The home drainage consultation process
Homeowners many times spend an average of 2 hours with me as I am conducting a complete home drainage evaluation of their property for groundwater problem signs.
During the evaluation of the home the homeowners eventually describe the drainage problem in detail. Time just fades away as we discuss the whole list of individual perceptions on the cause of the problem, how the home was built, any previous sump pump failures, areas of groundwater entry into crawlspaces and basements, the duration of each groundwater event needed to produce the leaking, the times of year and under which conditions the groundwater problem is present, how the neighbors may be affecting the groundwater problem, and any previous attempts to solve the groundwater problem by other contractors and themselves.
One of the most time consuming parts of any property evaluation, with respect to home drainage, is the time spent discussing the various other contractors that have seen the property, and their opinions, proposals, and motivations. Often a humorous, colorful, fun type of character description process takes place between the homeowner and the contractor as the homeowners describe the whole experience with each contractor that has reviewed the property.
This e-book is going to discuss many of the most common home drainage scams and suggested methods that I hear about over and over again. Most are very transparent in their own right. If you listen to logic and understand a basic amount of geology, you will be able to conclude that they do not make sense. It is vital that the homeowner understand that when it comes to home drainage, “all methods proposed are not equal”, and that the motivations of the contractor have a lot to do with what he feels is most profitable, what tools are easiest to work with, and what he is used to doing over and over again without too much work at all. Lots of these characters are just plain crooks.
DO NOT LET THAT GUY VENT A FRENCH DRAIN TO YOUR RAIN DRAIN DISCHARGE SYSTEM. 1. The most common home drainage scam in the book is the flim flam man who says that he is a drainage contractor and that he will excavate a french drain and vent it into a rain drain discharge that the gutter vents your roof water into.
This is just a lot of bunk. A hand excavated french drain that runs groundwater towards your foundation where the rain drain in installed is not what you want, even if it is a properly hand excavated french drain.
One elderly woman who is in her late 80’s in age and is a customer of mine, recently told me the story of her encounter with such a contractor. This individual may not have even been a contractor either, as she did not bother to check with the contractors board.
The customer told me that this professed home drainage contractor was pushy, condescending, and told her, “I’ll tell you what you need, you don’t know what you need”.
She contracted with my company to hand excavate french drains to prevent groundwater from entering her crawlspace. Her home is on a hill and groundwater runs quickly down the hill pooling at her exterior foundation wall, which causes saturation of the groundwater and hydrostatic pressure that produces leaking into her crawlspace. The condition had been that way for a long time. Attempts had been made to trench the groundwater within the crawlspace, but it never stopped the groundwater from entering in the first place.
The homeowner has done her homework on french drains. She reads the internet targeting information about hand excavated french drains, and along with her granddaughter, she knows that my web site has a top world wide page ranking on the subject of hand excavated french drains on google and yahoo, as well as other search engines.
The story is an old one. These types of scam artists, some of whom are actually contractors, love to come behind an actual home drainage contractor that has bid hand excavated french drains.
They bid there work about 2/3 of the price of a properly installed hand excavated french drain, and this person probably does what he says he will do in around 20% of the time with 25% of the labor force, leaving you with absolutely no chance of your home drainage problem being solved. Most often a worse condition follows as a result of the failure of the rain drain discharge system that vents the gutters and roof water. The rain drain discharges get plugged with dirt in no time at all.
This is an act of criminal proportion in my opinion. There should be a special jail for these types on contractors, run by homeowners themselves, who throw rotten eggs at them all day. They do not deserve a contractors license, if they have one at all. Call the CCB in Oregon or your home state contractors board to verify contractor status. Turn these professed contractors in by whatever name they give you if you are confronted by them and if they turn out to be un-licensed.
What these types of contractors are proposing is not a hand excavated french drain folks.
Do the math. If you need a grade for a hand excavated french drain on a hard finished surface, of 2″ per 10 lineal feet, and the proposal this guy gives you says the lineal feet that his system will cover is around 50 feet along the foundation, or perhaps even all the way around the exterior foundation, and the rain drain dishcharge which he intends to use as a vent is under the soil at a depth of approximately 8″, how could this guy make groundwater run on a flat surface to a location 50 feet away or more if the system is 8 inches deep the entire length of the so called french drain.
He can not make this work. It is mathematically impossible. Groundwater does not run on a flat surface or up hill.
The groundwater actually does two things when this scam work is done. It soaks right into the soil along the foundation and still wets everything below grade, and when it is raining very hard, it washes dirt into your rain drain discharge system slowly, and eventually plugs your gutter system and rain drain discharge.
These types of crooks prey on the elderly, who do not understand what a french drain is to begin with, not to mention how they are engineered and what they consist of.
Home drainage is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the world of home construction.
Homeowners get taken to the cleaners on this one because they think this scam contractor is giving them the same groundwater solution for less money, instead of nothing at all of value for a rip off price. Even worse is the fact that this guy is going to mess up your home even more than it originally was.
The main thing that the flim flam man is counting on is that you have heard the words “hand excavated french drain” somewhere, or maybe just french drain, and that you do not understand what one really is. The only thing he knows is the words hand excavated french drain.
Stand up to this bully and throw him out the door folks. Don’t be one of his victims. He knows what he is doing, and he makes lots of cash doing it too. He will be self assured, and probably driving a new rig as well.
The one common thing about this type of guy is that your gut will tell you something is just not right, no matter how much he keeps talking. These guys always overplay their hand with intimidation. When confronted with logic and homeowner questions about how and why this system works effectively and why it is a safe procedure, they will likely default to authoritarian pomp and anger, trying to intimidate you in this manner.
Don’t be surprised if you meet one of these characters when you go looking for home drainage solutions. Caveat Emptor, “let the buyer beware”.
These types of characters do not have the energy or the knowledge to actually design and install a hand excavated french drain, and like the common street thief, they have learned that being a predator means more money for less work.