How confident are you when it comes to assessing the abilities of a home drainage contractor? Do you know any professional home drainage contractors? Probably not. Most homeowners do not understand home drainage well enough to protect their home atmosphere, finances, and the structural integrity of their home.
Given that a home is likely the most expensive item they will ever purchase, it probably would be a good idea for them to learn about home drainage with hand excavated french drains. For many homeowners, the task of finding and interviewing home drainage contractors, for opinions on their home drainage problems, is like being asked to start speaking fluent Dutch, after listening to a few tapes.
In order to stay on top of things, homeowners everwhere must learn home drainage terminology first. They must learn the materials used, the ways to install home drainage without ruining your yard, the reasons for hand excavated french drain installation and times when it is not appropriate, how to provide a proper healthy environment within the home, as well as other major topics that are vital to the understanding of home drainage.
Home buyers must keep asking pertinent home drainage questions. This keeps the home buyer in control of the information stream when interviewing home sellers and contractors, usually as a result of a pest dry rot and structural inspection that indicated groundwater in the basement or the crawlspace.
Remember, you are interviewing the contractor, not the other way around. So, while the contractor may put out the vibe that he is competent, and should not be challenged for explanation of his principles; remember, you are the boss. Stand tall and get the answers, or watch him fidget and get defensive, just before he leaves in a sweat. Ask strong home drainage questions and watch the phonies melt under the heat of your light.
The solution to your home drainage problem is probably hand excavated french drains. Not always, but most of the time, it is the most effective home drainage science to prevent groundwater saturation and hydrostatic pressure caused by heavy rains. The concept is thousands of years old that we know of, and probably a very lot longer than that.
If you must sump pump some groundwater, do it only after you have installed hand excavated french drains to collect the groundwater that you would have been pumping, without collecting it prior to letting it saturate to the level of the sump pump.
In the majority of cases, installation of hand excavated french drains and grade work will prevent any existing installed sump pumps from ever running again. That is why you probably do not need one installed, since I hope your objective is to prevent the groundwater from entering in the first place.
It is too late for your foundation footings, as they sink while the sump pump just keeps pumping, as long as there is electricity, and the flow does not exceed the capacity of the pump or the discharge line where it is vented.
Many of those sump pump installers will be talking about underground springs running under your home, and underground rivers too, as the source of the groundwater coming into the crawlspace or basement. Imagine now, rivers! The dude has just told you there is a river running under your home.
Wow! If you believe that, I would imagine that same guy has a bridge to sell you somewhere, if you are interested.
Rains do saturate the ground to the degree that, after long rains, the ground weeps groundwater out of cracks in the soil as a result, in crawl spaces, but if french drains were properly installed on the outside of the foundation, with a compacted splash block against the foundation wall, the problem would not exist. You can call that quick rainwater flow a spring, but it stops with the rain, within days, and does not meet the definition of a spring.
Some contractors, or in some cases, people who introduce themselves as a contractor, are not really licensed, bonded and insured. These clowns insult everyones intelligence with that common old tale of underground springs and rivers running under expensive homes.
Most often, the truth is that when the average subdivision is platted and approved, little institutional drainage is demanded by the county, as part of the “conditions of approval” for the developers plan. Sometimes it is the developers who slide off into the sunset without having to spend the cash, a sometimes it is county ignorance of the evident signs of a future groundwater problem.
On hillside locations, each person above the property below them will impact the lower land owner as a result of the topography and their groundwater removal and perking systems, if any. Roof water and groundwater flow down hill to the lower property unless otherwise collected and vented so that does not happen.
Now, the contractor has your attention, right? Underground rivers and springs, in an area where, prior to the developer permitting the land many levels of professional geological review is used to determine that just such a condition does not exist. Geo-technical information, commonly just called a “Geo-tech report”, U.S. Geological survey maps and other historical information, as well as local corp. of engineers maps and information on the land are consulted; much of the information based on sophisticated collection methods, used primarily during the plat approval process for the subdivision, by the county, to rule out the presence of such geological features as “rivers” and “springs”, under your future home. Not many slip through the cracks folks. Not in this day and age.
I was a commercial-investment broker with my own brokerage, for 25 years prior to starting this company many years ago, and I have seen very few examples that were actually pre-existing or new springs that run even when it does not rain.
The saturation from the property above you amounts to the same thing to you of course, if you are below grade to that homeowner, but if the groundwater is from his overflowing gutter system, for example, or even off his hillside yard, flooding yours, your spring is really a neighbors home drainage problem legally. Better think about getting a professional home drainage assessment so a proper call can be made.