If you choose to install your own hand excavated french drains, be advised that many pitfalls are lurking. Not the least of which is… your desire to just install a sump pump. The second of which is your desire to bag this nonsense, so you think, half way into your proposed home drainage installation.
Home drainage pitfalls can only be navigated by sound home drainage decisions, and should be made only with experience behind the decision maker.
These decisions include, but are not limited to, decisions of where a groundwater system should be installed, and what it consists of.
Should it even be installed?
How long will it last?
What materials do I use?
What else will it damage if I do it wrong?
How much do I believe those guys who install sump pumps?
Do I understand the safety issues and how to proceed?
Confusion can easily set in, and your french drain installation attempt can become a comedy of errors, with consequences,.
Other decisions of the bank account, the heart, and the head, are also required, in order for the average homeowner to put forth the correct groundwater removal plan and install it safely.
Physical strength would be a good place to start.
If you can’t run wheel barrows full of wet muck and rock up and down hills, day after day, in all kinds of weather, you should think twice about this, no matter your ego, or the loss of points you think you will suffer in the eyes of your spouse, if you have one.
You will first need you to be in solid shape.
This is not sunday football couch siting with a beer, and not for the faint of body or spirit.
You will not get it done with pizza , beer and a few friends. You will fail with that approach.
You will require good laborers, a good plan, and patience, as well as luck with the weather, if you wait, like most people do, to attempt to solve the home drainage problem when it is already saturated in the dead of winter.
Preventing home drainage problems takes experience doing so.
The decision making home drainage professional, or homeowner attempting to be one, will be standing alone always, misunderstood most often, yet proceeding when it is appropriate, to express the correct geological logic, as it applies to that property, albeit the ignorant anxiety, acting like static electricity, caused by those nay sayers standing around the water cooler that believe french drains just don’t work, and will not shut up about what sump pump guys tell them.
So many sump pump installers can’t be wrong.
So how can this french drain installer, AAA Home Drainage, be right?
That means the sump pump guys are all wrong.
Not is all cases. They are not all wrong. Just a huge percentage of them, who found the profit in it suited them well.
Sump pumps have their place in home drainage. Just not first place. They are way down the line in order of installation, as a matter of fact. Many things can be done more effectively than using sump pumps first.
Oh baby. The truth is hard to get your mind around sometimes, isn’t it? That is why governments can constantly lie to us as citizens, and in their next breath ask us to believe them, unconditionally, in the future, and we do.
We should really question our own ignorance and fear first, and not question those who are actually solving Oregonians home drainage problems.
We are programed in many ways, and the subject of home drainage is one of the best programming viruses I have ever seen perpetrated against homeowners anywhere in the developed world.
The nay sayers want a sump pump installed, because that is all they hear. That is all they know.
A sump pump was suggested by the home inspector too in his report. Check mate.
Lights out for everyone else coming behind this b.s.
The bar has been set, and now everyone else is answering questions about why their system is better, instead of simply explaining the logic and engineering of their system of groundwater removal, to a non-programed mind that can reason.
The added unsolicited validation, from an un-professional home inspector, shooting his mouth off like he was a home drainage professional, in a report he is being paid for, while attempting to weigh in as a home drainage source of information is criminal and non-professional, as well as against the Oregon contractor laws, in my opinion.
This goes down while the home inspector is also telling the homeowners that he knows someone that can help them install that sump pump they need, or grade the crawl space.
This all sets the stage for validation of the sump pump installers premise of the presence of underground rivers and springs under your home. More dog feces.
The homeowners might think, “there are so many sump pump installers out there, they can’t all be wrong.” Right?
Wrong! They are all full of dog dump.
They are part of a lousy good old boy, busy sump pump business, that operates more like a mob than your friend, trust me on that one.
I hear stories about the hype of their sump pump guarantee that sells the job in most cases, and is absolutely worthless.
I finished a job in the last few months for a homeowner who is working for a major insurance company.
This corporate climber was so sure he had made the correct decision to install sump pumps too.
After not being able to collect one cent from the contractor who installed his crawl space french drain system, which failed from day one, which only made matters worse, he wound up with squat, just like everyone else does.
He was finally referred to me by someone.
These sump pump guys have obviously bought themselves lobby power at the state legislature, as well as speaking rights at the Oregon state home inspectors 2009 annual convention, where hired as speakers, I am told they spilled out their garbage to Oregon home inspectors as fact.
Attempting to, and actually manipulating home inspectors minds, while bringing them in their referral fold by convincing them of the opposite of which is true.
Sump pumps do not stop groundwater from entering below grade, as well as the degree of expertise among those that install them is highly questionable.
Sump pump installers and home inspectors are further on display in this web site as well because they are dirty, and manipulate public opinion to the detriment of homeowners everywhere, not just Oregon.
If you want to be a survivor of the home drainage “sump pimp” ploy, or you are a, “would be if you knew how”, do it yourself french drain installer; better start reading this site before it is too late my friend.
You are outnumbered a hundred to one by sump pump installers. You could be the next “sump chump” on their list if you buy into your frustration and hire them.
No one has been immune to this ploy, that I have ever met, unless they had totally educated themselves first.
Not even one of our former governors, who I know and appreciate as a friend, was immune to this sump pump scam. He bought a home that he did an addition to, and inherited the problem.
I was called upon to solve what had been a groundwater problem no one was ever able to solve, even with two sump pumps installed in concrete floors in the basement.
Another day at the office.
If you decide to take on the installation of hand excavated french drains yourself, be advised there are many pitfalls, not the least of which is your life, as well as the safety of your workers.
Utility locates during a feasibility study and before the job starts, are mandated, not an option.
Serious attention needs to be focused on french drains, specifically defined as hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems and their aqua duct grade engineering.
Other major considerations for prospective do it yourself french drain installers include, but are not limited to, utility locations, soil conditions, how to work in bad weather, choice of tools, decisions on the removal of formerly installed and failed home drainage attempts, permits, decisions that can impact neighborhood homes and land, as well as other considerations.
Unfortunately for homeowners, as well as home drainage contractors, installing hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems is labor intensive, and therefore will cost you more than you presently think, as well.
Sump pump contractors hope homeowners never find out about the long history of groundwater removal world wide, with hand excavated french drains. When homeowners find my website, the gig is up for the sump pump guy for that party.
Recorded history has documented hand excavated aqua ducts that have existed for hundreds of years, some excavated simply in clay, mostly lined with rock, once built to gravity flow groundwater to the village, and carry their sewage away from the village.