effectiveness, with respect to the extended length and the shallow depth required for any french drain installed in a basment or crawlspace.
The engineering does not work well. You can get deeper, and collect more groundwater on the outside of the foundation than in any below grade area such as a crawlspace or basement, and that cuts off the groundwater before it can saturate below grade and cause leaking.
In addition, some groundwater is always soaking from sump pump wells into the soil within your crawlspace, or sitting in them as the sump pump never pumps out all the groundwater.
This creates added moisture and mold in your crawlspace. The measured utility value in a crawlspace or basement french drain system is low, compared to hand excavated french drains, properly installed and engineered on the outside of the foundation.
Does the contended spring run year round, or does it show up when the rains come hard after a few days?
If you can go in the crawlspace or basement and see the spring running in the hot parts of July and August when we have had no hard rain for sometime, you may indeed have what you could call an underground spring.
That completes the list of the most common home drainage ploys and proposed concepts advanced by contractors or scam artists, that I feel are most often misunderstood, misrepresented, undefined, and often cause homeowners to lose money, home equity, patience, and sleep in their quest for a solution to their home drainage groundwater problem.
Thanks for reading along. See you down the road in future e-books on home drainage and groundwater removal.