If you are looking for home drainage solutions to solve a home drainage groundwater problem you will encounter many people who say they are home drainage professional contractors. Ask them what they do. What kinds of systems do they advocate.

Many of these self professed home drainage contractor specialists are enamored of a certain method, most always sump pumps, because it is the only thing that they do, even if they only do it poorly.

Whether it ditch witch, back hoe, or 15 laborers all moving at lightning fast speeds, disaster lurks on every job not designed and engineered properly.

I am never impressed with my contemporary home drainage contractors in my area, which is a mature home drainage market as well. If I was impressed, I would gladly speak well of them as well, just like I do of the professionals that install hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems in the method I use as well.

Some contractors you will meet are motivated by profit alone, while still others are just plain crooks, and not contractors, trying to make an easy days work into a nice fat paycheck.

Many of the proposed methods of groundwater removal that you will be exposed to are not the correct method of groundwater removal to be undertaken if your objective is to stop the groundwater entry below grade.

Do not listen to home inspection reports where home inspectors make unprofessional unsolicited home drainage remarks in order to steer business to their sump pump installer buddies.

Many of these dudes are just plain home groundwater drainage scam pros, that can smell a kill a mile away, and can sense your willingness to buy into his stories and proposal to install a sump pump and who knows what else.

This all can be made to sound feasible, especially to someone with no frame of reference to, or experience with, the subject of home drainage.

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the most common of these stupid types of methods, that are proposed in opposition to collection of groundwater on the surface layers around the exterior of the foundation with hand excavated french drains.

I will go into more detail on these subjects within this article, with respect to why you do not want to have this work done on your property, or in rare cases when it may be appropriate to do.

1. First up in our infamous line up of contractors is the guy I call, “bubba with the backhoe.”

Here comes the guy with the backhoe. Vroom vroom, get out of his way.

Both physically and mentally this guy is like a bulldozer who will not take no for an answer.

This fellow is the consummate professional machine operator type. He would be digging anything that paid a wage if there was no drainage problem to attack with his machine.

He really only knows one thing. Big breakfasts and diesel fuel fumes, that have probably rotted his brain a touch.

The backhoe makes him money, and your home drainage problem gives him the opportunity to use that machine in a huge way, if you buy into it.

This is his style. Lots of noise, lots of dirt moved, lots more home drainage problems for these homeowners in the future, all brought to you ladies and gentlemen, at a very large price.

He wants to excavate with his backhoe down to the foundation footing, completely destroying your yard and perhaps even cracking your foundation in the process.

I have seen some nightmare construction projects employing this program.

Lawsuits sometimes follow this construction work as well. A perforated pipe with a sock on it is placed along the outside of the foundation footing after the excavation and backfilling with rock against the foundation walls.

This allows groundwater entry to the foundation walls without having to soak through any dirt at all. Right down to the footing, 8 feet down in minutes or even seconds after his tweeking of your system.

The exterior of the foundation is usually backfilled with loose dirt, rock or gravel, which just makes the groundwater run below grade easier.

It is hard to imagine that homeowners fall for this one, but they do. Every year.

2. Next is the contractor that wants to just install the sump pump, perhaps in conjunction with a crawl space french drain system, or channels cut in the concrete basement floor.

This does not address how to stop the groundwater from coming in, and is wasted money prior to hand excavating french drains and compacting a splash block against the foundation to create a better grade for rainwater runoff, which will actually stop the groundwater from saturating and coming in to begin with.

3. Next up is the guy that just says you need to dig back the foundation wall many feet below grade and tar the foundation wall.

This is wasted money as well, since the groundwater will not penetrate below grade if the grade is compacted and raised at the foundation and hand excavated french drains are installed with exposed river rock.

4. Another one of my favorite dumb ideas is to place french drains directly on the foundation wall.

This too just makes the groundwater run to the foundation wall, and right down the wall.

Usually this ploy is accompanied by a speech about underground rivers and springs being under the home, and a contention by the contractor that groundwater always will exist at that level.

If you buy into this, you will indeed prove this individual a sage, because he has just done everything in his power to insure that groundwater will indeed just keep coming when it rains, and not from underground springs either.

It will be a self fulfilling prophesy that there will always be water down at the base of the basement wall or in the crawlspace, which validates his statement that you need a sump pump installed.

However it will be the groundwater that runs down the foundation wall that is pumped, not underground springs or rivers.

This guy usually wants you to install the sump pump right away as well. These two concepts go hand in hand to convince the homeowner that there is no way to stop mother nature. So pump that groundwater for life, and suck it up mr. and mrs. homeowner. This program is always just plain bunk.

5. One of the worst things you can buy into is that using a ditch witch or trencher of some sort can excavate a french drain.

A trencher cannot make grade. A ditch witch cannot engineer a slope, carve straight clean sides and a flat bottom, while feeling for utilities lines.

A ditch witch does not feel for utilities and can not make decisions. A ditch witch does not have eyes or ears. A ditch witch cuts at the same depth and creates just what it says it will. A trench.

This tool is fine for the placement of utility lines, but it does not belong on a home drainage job at all.

Trenching a ditch will remove some of the standing groundwater off the surface, but it allows the groundwater to saturate deeper against the foundation making the home groundwater problem worse. This one is another pass, thank you. A trench or ditch is not a hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system.

6. Last, but not least, is the foundation footing drain proposal. This guy also wants you to believe that the groundwater will always be at that lower level, due to underground springs and rivers that run through your area, and specifically under your home, which was probably approved with the help of the county, using geo-technical data to determine that no underground rivers or springs existed in the area, prior to the approval of the building site and issuing preliminary plat approvals, which are required in order to sell the lots to the public.

This contractor will likely put a perforated pipe with a sock on it, along the foundation footing, flat, after digging back the foundation and loosening the soil.

Like the backhoe guy, this fellow will talk about springs below grade and underground rivers, and put rock or gravel right on the foundation wall.

If loose soil is placed against the exterior foundation wall after this footing drain is completed, the soil will soak up groundwater around the foundation area more after this is done, creating a sponge effect and more saturation and hydrostatic pressure. If rock is used right on the foundation wall after digging out the dirt, the groundwater will run directly below grade into your basement or crawl space.

If rock, sand, or gravel is placed directly on the foundation wall the groundwater will run directly below grade. The perforated pipe with the sock will be most often laid flat on the outside of the foundation footing, and will probably vent nowhere, but simply be backfilled with rock or dirt. No grade. No vent. No drainage success.

The foundation area will also always be wet at the foundation footing without collection of the groundwater in the top 18″ of the soil, and about 18″ away from the foundation wall, with a hand excavated french drain.

When you install hand excavated french drains properly and can raise and compact a better grade at the foundation, groundwater does not saturate next to the foundation wall creating hydrostatic pressure and leaking below grade into the crawlspace or basement.

Hand excavated french drains upstage all these voo doo drainage tactics. Don’t fall for one of these programs when you want results.

Call me today, as I can help you solve your current home drainage groundwater problems, as well as teach you how to avoid them in the future.

I explained that home sellers who do not disclose former or present groundwater problems and installed groundwater solutions, are putting themselves at risk legally under state law, and that it was not ethical as well.

I told her that in the Portland, Oregon area many homes are affected by groundwater, and that buyers expect honesty, and are not put off by, but encouraged by, the evidence of groundwater problems solved with hand excavated french drains.

If you are a buyer of real estate anywhere, make home drainage the first item on your home checklist to ask about, and look for.

Look for evidence of groundwater problems already installed by someone, by using the information contained within articles pertaining to this subject on this website. Watch for homeowners like the one just mentioned who believe they can circumvent the state mandated home disclosure laws and attempt to trick home buyers into thinking no groundwater problems have ever existed.

Let the buyer beware, with respect to homeowners with this mentality. There are probably thousands of these non-disclosing types in Oregon alone. I see them all the time. They cause unsuspecting buyers monetary and emotional damage at here to fore not understood degree. They can bankrupt a family. These home sellers perpetuate home selling and lender fraud on the public without so much as a thought to the damage they do to individuals and to the real estate market in general.

Help me stamp out non-disclosure of home drainage problems.

Learn, empower, and insulate yourself from home drainage ploys, ignorance and scammers.

These so called “toxic assets”, homes with drainage problems many times, are often homes with home drainage problems that have been known for a long time by the lender. If the lender is the seller, beware.

As a prospective home buyer on the market in a complicated market where everything is shop worn, please do your due diligence and study about the professionalism that it takes to diagnose and install groundwater removal systems that work well, and work for decades as well. Empower yourself with every day factual, working, common sense information available at AAA Home Drainage.com and do not become the fall guy for stupid lender tricks played on the public.

If lenders had to pay all that bank cash out to home drainage contractors around the United States, they would likely have less bonus at the end of the year, or perhaps not.
On the local market I see lenders doing nothing to solve the home drainage problems that are causing many of these groundwater damaged listings not to sell. As as whole I see lenders presently not spending any money because their bonus survival is more important.

During good times when it was a great real estate market and money was flowing, lenders completed many home drainage projects. In the past years I represented many national lending institutions as well as the Mortgage Guarantee Insurance Company, with whom I worked many times. While I understand that congress cannot manage these secretive lenders, mortgage packagers, hedge funds, the federal reserve, the treasury, investment funds and many other models of monetary manipulation that the public and business is subject to but until the lending industry is run specifically as a low profit or not for profit industry that is set up for the benefit of the public and not a private corporation bound to model their activity on how much money they think the community can afford to cough up.

I would not even think about buying a home from a lender without really knowing everything about home drainage, because they sure do not know jack about drainage from my perspective and personal experience over many years as a professional home drainage contractor.

I have seen many residential listings recently with home drainage problems listed by realtors that have outright told me that their client was a lender and they would not do any capital improvements to the extent of hand excavated french drains because they did not want to spend any money on the home period. They understand that it is what is required but they will not pay for professional installation and want to just get away with putting in a sump pump at sticking the new buyers.

Lots of broke lenders on paper. Yeh, broke lenders. What a laugh. Their assets are enormous.

Watch out home buyers. Some of these lenders and uninformed realtors are about to drop a load of home drainage problems on unsuspecting home buyers around the U.S.

Most of these home drainage challenged properties sit vacant for sale on the market around the U.S. listed with signs on them and no one interested. I wonder why. Not likely homeowners that know the difference are going to buy a mold problem in this market, or any market for that matter.

A lender as the seller should be a red flag to a home buyer. Ask the listing agent right away who owns the home, how long it has been on the market, and why the lender wound up with it. Most likely no answers will be available to service those questions if the future looks anything like the past. Beware of those lenders who are sellers. Many are trying to make stripes in their company by dumping bad assets on the market. A pat on the back for the smart good ol’ boy who dumped millions of dollars worth of bad toxic assets “as is” on the stupid public who doesn’t want them to have a fat bonus at the publics expense. That guy could be management material they are thinking. Those lender Dilberts are poster children for the movie, ” the blind leading the blind”, and that could star you too if you are not careful.

The extent to which the nation wide glut of home drainage challenged properties is affecting the overall real estate market in the United States is not known. It is not possible from a quantitative stand point to estimate it currently, but I would estimate it as huge. Probably in the multi-millions to billions itself by using the local market as a model.

Time rots and deteriorates structures and foundations that don’t have adequate groundwater removal systems installed that were designed for that particular site and grade. The plan is everything. Installation professionalism required. Safety experience required for safe operation.

Home drainage problems often occur where foundation soil grade is bad, window wells or foundation vents are below grade, trees with roots exist on the foundation, where spongy bark dust exists deeply on the foundation, where ingress windows exist without coverings, where rock, sand, or gravel is backfilled directly on the foundation allowing groundwater to run right along the foundation wall, and/or poor french drain work was done without care or knowledge by someone who just did not get in done.

Success with home drainage is a completely achievable goal for most homeowners if they do the right things in time before someone messes it up beyond help.

Home drainage challenged homes with home drainage problems almost always lack proper foundation grade, properly installed hand excavated french drains with exposed river rock and/or properly installed rain drain discharges or a combination of the above causes.

Lots of these home drainage challenged or damaged homes really should be bulldozed from a functional health and practical long term value objective, but the massive underlying loans existing on them cannot be paid off if the home were demolished.

Living in a home with mold and bad air can be a death wish for some homeowners and just plain bad for many. Kids are especially affected by mold problems.

If the home seems like a super deal, maybe it is, and then maybe it is a problem property that the bank just wants to treat like a pig with a new coat of lipstick.

Do not be the one to own that drainage pig.

Ask the listing agent if there has been any offers on the property, how long it has been on the market. Ask if there has been any price reductions, and why those former offers, if any, did not go through the escrow process and close. Home groundwater drainage problems may have been the reason for the escrow sail fail. It is quite common.

Even after a sale fail caused by drainage problems they won’t fix, the lender, the home seller is this example, may attempt to market it “as is” anyway and stash the cash frustrating the realtor to no avail.

Many times the listing agent will tell the buyers agent about the home drainage problems out of frustration with the seller who is a lender, the owner in this example, who has refused to do the repairs even after the bids were submitted. Lenders are among the cheapest of the cheap when it comes to being outright stupid. Penny wise and pound foolish as they say.

If that property looks too good to be true, maybe it is. Sheet rock covered basement walls hide the problem well many times from a unsuspecting homeowner who is caught like a deer in the headlights without a list of professional home drainage questions to ask while looking at the home from a structural standpoint.

Arm yourself with knowledge and walk with your eyes open.

Read articles on this web site about how buyers can direct the home purchasing process with checklists and due diligence performance for understanding home drainage problems while selling, refinancing or buying a home. Whom ever is asking the questions is really in control. Be that person. The one in control of the information gathering and who does it.

Protect yourself from lenders, many of whom are sellers with many homes on the market. These lenders are the largest group of homeowners with the most “toxic assets”. Typically the term “toxic asset” refers to the mortgage notes themselves instead of the quality of the home. It seems more appropriate in the case of home drainage problems to inform the home buyers that these assets are toxic alright, and in more ways than just being a bad bet for the lenders. The fund to whom they hope to sell the loan eventually does not want the paper at all with any problem what so ever. Sub-prime real estate lending is over.

The term “toxic asset” should be descriptive of the property condition as well in many cases. Beware out there home buyers. Get hip to the game and win.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/376/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/320 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/320#comments Wed, 28 May 2008 13:44:28 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/320 6. If you have planted bamboo near your foundation, you are very likely going to have a case of the home drainage groundwater blues. Once bamboo is established, you are in for bad home drainage problems. Even neighbors can affect neighbors by planting bamboo. This is one of the worst things you can do to the health of your home and your foundation. The roots of the bamboo plant are extremely invasive.

I looked at a home yesterday that is the poster child for this home drainage problem. The bamboo plants were put in by a former homeowner just about 1 year before the home was sold to the present owner.

The basement has never had a history of leaking, although the slope of the land away from the home is not adequate, and two large window wells have no coverings. The groundwater problem is on the side of the home where the gable roof runs roof water right off the roof because the design has no gutters in that area.

Never the less, the home is how in need of grading, hand excavated french drains, window well coverings, and killing the bamboo, which has penetrated the foundation border and is now a mass of roots running everywhere against the foundation. In time these roots will also crack the foundation wall itself and will be next to impossible to remove or kill.

This is a bad condition to come behind for the home drainage professional needing to install hand excavated french drains.

This also creates a problem for the homeowner unless all the bamboo and roots are successfully sprayed and killed. The soil that is excavated during the installation of the hand excavated french drains will have bamboo root pieces everywhere in the soil and therefore these pieces will start new bamboo plants everywhere the soil is used in the existing landscape. Bad ju ju folks..

Don’t plant bamboo unless you contain it in something that will not crack, like concrete tubs that have no holes for the roots to penetrate. There are other plants that are poor choices for foundation plantings as well, but bamboo is at the top of my list.

For the best foundation health and lack of groundwater entry below grade, do not dig up the soil within 2 feet of the foundation area for planting anything, and compact a splash block away from the foundation for run groundwater from heavy rains off to the hand excavated french drain placed approximately 18″ from the foundation wall. Do not plant bamboo unless you want a bad case of the groundwater entry blues. Additionally bamboo can get you in serious hot water with your neighbors as the roots of bamboo will travel over 30 feet to affect neighboring home sites.

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