My evaluation and understanding of your home drainage problem starts with understanding your perception of what is occuring at your property, or at your home site or lawn in general, with respect to saturated rain groundwater entry below grade, and the groundwater, environmental, and health problems that it can create.
The symptoms of your home drainage problem is what I want to initially learn about. Your perceptions of the problem and its history.
What do you see when it rains hard?
What do you see when it does not rain hard?
What makes you think that you have a home drainage problem? What are your experiencing?
Where does the groundwater become apparent? All are preliminary questions to understanding your situation.
Let’s look at it this way. If you were not feeling well, and you went to the doctor and said, “I’m not feeling well”, what would the doctor ask you next? Probably something like,” what are you feeling or experiencing”?
You, as a patient, would explain your symptoms and concerns, and the doctor would determine what is likely happening, by reviewing your experiences with the symptoms of your discomfort, and then interfacing it with his knowledge base, be it personal, computer, or through other professionals that specialize in his certain type of medical work.
When the doctor had determined that your symptoms lead she or he to believe that a certain health problem was indicated, the doctor would research the symptoms data and advise remedies for you based on the information.
The decision of whether to use this doctor would be based on his or her experiences with him, confidence and prognosis documentation, as well as his or her history of success, with actually solving problems, of health and not drainage, in that case. The same system of information gathering is used however.
Solving your home drainage problem starts with your perception of your home drainage problem, and your ability to communicate it. Your experiences and history with the groundwater caused problem. The reasons you believe that you have one. What evidence you see.
When I meet a homeowner for the first time, I usually spend around 1 hour or more discussing the perception of the home drainage problem from the homeowners experience, history of the former attempts to solve the drainage problem, and there may be many, as well as looking at the areas of the home that are affected first, and asking exactly when those areas within the basement or crawl space are affected by heavy rain water.
Not to my surprise, near 100% of all homeowners say their groundwater leaking only occurs when it rains hard, and sometimes not even then. Or perhaps has never even happened before. Many things can change around your home that homeowners are not aware of in time to prevent groundwater created saturation and leaking into basements and crawl spaces.
If no discussion were undertaken at all with the homeowners, I probably would be able to ascertain the source of the groundwater problem areas anyway. The damage that the groundwater problem had caused would most often give away its origin.
After the discussion with the homeowner about their perception of the home drainage problem, and perhaps, but not always needed, a visit to the crawlspace or basement; I move the discussion to the outside of the home.
I look at the issues that are important to me. Such as: Where are the downspouts vented? What is the topography of the home in general, and especially at the foundation wall. I look for foundation vents poured too low in the foundation walls, preventing the installation of a compacted splash block against the foundation, for maximum rain water run off.
I ask myself, is the area dug up loose soil, or is the soil around the foundation walls comprised of natural compacted soil or clay?
Are low foundation vents allowing groundwater to enter into the crawlspace? Does the home have foundation issues with respect to damage from groundwater leaking, or a structural in-stability, as a result of bad or no drainage?
What type of gutter system is in place, and what is the condition of the gutters and rain drain discharges? Are there any former home drainage attempts installed that attempted to solved the groundwater problem, but did not solve anything at all?
What was the impact on the property, both good and bad, as a result of these former failed home drainage attempts, previously tried to solve the problem? All these items, and more, come into play prior to me discussing a solution to the groundwater problem.
Without the homeowners input, I would likely discover this information anyway, but I would miss important perceptions from the homeowners prior experience with the problem. This would be especially true of any former attempts to solve the problem, who did the work, when it was done, and other basic considerations and observations of the homeowner.
Most likely, I was not at the home when it was raining hard, and because I was not at the home when a previous construction attempt to solve the problem was undertaken, I could not have known what the homeowner saw or determined with respect to that construction.
I could not have known what the previous homeowners told the present homeowners about drainage work that was done before the present homeowners bought it.
Stop! Look! and Listen! That is my important first rule of thumb in home drainage assessment. The degree to which understanding can come into play, along with the perception of the groundwater problem, as defined by the homeowners, determines how swiftly and confidently a professional home drainage contractor/mason can proceed with the proper solution.