Got groundwater? Now would be a good time to check out your crawl space or look along those basements walls, where the wall meets the floor, which will be a likely groundwater entry point.
Homeowners often let groundwater problems become yearly events that get worse every year.
Moving dirt and rock, that is measured by the dump truck load, is not easy work, especially in bad winter weather conditions. Frozen ground can not be excavated, so the opportunity is lost during those times.
Working in bad weather can become everything from unpleasant to dangerous for workers trying to keep balance on slopes containing plywood runs, with ice present, or with slick feet full of mud.
Wheel barrowing and walking on plywood runs, so the landscape does not become a casualty, is a necessity, not a luxury when doing home drainage in the winter. If you do not do this, your lawn will be trashed. Knowing these conditions can prevent serious worker accidents and preserve the health of yourself, the home, and your crew.
While it is more efficient, from a groundwater collection model, to get your hand excavated french drains and rain drain discharges installed while the weather is not at its worse, many homeowners do not do this. I know this because I spend every winter in the snow and rain discovering home drainage problems that are decades old.
Drainage problems can be prevented by stopping the saturation of rain water next to the homes foundation.
Every year drainage afflicted homeowners enter the winter season with a renewed sense of optimism. Perhaps that pesky, mean old drainage problem won’t come back next year. After all, it did not exist before a few years ago.
I think homeowners say a new home drainage prayer each year, after nothing in or around the home seems to move or crack. What’s the problem, right? Is there a problem? Especially if the solution is already what they have been told requires more money than they have or care to spend to solve the home drainage problems.
From my experience, many of these drainage afflicted homeowners may be thinking, maybe it will all change by next year, without any money being spent to solve the groundwater entry problems. Could happen. Let’s try that first. After all, the problem did not appear until perhaps a few years ago.
To my mind, this pretty much resembles Einsteins definition of insanity. “Doing the same things over and over and expecting different results”. Or in this case, not doing anything, or the wrong thing, over and over again, expecting different results.
Stop the groundwater entry when it is coming in, with hand excavated french drains, installed to gravity flow groundwater away from your homes foundation. A graded foundation splash block will prevent groundwater from soaking next to the homes foundation and will run groundwater away from the homes foundation, preventing saturation.
If you do not gravity flow groundwater away from your homes foundation on the bottom of a hand excavated french drain, the groundwater saturation that makes the added groundwater weight will create hydrostatic pressure against your foundation walls.
The added weight of the groundwater above the homes foundation, will press the bottom layer of groundwater caught up in the saturated soil along the foundation wall, them already perhaps many feet below grade, out into the crawl space air, along the base of the foundation wall, after flowing to and under the foundation wall into the crawl space because it was not collected on the outside of the foundation walls.
If you let the process of groundwater entering your crawl space year after year create groundwater pathways along the foundation walls your groundwater problems will only become worse as the years go by
. Trees and mature shrub plantings close to a home with a drainage groundwater problem, originating at that location of the founation, will most often make it impossible for hand excavated french drains to be installed in that area, where they should be installed, around 18″ from the foundation wall. Mature tree plantings and shrubs located along the foundation, in flat areas along the home especially, are suspect always for allowing groundwater to quickly run below grade along the foundation wall and into basements and crawl spaces during hard rains.
Rain drain discharges venting the homes gutter system and the rain falling on the ground around your foundation will be the first things I inspect when solving a home drainage problem. Roof water can become massive when a downspout gets pulled out of the rain drain discharge.
Gutters spill over when they are bent or if gutter spikes get pulled away from the ends of the rafter tails to which they are nailed.
When the gutters overflow, with ice already in them, as it starts to rain, everything flows right over your frozen gutters. You have no gutters in that situation. Better have hand excavated french drains installed along the foundation walls, or prepare to get soaked.
Hand excavated french drains and splash blocks can save the day at that time. Snow country homes seldom have adequate drainage and suffer when sited in flat or low areas or below grade to hillsides that run groundwater towards the home.
Once a homes crawl space is full of groundwater, whether you pump some of it out or not matters less than stopping it from coming into the crawl space. Sump pumps are like the little dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. Too little, too late.
When full of standing water, your foundations crawl space will likely stay wet until the next summer ends, at best. That is predicated on the soil perking down the rest of the groundwater so the crawl space can be dried out.
A sump pump won’t dry it out, that is for sure. And a sump pump won’t even clear the crawl space of all the groundwater, so it is still there is less quantity to do the exact same thing, make moisture and mold.
To be successful at drying out the crawl space of your home, the ventilation plan must be strong. The foundation vents should be opened in summer, and the moisture barrier should be pulled back so the crawl space can be dried out with box fans. Close all vents and pull moisture barrier back over the crawl space ground when it has dried out.
Many crawl spaces, once full of standing groundwater, may never dry out, depending on the amount of groundwater.
When drainage problems are not dealt with in their early years when recognized, often the foundation repairs of the home can amount to thousands of dollars more, besides the drainage work required.
Once the groundwater starts sinking the foundation footings and begins the process of the decaying the homes post beam structure, plan on spending some big cash to rebuild the home from the ground up, the very hard way. This is advanced engineering skill work, and must be completed without moving the home at all, while replacing posts, beams and pads.
If your windows and doors start sticking and not wanting to close, or your doors don’t close well, and they did previously, the homes footings may be sinking. This would be especially possible within old homes, naturally.
If you suspect that your homes foundation footings are sinking, a geo-technical engineer should be called in for an assessment of the home to determine what should be done to save it, if it is still worth the money to save at all by that time.
I have jacked and rebuilt post beam pad infrastructure on old homes that could have been easily saved without having to re-build it from the ground up. Just drainage would have done the job.
The process of saving it would have needed to be started decades ago however. Hand excavated french drains would have saved most of those homes.
Advanced construction and engineering skills are required to safely work under a home while messing with the post and beam structure of the home. Not a job for homeowners in most all cases.