Home drainage magic? No electricity! No sump pumps!
If you are a homeowner or home buyer that has just discovered a home drainage problem, probably during the sale or purchase of a home, it would be a good idea to… continue reading, right here at AAA Home Drainage.
You are not going to find a better place anywhere on the internet for information on the subject of how to solve your groundwater problems. If you are under time constraints. Start reading.
This web site is indexed on all major search engines, with respect to the key words, “hand excavated french drains, hand excavated dry wells, groundwater removal, home drainage, portland french drains, and others.
During my attempt to share this knowledge, I have been fortunate to find the graces of the major search engine spiders as well, as they look for quality content on every subject you can think of.
Finding myself at the top of the search results page on a particular subject is not a matter of buying the top colored spots on the page. This page placement, and even being listed at all, is freely given to us by the search engines themselves, as their spiders crawl web sites reviewing and grading content, and rating it for value.
Key words used on any major search engine to find AAA Home Drainage, other than the address itself, are numerous, some of which are, “hand excavated french drains, groundwater removal, home drainage, hand excavated dry wells, french drains portland”.
Many homeowners around the world have called and e-mailed, since this site was started, to say that the information they received for free, by reading my site, enabled them to study home drainage better than any source they had previously discovered.
My sincere hope is that my writing will continue to be in context, to the point, and loaded with things that other contractors are not going to tell you about, or do not know about, with respect to solving groundwater problems, home drainage groundwater entry prevention, as well as groundwater removal science in general.
Many readers call and e-mail to say thanks. Many readers have eventually hired their own labor, and installed hand excavated french drains in the manner that I teach, after much studying on my site.
This is a difficult process to be sure, and for the dedicated home drainage student that is also a strong worker type physically.
This work is very labor intensive. Strong back required.
The installation of hand excavated french drains, after a professional analysis your homes drainage health, also requires a professional plan, using the existing home site topography to achieve an engineered flat hard bottom, gravity flow grade, for the bottom of the french drain aqua duct, that will form the enclosure for what will become a hand excavated french drain, containing a 3″ perforated pipe, 3/4″-1 1/2″ river rock, and weed cloth.
The aqua duct must have an engineered hand excavated french drain bottom grade of approximately 2″ per 10 lineal feet or greater. This means on a flat surface, your average maximum length per system is around 50 feet, in this example, to achieve best results.
Go more than approximately 50 lineal feet for your french drain, assuming depths between 8″-18″ deep, and your attempt at a french drain, on a flat surface along your foundation, in this example, will become a flat to slight grade ditch full of mud and debris, mixed with some groundwater.
The further you try to stretch the length beyond 50 ft. the flatter the french drain attempt, now a flat ditch, becomes. It is a liability at that point, and not an asset to your home drainage health and success of your french drain installation.
And that is when the homeowner throws down the shovel, lets loose with a few choice angry words not fit for the ears of grandmas, widows, or orphans, and grabs a beer and/or punching bag.
He decides that french drains just do not work.
His neighbors had told him that anyway. What was he thinking. He knew he could do it just as well. If they would have worked at all, his would have too. He read a few articles before saying, “yah, yah” and grabbing the shovel with a crew of 4.
Fatal drainage logic virus. oops. All the neighbors who had sump pumps had already told him that the entire neighborhood sat on top of underground rivers and springs.
About this time the homeowner may feel like he has been frozen in ice, and just thawed out actually. It is just the beginning of the end however.
He should have hired the pro.
Two inches per ten lineal feet of grade is nearly twice the french drain bottom grade recommended by most french drain installers, or people who act like installers.
Hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems are ten times the quality, and work faster for decades longer in real working life than other attempts at groundwater removal.
We live in rain country here in Portland, Oregon USA.
If you want to solve your groundwater problems, prepare for them.
Don’t wait until your only recourse as a home seller or home buyer is to fend off the groundwater problem in the worst of conditions, most always caused by heavy rain periods and the lack of professional home drainage with hand excavated french drains.
If you prevent the groundwater problem, you do not need to solve anything.
You should not have needed a solution if you would have installed the prevention. Any body home?
If you want success in your part of the world with groundwater problems, pretend you live in rain country too.
Eventually the day will come when you will find yourself caught in that that multi inch per day rain or snow/rain cycle, with your gutters running well and not overflowing next to your homes foundation, hand excavated french drains working, and no groundwater soaking your crawl space or basement. You will be high and dry and laughing.
If you are stuck for monetary resources to hire the home drainage pro you want in your part of the world, study, call me, dig in and get used to reading alot. Start reading.
And, probably a good idea, start working out too, before you attempt it. Maybe a few months ahead would be a good idea.
Even then, paying real home drainage professionals in your part of the world may be more cost efficient in the end, as your first few home drainage installation attempts will not look like, or perform anything like, a hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system that I would install for one of my customers.
You just cannot be expected to, or would likely achieve that standard, without years worth of experience and desire.
“Minimize it if you must, but try it and bust”. aaahomedrainge.com
The “do it yourself” way is not exactly the most productive way, man hour wise. The potential for damage factor exists with every penetration of the ground with the point of a shovel.
When few alternatives exist however to solve homeowners drainage problems, it might be time to start reading and working out some.
Getter done. You can do it. Hire some strong backs. You can run the order of installation and get them the materials. Teach them first naturally.
The amount of ways to do things wrong, when installing home drainage are amazing. If there is a wrong way to see it done, I am certain, I would tell you I have seen everything, although the next day I would just find another stupid sump pump installation in some variable form.
Failed groundwater system types are much too numerous to account for all of them.
I share the most volatile and deceptive home drainage scams that I run into over and over.
These are procedural, safety, and operational aspects that are critical to understand prior to under taking the design and installation of a hand excavated groundwater removal system.
Without alot of everything going right for the do it yourself installer, and if lacking the strength, knowledge and will to complete the hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system, in one setting, over a period of a few days to weeks, a decision to consider first hiring a professional home drainage contractor, rather than winging it, might be good advice that a brother would give a brother in such circumstances.
The soils may be different in your part of the world, and consist of different minerals and textures, but the rain is just as wet here in Oregon USA, as it is where you live, and most all of the same geology and hydro-dynamics principles related to groundwater removal and saturation, still exist and apply no matter where you live, on solid ground that is.
Since groundwater only understands what up hill and downhill is, and not in which country it is flowing, no matter where you are located on mother earth, my information is applicable to you as well as it is in Portland, Oregon USA, and to most every home site spot on mother earth out there as well, be it in, or on rock, sand, soil, or clay.
Out smarting groundwater is really not that hard. It involves thinking, designing and installing prevention rather than pumping your money out the window with some stupid trick that does not stop the groundwater from entering in the first place.
Home drainage magic? No electricity. No sump pumps.