Few of these home drainage solutions work well, if at all.

Many of these drainage concepts are simply not drainage solutions at all.

It is amazing to see that many sites on the internet continue to discuss methods of home groundwater removal that use the term french drain, but are actually, from my perspective, by their own description, nothing more than a ditch containing gravel, and other inappropriate materials all cumulatively, being referred to as french drains.

Many sites using french drain as a heading discuss the use of machines such as ditch witches and other sites talk about backhoes.

While these so called drainage experts flood the internet with sloppy science and sloppy facts, creating sloppy drainage, the real fact is that hand excavated french drains, ie. french drains, have been in existence long before the use of machines ever were thought of, and are much more effective and long lasting than any system created with a machine.

A real french drain is hand excavated, and takes much longer in manhours to construct, install and plumb.

It never contains gravel, sand, or dirt mix, and does not have a perforated pipe with a sock over it, that plugs and prevents groundwater from entering the perforated pipe.

A quality, engineered french drain does not contain road cloth, or weed cloth, wrapped up in a big bundle, with gravel and a perforated pipe smothered there in.

A real quality french drain does not have a grade of 12″ per 100 lineal feet. That is too flat.

The grade is around twice that engineering standard. More like 2″ per 10 lineal feet or greater.

Eventually the sloppy science and engineering behind those so called home drainage experts will be the very reason why so many of you home drainage readers and seekers will find their way to AAA Home Drainage, and the information available here, given freely, to educate homeowners around the world about home groundwater drainage solutions.

Each year I tear up many of these other types of home drainage attempts, so that the area can be used for the installation of hand excavated french drains.

I currently have a pile of footing drain perforated pipe with a sock over it, plugged with dirt completely, cut up in sections when removed, and now stacked behind a shed, waiting for the next dump run. This is so common.

Homeowners get hood winked into thinking that just because a certain contractor uses the term french drain, that they are getting the real thing, and that there is one definition.

Most often they are getting a ditch full of debris and rock, with little to no grade, from a contractor that doesn’t even know the difference in functional ability between the two, or perhaps does, and doesn’t care, or can’t pull the real thing off.

This is the way it turns out for many homeowners, over and over again, failure after failure..

Consequently the homeowners believe that french drains do not work, and they tell me so.

So these types of homeowners fall for some other type of home drainage scam, like a sump pump installation, to extract money from them without results.

The quality of home drainage information on the internet, under the keywords french drains varies greatly, and is for the most part, a bunch of bunk. Or is written to support a specific manufacturer that is selling a costly specific plastic drainage gadget or product of some sort, in the name of home drainage with french drains.

Many times the site purporting to teach the engineering behind the installation of french drains is marketing some specific product, like a channel drain system, that they think is a substitute for the labors involved in the creation of hand excavated french drains.

Do not be confused by the use of the words french drain as a local, as well as an internet generic term. It means very little, and does not include the right information most of the time, to tell the difference either.

Go to the internet and look up “hand excavated french drains”, “home groundwater removal”,” home drainage, groundwater problems, Portland french drains, hand excavated dry wells, and other home drainage key words, and see who is recognized as the worlds leader in home drainage information and listed at the top of the page.

Learn not only what to look for in a french drains and contractors, as well as what not to look for.

Always specify hand excavated french drains, for long lasting groundwater removal results.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/141/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/72 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/72#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:53:22 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/72 Don’t let groundwater problems kill your home sale or purchase.

Nothing beats knowledge and preparation.

Home drainage is a common deal killer when it comes to home purchases. Many times per year I receive calls from homeowners in a panic due to the fact that they… either have not dealt with the home drainage issues that affect their home, or they did not know about them.

Most of the time the home is already in escrow. The heat is turned up, and everyone is in panic mode. The pest dryrot and structural home inspection has a laundry list of things the inspector believes needs to be addressed, among which is the home drainage issue, and the seasonal recurring groundwater entry into the crawl spaces and/or basement.

Homeowners want to know what action should be taken, with respect to home groundwater problems, and their impact on earnest money agreements to purchase real estate, that are made subject to solving home drainage problems, in order to satisfy the conditions of the lender, with respect to the new financing. This all becomes a jump ball situation depending on how strong the repairs clause in the earnest money is, with respect to protecting the interests of the eventually damaged party to the transaction.

Surprising is the fact that few contractors actually understand and specialize in hand excavated french drains. Most contractors that advertise as professional home drainage contractors are sump pump installers.

I contend that most of these described, “would be” home drainage contractors, really do not have a clue and are licensed scammers.

Much precious time and money is lost and squandered in the attempt to solve home drainage problems. Contractors are all talking a different language too. Time to study up and take them on.

To prevent this from happening to you as a home seller or home buyer, learn how to deal with the situation if it does happen to you during a home purchase.

Read my e-books, published and offered free as a pdf file on this web site.

Arm yourself with powerful, practical, working, home drainage knowledge that works.

If you are a member, look AAA Home Drainage up on Angies List, for a sampling of how our Portland market feels about their success with hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems.

Do not be a victim of groundwater problem fear and loathing ever again.

Stupid sump pump contractor tricks can, and will, cost you thousands of dollars, and make your home drainage problem worse to boot.

Hand excavated french drains have been around for thousands of years in various forms.

Read on and learn about the alternatives to solve home drainage problems and hold your transaction together.

Your not dead in the groundwater yet.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/72/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/191 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/191#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:34:21 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/191 Beat the home inspector, lender, sump pump guy trap.

Read, and protect your rights to receive buyers home inspection reports in a timely manner, when it is not too late to… find another home and back out of the transaction getting your earnest money back. This can prevent you from buying a home that is a drainage nightmare, and not disclosed.

The average home purchase earnest money agreement gives the purchaser the right of satisfaction with respect to backing out of a real estate transaction if a seller does not agree in writing to fix the repairs issue prior to closing of escrow. If the sellers do not solve the problem, and the home buyers accept the problem, they have not done their home work, or did not get the information early enough to alter the situation, which is the case most often, and the topic of discussion is this site as well.

Should that home the buyers are looking at be found out to be an undisclosed drainage problem and basically a money pit, with non disclosing home sellers, bent on deceiving you, and with no money or interest in solving the home drainage problem prior to closing of escrow, you can be out of there with your cash, with only losing a couple of hundred bucks on a home inspection report, while delaying making application for the loan until you, the buyer, or buyers, are satisfied with the results of the home inspection report and your personal observation after learning the ways in this site.

This preserves the home buyers rights, and gives then the opportunity to learn about it before they have paid more fees and are locked in, in most cases, having already sold their existing home as well to buy the new one.

Finding out early in the looking process, before loan application, what the actual condition of the home is, prior to paying hundreds more in fees for appraiser and other bank fees, that will not be given back ever, preserves the rights already given to you and buried by everyone else in the transaction.

Find out before hand if the sellers plan to install another sump pump, or if they will actually “solve” the groundwater problems with hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems.

It will become your way, or the highway.

Many home inspectors, sump pump installers and home lenders are involved in streamlining home buyers through their own process of understanding the condition of the home, in the lenders time, and not the buyers time.

The lenders set up their own timing, in opposition to the home buyers stated rights to discover the groundwater problem early in the transaction. Without early knowledge, buyers cannot back out in time to prevent a crash of the entire moving plan, and perhaps the kids schools too.

Home buyers have the right to back out of the transaction unless the home sellers agree to fix or solve the problem. Not just install a band aid pump.

Everything is supposed to be made, “time is of the essence” as specified within the earnest money agreement, but then not even the realtors protect or understand that right to its fullest apparently.

Just because a realtor calls himself or herself a broker, does not mean they will discuss drainage with you. They will not in most cases, and will leave it to your discovery.

Proceed to hire a real estate buyers agent with caution, even if she or he is free to you. You could pay for it in the end dealing with the realtor, brokers, lack of experience and patience.

There used to be a many years condition for having experience required to sit for the Oregon real estate brokers exam. Not anymore. Everyone is called a broker now, no matter the difference in education and experience levels. Everyone is a broker.

Lots of these folks are nothing more than new sales associates, with a new title given to them by the state legislature, for other reasons than I have time to get into at this point.

Another area realtors often fall down on, when representing home buyers, is they do not protect their buyers with good enough earnest money repairs clause amounts or language to mandate and define what needs to be done, and at whos choice of method, and by whos bank account. Realtors see all those issues as deal killers, because they are, if left to deal with. If dealt with right away, and not successfully, oh well, on to the next home, where they will scratch their heads as you inspect the crawl space, and start all over again, with a patient realtor that knows you are a deal, and not one of the lost.

Fine. Hit the road folks. Shake some hands. Smile. Go find yourself a home to buy. Forget what you cannot change, and be smart enough to know the difference early in the home transaction by reading the obvious, which is not understood until looked for.

Realtors will not support this program in general.

Talk to your buyers agent ahead of time, explaining your priorities. If he or she is not comfortable with them, including treating their own customers on their own listings, should you wish to buy one of those and they are acting in a duel agency capacity. If the answer looks like no, shake their hands and find someone who gets the importance of it, and is not afraid to rock the boat a bit. No exceptions.

Realtors are mostly all taught the same working methodology, until they get more experienced, when everything changes, if they last that long in the business.

Most realtor brokers do not last more than a year or two.

When a few I know start crying, I remind those short sited realtors of an old Muddy Waters blues song line, “you can’t spend what you ain’t got, you can’t lose what you never had.”

Start reading if you are a real estate broker. Start really protecting your home buyers and sellers, in a market where they need it badly.

You will find that you have uncovered a massive market of under serviced home buyers out there, who appreciate your knowledge and will stick with you over the years to come as well. Provide them with access to this site, so they can learn how to solve groundwater problems and make you life easier too.

Lenders dictate to home inspectors what they expect of them, as they are interested in only their own program, and are not in the least interested in respecting the home inspectors, or the home buyers or sellers rights first off, to simply not proceed with the transaction if terms are not met, or the conditions are beyond repair as agreed.

“Just tell me in time to find a solution to the problem, or back out.”

Nothing in the earnest money agreement obligates or forces home buyers, unless otherwise agree to in writing, to be forced into accepting a sump pump installation, that the home buyers know is worthless in its ability to stop groundwater entry below grade into your crawl space or basement.

If the home buyers have no right to walk away quickly, they have no right period.

It counts for little, if the terms or conditions are changed in mid stream, under the table by the parties to this collusion.

Drainage problems are discovered too late to solve the problem, due to planned late disclosure of the drainage problems.

Without prior knowledge of the homes condition, prior to determining to go all in and buy it, the home buyers are at the mercy of everyone else, and no one will step up to defend their earnest money agreement stated rights, even if they do know the difference.

Prevent the streamlining of a sump pump installation, set up by a controlled and delayed late home inspection report, done that way in part just to give the home buyers no time to do anything else but install a sump pump prior to escrow closing.

Protect yourself from lenders, home inspectors, and sump pump installers, by reading how to proceed in opposition to their plan.

If a lender does not go along with you, with your plan to order and pay for home inspection reports yourself right away, before making application for the loan, after your own inspection for drainage purposes, as discussed first when you are pre-qualifying for the loan at the lenders office, go to the next lender, after shaking his or her hand, and telling him or her exactly why you can not deal with this lender.

That is where control starts for the home buyers, and where industry change begins.

There are literally hundreds of sump pump installers and home inspectors in every home market. Especially in the Portland, Oregon market.

Most of them are talking the same old, very old, lingo. Many sump pump installer companies and home inspectors pass referral fees back and forth all the time, and have for decades I am told. More information is available on this site with respect to this problem of collusion among people who can influence professional home installations, under the pretext of an inspection report.

These types of home inspectors are probably making as much off referrals as they collect doing home inspections, where they are really working it.

The play is fleshed out right away in the beginning, when the home inspector gets the first chance to talk to the homeowners and suggest they should meet his sump pump guy first.

The stage for the perfect home drainage crime has been set. All the actors are in place. They are on spot, and basically on cruise control by now, expecting the same old drill will work again, as it always has in the past.

I will not disclose this in detail at this time, as I have previously on this site.

Don’t be lender, home inspector and sump pump guy scammed.

Part of why the real estate financing industry is in such turmoil is from their own greedy and shady scams.

This is not one of their most profitable misrepresentations, but it offers them total control over whether they have wasted their time on a home that will not close, or have invested their time in one that most often will close, even if the drainage problem has not been solved, for what ever reason the bank does not care. This is why so many properties are in the lenders REO, real estate owned portfolios. They are stuffed with home drainage damaged homes, that they will not pay any money to fix.

Home buyers and home sellers are systematically force fed, until they could puke, stories of underground rivers and springs under the home, and how a sump pump is the answer.

It bodes well for home sellers and buyers to protect, recognize, respond, and to change this perfect crime, that circumvents the rights of both the sellers and buyers, as given to them in the earnest money agreement.

What good is a clause in the earnest money agreement, that says, “this transaction is subject to the home buyers satisfaction of a home inspection report”, containing a repairs cap clause, etc, and other protections, if the buyers will never find out about the home drainage problem in time to solve it?

Or if a home seller has already been programmed and motivated by what they believe to be less money to install a sump pump rather than take the bid to actually solve the drainage problem, what chance does another professional have in attempting to educate them on the fly, when ignorance rules.<

The planned late disclosure of home inspection reports by home inspectors and lenders is discussed in more detail in past articles.

The fact of the matter is that most home inspection reports are planned to be delivered late to home buyers by the lenders and home inspectors, usually the last week when the home is in escrow and set to close.

There is no time to install the proper groundwater removal system prior to closing of escrow, or perhaps not even enough time to get a bid for one, even if the sellers would step up for what by this time, the sellers believe is the more expensive option, after talking sump pumps and prices, rather than installing a hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system that will actually solve the groundwater problem.

Home buyers should have controled this a long time ago. Read more on other articles about this subject, as it is detailed better within those articles.

The home buyers should always be asking themselves, “what else have these sellers not told us about home drainage and the general condition of the home?

If you are a home seller, and you want to avoid the problems that can arise as a result of home drainage problem non disclosure during the sale of your home, read my site and e-books, looking for articles on home inspections, lender scams, real estate, and other articles discussing how sellers get double dipped financially and emotionally by not acknowledging and dealing with home drainage problems, prior to listing the home for sale, or at least during a home transaction, if caught having to deal with solving the problem.

Home sellers would be well advised to inspect the home themselves, or hire a home inspection person themselves, after clearing it with the bank they intend to use the home inspection report with, to get the loan.

This takes the scam out of the lenders and home inspectors hands. The home inspector now works for the buyers directly, and not their prospective bank, even after they had paid the fees to hire the inspection in the buyers name.

Timely attention to home drainage problems, prior to marketing the home, will save you money and grey hairs in the end, if you are the home seller.

The use of my buyers due diligence check list and other solutions to common real estate scams can change everything for you and your family when buying or selling a home.

This is not some fly by not information that is just going to go away. Plan on hearing more about it, everywhere you go.

If you are a home buyer, turn what would have been a home escrow sale fail, into a closed escrow on time, as projected, without getting burnt or losing your rights to back out of the home transaction early, before you are on the streets, because of some criminal act of ignorance and greed perpetrated against you by lenders, home inspectors, and sump pump installers, as well as realtors who are part of the problem, but can’t get involved without becoming road kill themselves.

No one can do this for you. You must learn and teach home drainage to not be a victim in the future. The issue is not going away folks.

There is no alternative to truth. You must step up and realize the truth, and deal with what is, and not with what they say it is. On many levels.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/191/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/86 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/86#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:14:27 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/86

Home sellers have the responsibility in Oregon, to disclose the condition of the home, past or present, to… any prospective home buyers, in the sellers property disclosure form, made part of the earnest money agreement, and attached as an addendum, mandated by Oregon state law.

This form must indicate if the sellers are aware of any groundwater problems. This is not an elective process. It is the law.

If home sellers decide to attempt a slip sliding approach to not disclosing home drainage groundwater caused problems, the sellers are violating Oregon state law. These home sellers may have committed buyer and lender fraud as well, all to save a few bucks. That is the definition of being “penny wise and pound foolish”.

Groundwater drainage problems put homeowners at risk financially and emotionally, when it comes to home drainage problems, almost always caused by heavy rains.

Groundwater problems that are not identified before sellers and buyers are handed a copy of the home inspection report can often trash a real estate transaction to the point of failed escrow, if no one has the money to solve the problem, and opts for a sump pump band aid scam instead.

If you are thinking about buying or selling a home within the United States, or anywhere around the world for that matter, you owe it to yourselves to be educated to the ways that home drainage problems can affect the value of a home.

States that have manditory sellers property disclosure laws, such as Oregon, are ahead of the curve, but as we know, even in Oregon, many homeowners try to lie their way out of the, long ago found, groundwater issue.

Just because home sellers successfully close escrow on a home transaction, and fly off with the check into the sunset, does not exempt them from being personally liable to the new buyers, for their lack of known home drainage representations.

Even good lies fall hard when the day comes that the former homeowners must return to Oregon for the law suit, or pay up prior to having one instituted, which would later require a trip to Oregon.

Even former neighbors roll over on these scamming sellers, and testify against them in court, on behalf of their new neighbors. They do so and feel real good about it.

It can get ugly when sellers start it all up, and think they will never have to finish it.

If you are a home buyer, don’t be stuck with a home drainage problem, just because the sellers thought it would work in their best interests to deceive you.

If you are a home seller, don’t put yourself in that situation. Get the work done prior to setting the home price, and listing the home. Add the capital improvement you installed, hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems, and add the price of the work to the sale price. Done. Covered.

Add the home drainage work to the home price. It is indeed a capital improvement, and not a repair. You will treat it as so on your tax statement. Disclose your hand excavated french drains proudly to any new buyers. Be up front, and you will find everything will go just fine.

When sellers do not disclose a material fact in the sale of a home, the court will view this action as as violation of law.

The attorneys may not have to prove that the homeowners knew about the long standing home drainage problem.

If a home drainage problem existed, and home sellers did not disclose it, they may be held liable under fraud statutes, or simply in violation of the Oregon home condition disclosure laws, mandating the use of the sellers property disclosure on all transactions involving a home in Oregon.

The cost to fix the home drainage problem is usually much less than the combined costs of a court award to the buyers, plus the home sellers attorneys fees, and probably the buyers attorneys fees as well.

This situation is unavoidable to the sellers if the buyers feel that the condition of the property was misrepresented, and they get pissed off, after losing the home, because it will not finance, or after buying into a home with thousands of dollars worth of home drainage solutions being required to make the home safe and healthy.

Sometimes all it takes is for the new buyers, who everyone just loves, to come up with one of the neighbors to appear in court, and on behalf of the new home owners, and have the new neighbors statements read into the record. Game over.

Statements from homeowners in the neighborhood that say things like, “the neighbors all have some sort of drainage problem, and that it was common knowledge that the former owners of the home in question had attempted to solve the home drainage problems many times, for instance, and everyone had known this for years in the neighborhood, as it had been the source of discussion at neighborhood meetings”.

Home buyers must always have a pest dry rot and structural home inspection completed, in conjunction with the home purchase.

Read articles within this website on how to do your own preliminary home inspections, by structuring a contingency for the prospective home purchaser to do his own inspection, as well as perhaps a professional inspection, at the buyers cost, which it would be anyway, prior to making application for the loan.

It should be specified in the earnest money agreement that the earnest money already deposited at the escrow, be returned to the home buyers in full, without delay, if the results of the inspection are not satisfactory to the home buyers.

The release of the home inspection report, if ordered and paid for through the lender, can drag out to the last week of the transaction, as it is part of a plan. I have gone into this subject in depth in another article.

Look for more detailed articles on home buyers due diligence check lists and procedural knowledge for buying a home without a home drainage problem.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/86/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/344 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/344#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:56:10 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/344 Home buyers working with lenders on home loans should demand early release of home inspection reports during escrow and financing. The report should be… ordered, the home inspection finished, and a copy in hand to the buyers, before making application for that home loan, which includes appraisal fees and inspection report anyway, on a home that has not even gotten a clean bill of health.

Oh sure, I hear you crying, “time is the essence of this agreement,” and that is still so. Nothing changes, but the chance to mess up and buy a home drainage problem is taken out of play, that’s all. What is not to like about that?

The home buying process is skewed to favor control by the lenders and home inspectors. Should you be so surprised? We are going to slowly change that.

Many real estate buyers these days, after meeting me especially, are ordering and paying for home inspection reports themselves, prior to paying lenders for appraisal fees that can not be recouped if the home inspection report indicates groundwater problems with the home, that the sellers did not disclose. The home sellers always seem to say they do not have any money to pay for anything, poof..up goes the transaction in smoke, with money lost.

The home buyers have to pay for home inspection reports in cash anyway, when they make application for a loan. As well as pay another $500. or so to the lender for the appraisal report, besides the $300. for the home inspection report. Better to just lose the inspection money rather than go all in right away on a home that you do not know the quality of. Home drainage is not the only issue that could come up either.

Check with the lender to make sure they will accept the results of the home inspection report that you plan to order and pay for, on the home you may be interested in buying. Do this before paying them one dime. If they do not agree, go to the next lender. These guys will follow you around like puppy dogs in this market, if your credit and attitude is strong.

Home buyers should have already inspected that home themselves, from the ground up, after reading this web site, prior to redeeming the note for earnest money and making application for the loan.

The lenders want the home inspection reports to come out at the very end of the loan process when the buyers have ordered and paid for the appraisal report already, and the lender has collected most of the loan costs. This is a trap, and insures that their staff appraisers, or independent fee appraisers will collect your appraisal fee, even if your deal never closes escrow.

Lenders know if they do this, that the home buyers will always have more to lose if they walk away from the transaction, and this all favors the lender and the real estate agents, and not the home buyers or sellers.

Lenders also know that home sellers caught later with concealment of home drainage issues, know the gig is up, and may be more motivated under pressure to put up that cash, and solve the groundwater problems trashing their home, under pressure of losing the transaction.

The minute most home sellers put their home on the market, they conclude they will spend no more money. It belongs to someone else. And most often this includes capital improvement money to solve drainage problems when selling the home.

Learning how to negotiate home drainage repairs early in the home transaction, before the lender has the buyers and sellers slammed into the loan application process, and the sellers are in control of what will be done to solve home drainage problems, should be a home buyers objective, whether a loan is required or not.

The real problem comes when there is no time left in the real estate transaction to even have the property looked at by a home drainage professional. Short notice is the anchor around everyones neck at that point.

The professional home drainage contractors assessment is needed to find out what to do to solve the home drainage problem, under pressure of time, due to the planned late disclosure of the home inspection report by the home inspector and lender.

It sure seems like home inspectors have wandered into my sights lately, with respect to a few issues of procedural legality, as well as their growing attitudes and mis-information, with respect to home drainage.

Many variables can affect the ability to close escrow as agreed in a timely matter, even if everyone has agreed that “time is of the essence of this agreement”, with respect to the language in the earnest money agreement.

The earnest money agreement is where you get it all lined out.

A solid real estate buyers agent is a must at that point in the home hunt. One with knowledge and patience is a blessing. One with knowledge of home drainage is rare.

State your intentions clearly and get the sellers signatures on what you plan to do prior to making application for the home loan.

This should include on the spot, initial examination of the crawl space, during the first showing, if you think the home is suspect for drainage problems that were not disclosed to you.

Make sure the language in the earnest money agreement takes the property off the market, for a period of a few days, until the contingency is signed off satisfactorily by the buyers, subject to the repair conditions, and that any subsequent offers to come in, prior to the removal of this contingency, will be placed in a back up position, subject to the failure and mutual written release of the transaction by all parties, which includes the buyers.

Perhaps the prospective home buyers loan rate lock may even expire, as a result of home sellers not closing escrow as projected, on the date projected, because they did not disclose drainage problems, and therefore blew the closing on their new home too probably.

When late disclosure of home inspection reports rules the transaction, seldom is there time to solve the home drainage problems, and lots of sump pumps get installed by homeowners and home buyers looking for at least a band aid on the wound, so the lender will close escrow.

Escrow closing typically would be around 30 days from the date of the mutual acceptance of offer, unless otherwise wisely written to give home buyers more benefits, to protect home buyers from non disclosure of home drainage problems and lender/home inspector scams.

Home buyers that have family in tow, and are stuck with not enough time to solve the problem, install a sump pump and get some cash from the sellers, and still live with drainage problems and health problems, that they did not intend to buy into, buy by then realize, they are forced to.

It is necessary for home buyers to protect themselves from being a home buying victim of non-disclosing or knowing home sellers with drainage problem homes.

Late report issue is a very old lender scam. I only now have a soap box on which to shout about it.

Lenders are fed up with short sighted property owners who won’t do the home drainage deferred maintenance before trying to stick new buyers with the problem.

Lenders who are originating home mortgages, continue to use late disclosure of home inspection reports to home sellers and buyers, as a means for them to control the time line of the home purchase. This keeps discovery of home drainage problems to be discovered only days prior to the scheduled closing date.

And all this planning comes from professionals too no less.

Leaving no time for the buyers to change course and find another home, in most cases, if the home inspection report indicates a serious groundwater problem exists, and the sellers act like mules with their feet propped out in front of them, not willing to move an inch or flinch.

This old lender scam has been in place, and running quietly, right under everyones watch, like a computer virus, quietly eating away various opportunities and rights, that the home buyers especially thought they could count on, as these rights were already agreed to in writing within the earnest money agreement to buy the home, that everyone signed. It was made law that home sellers disclose former or present groundwater problems for a reason. Home sellers are notoriously bad liars on the subject, buy liars many times, never the less.

The nature of the home inspection process taking up 3/4 of the closing time on average, just to get a piece of paper out to parties involved, is not because the home inspectors are so busy, or perhaps even want it that way.

20 years ago I knew home inspection companies that would give you a computer generated report on the spot.

Home inspection companies not playing this game with lenders, who give them lots of homes to look at, and tell them what to do in some cases, are still able to print out a report on the spot. Just like I do with my Mac Book and printer, powered in the truck with a dc to ac convertor, and paper. On the road, when I need to write a proposal on the spot. Everyone else these days seems to be up to communication speeds required. Why not home inspectors? Oh, I forgot. The old party line, “they are so busy”.

So, it is not really so much a home inspection guy schedule problem, it is lender b.s.

As a practical matter, the process disparages both sellers and buyers of homes, and benefits lenders only.

Whether this scam is actually a product of over scheduled home inspectors, or, as I contend, is always lender created, still makes the practice unacceptable.

After all, the money was paid to the lender of choice, all of whom play this same game, by the way, for the home inspection report, weeks prior, when the report was ordered, as the home buyers made application for the loan at the lenders office. This would have been just a few days from when the buyers redeemed the not for earnest money at the escrow, and ordered the report.

Why should every home inspection report take over 3 weeks to complete, every time? Of course, they do not take but a few minutes to write actually.

Time for performance of all due diligence to complete the loan process, was made ” time is of the essence”, in the earnest money agreement clause, and the bank violates that clause most every time by their actions, which always go un-detected.

Lenders work with home inspectors to teach consumers and realtors what is possible, backed up by stories from home inspectors and lenders on how busy they are, and why it will take so long to get a home inspection report out.

They lead you to believe it won’t be that long though. But it will be.

The home inspectors get their checks directly from the banks very often, and work with them over and over again, some on staff, some as independents, developing a cozy relationship in some cases. Getting the picture now?

The same old story comes down the line, with respect to why the home inspection report takes so long to get out, and as a result, everything is “status quo”.

The home inspectors are just so busy. Sure. Like the Maytag repair man. Especially in this real estate market.

Some of these home inspectors have proven to me that they are in bed with the lenders and sump pump installers as well. Other articles will go into this subject in detail.

Some home inspectors are just not aware they are being manipulated. Some of these home inspectors just plain piss me off too, because of the mis-information mutual admiration society that they belong to, developed by the lenders and sump pump installers, which gives them all pay checks at the expense of both home buyers and sellers.

Home inspectors that don’t have a clue about home drainage will be found saying stuff in their reports like, “grade the crawl space”, “adjust the low point drain”, trench along the inside of the foundation crawl space wall, and then have their buddy install a worthless system and run off with your dough.

Stupid stuff, from a professional home drainage perspective.

At the same time, many of these home inspectors act like their opinions are professionally qualified, with respect to home drainage issues.

Why don’t they just shut their mouths and say, “contact a home drainage contractor” only?

Often as the scenario plays out, the home is finally closed. Nothing is done physically solve the home drainage problems or to satisfy the legal repairs clause aspect of the earnest money agreement that was violated, with respect to the home inspection report, and the sellers requirement to fix drainage problems, prior to closing of escrow, which never happened.

The home buyers are most often given some money by the home sellers to compensate them for buying into the home drainage problems, as well as the possible health problems. Great trade, huh?

The new home buyers pocket the cash as profit. The bank makes the loan, and we start all over again with a new non disclosing seller and new buyers, both out of cash, most often much later in the future, where a version of the same thing will likely happen again, if no one steps up to fix the drainage problems prior to that time.

In many cases, the homes drainage problems get worse, and are never solved, because those new buyers were forced into pocketing the cash, and never had the cash again to fix to drainage problem the right way.

It comes back to the time line at closing of escrow, and these home buyers being slammed into the home drainage problem when it was too late to simply walk away, after they found a problem with the homes drainage, as well as the homeowners mindset.

By the time the buyers get the bad groundwater, or other related drainage report news, and assess the results of the home inspection report, it is most often too late for them to back out of the transaction, without a significant monetary loss, and emotional upheaval, and being on the street perhaps as well, looking for a home under the gun. Perhaps staying even a night or two on family friends couches while they are still looking for homes, and are about out of money.

It probably is too late to schedule any work to repair the home drainage problems prior to closing of escrow anyway, given the late disclosure of the home inspection report, and no time to complete the work before the projected closing date.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an old, blatant, perhaps even criminal, lender and home inspector ploy, to make sure.

It all goes together that way so that enough time has elapsed and is wasted, before the home inspection report is returned to the buyers and sellers. That is the beginning of the end for the home buyers home inspection report rights.

As a result, the buyers have much more money and time invested into the transaction at that point.

If the lender can stall the home inspection report until later, which they always do, no sweat, most often less than a week before closing of escrow was projected, the home buyers are in a whole different situation.

The focus now becomes urgently on closing the transaction and everyone bails on the need to solve any home drainage problem at all.

As things get crazy, the cash in hand from the sellers, and perhaps a grand or two off the purchase price even, starts sounding better than uncle Louie and aunt Marthas couch.

The home buyers actually end the transaction with some cash being given to them at closing of escrow.

Home buyers are usually broke after the process and fall for it almost every time, to their long term detriment.

Late home inspection report issue serves to slam home buyers further ahead into getting it done, from the lender perspective. The heat gets turned up on the cooker, with little time left to even find out what is to be done.

With often the buyers and sellers both being the cooked.

Buyers are slammed hard into the transaction at that point, without much recourse, in most cases, but to lose their appraisal money and home inspection money and start over again, looking at homes to buy.

Starting over looking at new homes 3 weeks ago would not have produced the same effect for these example home buyers or sellers. In fact their old home would not have even been sold and closed by then, in many cases.

When in fact, the transaction wording in the earnest money agreement plainly says that “the transaction is subject to the purchaser and the property qualifying for acceptable financing”, the buyers rights under contract have been violated by the lender, with respect to the, “time is of the essence clause”, and from an ethical standpoint, as well, in my opinion.

The effect of the prospective home buyers having sold their home already, and them feeling uneasy as well about the current prospective home acquisition, now late disclosed as a home drainage problem. The home buyers probably know little to nothing about drainage.

This all makes the buyers feel that backing out of the transaction because of a bad home drainage report is just not wise, or even possible. Given the amount of money already invested.

In most transactions, with standard earnest money agreements being used, it is possible to back out of the transaction after getting the results of the home inspection report, and for the buyers to get their earnest money back in full. This is very standard almost everywhere in the United States.

The lender asked you, if you are the home buyers, to consult a home drainage professional. The fact that the property needs work is the buyers out. It does not matter how much work, or where it is on the home. If the home sellers will not pay for the work and complete it prior to escrow closing, the buyer is refunded the deposited earnest money at the escrow and the escrow is cancelled.

Buyers agents should write earnest money agreements to protect their buyers first. If the home does not come up clean on the home inspection report, the buyers get their earnest money back, except when the lenders don’t tell them in time to make it physically happen. This is planned stuff, not bad luck.

If you are the home buyers, you probably will have lost the appraisal fee and the inspection report fee amount, if the report indicates you should bail out, and it is late in the game.

Knowing everything ahead of time is the only way to go.

Order the home inspection on a home you are interested in, as I discussed previously in this article, only after your own physical inspection, complete in the crawl space or basement.

Escrow cancellation charges and other cute kinks can further make closing the existing escrow more important than fixing home drainage problems, that the home buyers had been compensated for anyway, in cash, prior to closing of escrow. The lenders never really made anyone do anything to solve the home drainage problems at all. It was planned this way. Why? Not sure of all the motivations, just the ones I see over and over again.

The buyers have already sold and perhaps closed the former home, and they often feel absolutely held hostage to the lenders repair items, as indicated by the home inspection report.

It sure would have been nice for the buyers to have access to that information prior to spending around $500. for an appraisal fee wouldn’t it? Thanks a lot Mr. Banker, right?

The lenders know how this screws up both home sellers and buyers, and they are counting on this game continuing forever, unless we stop it. This old game benefits banks greatly, and they have no intention of it being disclosed to the public, or of them ever having to give up a very profitable game.

The lender game is changing however, just when you thought they would never change. A little change may be coming. Not enough change though. Many lenders are now requiring that professionally installed home drainage systems, in particular, hand excavated french drains, be installed on the subject property, prior to closing of escrow.

The average banks REO departments are full of foreclosed properties with home drainage problems that prevent even the lender, who wants to sell them, from selling them. As well as the market is glut stuffed with home inventory for sale. These lenders act the exact same way as the sellers with chronic home drainage problems. They just will not spend the cash to fix the home drainage problems.

I know of many such cases currently in the Portland, Oregon area that fit that exact statement.<

p> So who pays for the home drainage work when the sellers say they will not pay for it, and the buyers are slammed into needing to close escrow, and have no money to contribute to the home drainage affected home sellers contribution of 0 dollars.

The home buyers are down the road anyway, in most cases, if that happens, after blowing some cash, only to start over again, looking at more homes to buy.

Ask the bank you are intending to pre-qualify with for the purchase of a home, which entails a credit report and financial statement from you to the lender, if the lender will accept a home inspection report from a licensed, bonded and insured home inspector, that they, the buyers have hired and paid for, prior to loan application being made. We want to take the property off the market subject to your inspection report giving it a clean bill of health, and then agree to make application for the loan, on or before 48 hrs. from the satisfactory removal in writing of that contingency, as it pertains to repairs for anything, especially home drainage.

I would like to see home buyers order and pay for the inspection report prior to making application for the loan. Just tie up the property on an inspection clause in the original earnest money agreement, that is modified to allow you to do this. Sellers agree, sign off etc.

The home inspection report is ordered in advance of the loan application on that particular property that you are really ready to buy only. Sounds stupid until you realize that I have just put you, as buyers, in control of an important, volatile subject. The home inspection disclosure process.

I have reduced your potential loss in many ways and I have reduced your immediate monetary outlay from the potential loss of home appraisal costs, all of which would be lost if you backed out later in the home transaction, due to reports that the home had serious problems of some sort.

If the home inspection report is new, and you ask ahead of time, before making loan application, or giving the lender the impression that you are ready to make application, the lender may honor your request.

Write the earnest money agreement to reflect the need for this timeline. Agree to inspect the home within 3-4 business days after acceptance by all parties of the earnest money agreement, with the provision that should items of repair come up, or drainage problems be found, you can get your earnest money back right away, upon mutual release, not to be unreasonably witheld, unless the home sellers agree to solve the home drainage problems or any other repairs required at their expense and the buyers choice of proposed methods.

Do not let realtors dissuade you from your mission if you are the home buyers.

If you are the home buyer, or buyers, get tough and make the home inspection process work for you. Do not let the sellers and the lender control the way the inspection process works. Don’t get steam rolled by this old lender scam.

There are thousands of great homes out there for sale. Use common sense. As a home buyer in this market, you are in control, if you are a strong, pre-approved buyer. Not just pre-qualified. Pre-approved. This means your credit report and financials have been submitted to the prospective bank you wish to use, and that they have issued a letter in written pre-approving the buyers up to a certain amount, for the loan, and under certain other conditions. One of the lenders conditions is the condition of the home, as well as the buyers.

Everyone, including the sellers and lender will fidget when you break out this logic out for the first time, but in the end they will go with your program, if they want a home sale. Buyers are not exactly dripping off the trees with the rain these days.

Lenders have taught bad seller behavior in the past, with respect to solving home drainage problems, and not required that home sellers or buyers solve home drainage problems prior to closing escrow. They have left it to a meeting of the minds between the sellers and buyers, as the banks REO swell with foreclosed properties that won’t qualify for loans because of home drainage problems.

Most all banks have used this failed control of home inspection report release policy, based on their success with it as it serves them well to control of the information process and when it is released, there by diminishing any time sensitive time alternatives that could have solved the problems prior to closing of escrow.

Lenders are fed up with short sighted property owners who won’t do the home drainage deferred maintenance. The lender is actually going to feel more secure putting time into your transaction when this roadblock is out of the way early in the transaction and clear sailing is ahead for everyone, but they are penny wise and pound foolish, and stick with the disclosure of home inspection reports at the last minute, because it closes transactions, and does not give many buyers a way out in time, without additional loss.

The lender industry knows that perhaps 90% of all home drainage problems have been known about by the homeowners for a long time, and have probably been passed down the line from seller to buyer over and over again.

There is one home in the Portland, Oregon area that I have personally been called out to 3 times in the past 8 years. Each time the seller refuses to do what is necessary, and each time the proposal price goes up because the cost and scope of the work goes up, and the groundwater problem gets worse and worse. Eventually this home will become a lender owned property, or some poor seller will have to bite the bullet for big bucks to solve this homes drainage problems.

Times are changing with respect to lenders not wanting to own homes at all. In the past the lenders mentality was that all property was going up in value, so they were not afraid of becoming home owners, especially as a default and loss of equity only played into their big profit picture.

Huge REO, departments did not worry lenders. Todays market is crashing, so they simply don’t want to become owners of real estate in this market.

The lenders are holding thousands of homes presently in their REO departments, which is bank jargon for “real estate owned’. These are homes that they have foreclosed on. Many as a result of groundwater damage such as dryrot, air quality issues, foundation settling, doors and windows jammed, and other invasive groundwater problems, and are not even capable of being sold in their present condition. Many of those lenders act exactly like the homeowners they got the homes from, not wanting to spend the cash to solve the home drainage problems either.

At best, in this market, the lender, if they are the seller, will act just like the typical non disclosing seller. They will acknowledge the problem when a report makes them do so, and agree to do any repairs only if they have a solid buyer who buys into a sump pump installation to give the buyers the impression that something of value was done, and to close the transaction. You will see many of these slip slide lenders wanting to install a sump pump and call it a day. I have seen a few lately.

If you are planning to ever sell your home, remember that todays lender standards will not allow the types of groundwater caused homeowner abuses that have helped to stack up thousands of homes that are literally unable to be sold in their present condition.

To make matters worse for the lenders, they don’t have the money to invest to fix these homes, so they say, for sale when all the homes are added together, and all the contractors fees are combined. So many of these homes just sit vacant.

Lenders say they are fighting for their own survival, as they record huge profits and lay off workers. Most of their toxic assets were removed and they were fronted more cash to loan out. So how bad can this be for these fat cat lenders on the take.

As their loses from real estate lending mount due to these practices, they will come around all together to form a better model for their own survival and for what is right to do for the home buyers and sellers.

Lenders are perpetual consumers of money to pay experts to sit on their posterior and postulate. This takes cash. Stuffed shirts with big attitudes make for big wheels going in wide circles. Postulating takes people who get paid lots of money if they believe your postulating, so there is an adequate feeling of superiority and control imparted to the person postulating, and this is great lender boot camp stuff to toughen up the troops, ie their loan officers.

Banks are sitting on hundreds of thousands of homes nationwide right now that are vacant and are actually just molding and becoming worse by the day. These lenders are hoping their credit card business will pull them through, and many are putting their heads in the sand with respect to bringing these homes to the market. Many other lenders are just passing time hoping for congressional connections and a bailout when it is their turn to go under.

In addition to these lender motivations, the clearing houses that have traditionally functioned as the buyers for the asset backed paper that is generated by lender note creation activity, like fannie mae and freddie mac, are now underwater themselves and going down with the ship. This means that lenders are less inclined to make loans at all, as they do not want to be held holding the bag as a portfolio lender, holding the notes generated from home loans as the market free falls in value.

If you are a good credit buyer, or an investor with a good credit rating, look for these home drainage damaged homes by contacting the REO departments of your local banks. They probably will have some special terms for homes in this category, not that you would want to live in them prior to fixing them up and giving them months to dry out. You will need to solve the home drainage problems that put them in that category to begin with. There is actually lots of money to be made by buying these homes at steep discounts and doing hand excavated french drain and rain drain systems.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/344/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/123 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/123#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:05:48 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/123 This article is available below as a pdf file e-book as well.

This is published for home buyers who do not wish to download the entire e-book.

All homes are not created equal.

When it comes to assessing a home that you wish to purchase, home buyers need to… understand common home drainage problems that affect the livability of the home.

Homeowners need to learn how to look for signs that could indicate to the home buyers that a home drainage groundwater problem probably, not perhaps, exists.

Home drainage should be at the top of the inspection and due diligence list for home buyers, but it seldom is, unless a reader becomes aware of the power of this knowledge, when used as part of a preparation study in home drainage health.

Readers learn to value the knowledge here-in on home drainage in real every day use, when solving drainage problems, or when hiring a home drainage contractor in their part of the world.

Study this home drainage due diligence check list, which is written to teach home buyers how to assess the condition of the home they are thinking of buying, with respect to home drainage issues.

Learn which homes have groundwater problems that can be solved, as well as those homes that probably are a “pass”. Too much damage. Too large a problem for anyones budget. Structural problems etc. When you want to raise the bar, and ask questions, just call us.

There are too many great homes on the market for informed home buyers to buy one of those home drainage pigs from non disclosing home sellers, without serious upside in profit potential becoming a motivating factor.

After the groundwater problems and structural repairs have been completed, a new era begins for the homes worth and health.

Look for a home with exposed river rock hand excavated french drains installed, as value added, only if evidence exists that shows it actually works. As in, no water in the crawl space or basement.

Hand excavated french drains are not a sign of weakness in a home, when professionally installed, they are a sign that the builder or homeowners have taken a value added step to install hand excavated french drains to prevent groundwater entry into the home, as well as to preserve the health and value of the home.

I have inspected hundreds of homes that were under 5 years old that had been affected by groundwater from the day they were built, due to home builders drainage attempts that were doomed by poor to zero home drainage knowledge and planning skills.

Groundwater drainage issues are often misunderstood and not dealt with correctly by the homeowner during their period of ownership. Many times they are just passed on to the next chump down the line.

They are seldom incorporated into the overall design of the home when the home is built.

Once new homes are built with groundwater problems destined to be part of their legacy, they soon turn into older homes with groundwater problems, made worse by procrastination, and owned by homeowners who really may not want anyone to even suspect they have a groundwater problem.

1. When you are considering a home on a flat building site, or one on the low lying, below grade type of building site, without hand excavated french drains, think twice, or budget for hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems to be installed, and grade compaction work, as part of the move in costs.

2. Make sure the home has wide gutters with adequate downspout locations, and that they look newer and are in good condition.

Look for the proper sloping of those gutters horizontally along the roof line, sloping the roof water to the downspout location at the end of the gutter, most often.

Gutters are not meant to be installed flat. They slope to the downspout location cut in the gutter.

Gutter spikes popping out are the most common cause of roof water missing the gutters.

Gutters should be hung at a slight slope on the facia board running towards the downspout location.

Many gutter systems are hung wrong and overflow over the edge of the home causing roof water to pool next to the foundation and subsequently producing groundwater saturation, hydrostatic pressure, and leaking of groundwater, once roof or rain water, into crawlspaces or basements.

Gutter guards can make the cleaning process seem easier for the homeowners, but I am not a fan of the helmet type gutter protector, which reduces the size of the gutter opening and tends to run rain water, during hard rains, over the edge of the gutter, instead of in the gutter system designed to remove that rainwater. More plastic than air space. In hard rains it is like having no gutters at all.

Look for homes with multiple layers of roofing. If you stand at the edge of the homes overhang and step back a step or two, you will see that homes with many layers of roofing raise the height of the shingles relative to the edge of the gutters line of sight below it.

Presto. Rainwater sheets directly over the gutters. This will make a more severe groundwater problem than had existed to begin with, in many cases.

Line of sight on the roof line, over the top of the gutters, as mentioned above, is a smoking gun for home drainage problems caused by melting snow or roof water run off.

It does not have to be a home with gutter guards that are helmets either. Home buyers need to look at the way the roof height stacks up with the edge of the gutter system.

Faulty placement of gutters and lack of adequate downspout locations are smoking guns that lead to overflowing gutters which can cause wet basements and crawl spaces. The resulting groundwater damage is seldom noticed until inspected by someone professionally looking for such a problem.

Most likely discovered by the professional home inspector that will weigh in on the health of the home when it is sold. Unless the home is sold for all cash, or as part of a Irc 1031 tax deferred exchange, and like the other examples, did not require loans from a bank, and therefore was perhaps not even inspected. In those cases a home inspection may not have been ordered.

3. If you are a prospective buyer of a home, talk to the neighbors about the evidence of home drainage problems in that particular neighborhood, and naturally, specifically at the home at which you are looking.

Introduce yourself, and ask these neighbors if they know of any home drainage issues that the home you are looking at has ever had in the past.

Not all neighbors get along like two peas in a pod. Many homeowners will tell you the exact truth about the home, and do so in a more honest way than the sellers of the home would.

If the home is newly built, take the time to talk to the neighbors or former customers from a different subdivision, that the same builder was responsible for building, and ask about what they know of the builders methods, and any problems with drainage that any neighborhood owners may have encountered.

You will find out that neighbors often have lots of old world, down to earth, hand excavated french drain knowledge, and a seemingly rippin desire to educate you, with respect to what may concern you about the homes drainage strong and weak points, as well as the over all drainage health of the entire neighborhood.

I warn you however. Be prepared to hear stories about underground rivers and springs under the neighborhood and that this has been common knowledge for many years.

The story will go on explaining that they are the reason everyone has groundwater problems, and yes, you guessed it, sump pumps installed.

Do you understand what a hand excavated french drain is? Do you have one installed and engineered properly? Few will know about them, and less will have them.

So, there it is. The stories about these underground rivers only come up when the winter comes and groundwater is apparent again. As a result, in my opinion, over many years of installing drainage systems, that the stories of underground rivers penetrating everyones homes and springs, everywhere, are a bunch of suburban gibberish that got started over a pitcher of beer somewhere.”We’ll just tell them this, then”. Right? Sure you will dude.

While it does happen that a building site slips through the cracks in the approval process during the preliminary plat approval process, and is approved when geologic data and inspection indicate that because of the soil stability or springs that the area should be dedicated as common area to the subdivision and not granted lot status, very few sites slip through the cracks and are built on with geological rivers and springs under them, and coming to the surface under the home.

4. Ask the sellers and their agents about the existence of hand excavated french drains on the property. You can be sure that your buyers agent has never uttered the words french drain even in the most silent of ways.

That is the last subject that any realtor wants to have come up. What a deal breaker.

Come on home buyers, if you don’t take control of this process and turn looking into seeing, no one will be at the wheel when it’s too late to change everything back to re-do and start over, looking for another home.

If the homeowners profess that the home had french drains installed, did they specify hand excavated french drains, and when were they built? Are the sellers starting to fidget and scratch occasionally about their faces, when you keep your questions coming?

Body language will tell you most every time whether they need to be uncomfortable, because of your preparation asking pertinent questions, or whether they are just weasels caught with their tails in the trap.

Ask the sellers if they understand the distinction between a french drain and a hand excavated french drain installed in the old world way, with a hard finished engineered slope of 2″ per 10 lineal feet of grade, venting to a “green friendly” hand excavated dry well or day lighted vent.

Ask the sellers of the home to show you the placement of their hand excavated french drain, if they say they installed one. Ask the sellers to show you the rock exposed on the surface of the hand excavated french drain, and the grade work.

Was the clean river rock within the hand excavated french drain covered up with dirt, therefore rendering the effort fruitless. No french drain would function well in that condition. If the french drain was covered with dirt it would have been destined and designed for failure, unless used with weed cloth and dirt over lawn drainage, which is designed with sod or grass seed replacement over the dry well, if it is located in a yard, for example.

Lawn drainage engineered hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems are an example of putting dirt back over the river rock on the surface, but in that case the river rock placed over the perforated pipe and sloped bottom are separated by a layer of weed cloth from the dirt and sod which keeps the hand excavated french drain from accumulating the type of debris volume that would cause the drainage system to not work.

Ask how old the french drains are, and where they are located, if the sellers say that they exist at all? They say every picture tells a story, and with home drainage this statement has never been more true. Thanks Rod Stewart.

5. If you are buying a one level ranch style home, without a basement in particular, look for the adequate placement of the foundation crawlspace vents.

Were the foundation vents poured so low in the foundation wall that the addition of soil and bark dust next to the home placed them even with, or below grade to the existing soil level?

Gravity takes that ol’ nasty groundwater and pulls it right into that hole about 8″-12″ wide and long. A huge hole on the ground that can fill up with groundwater caused by rain. Well duh. I guess one could suspect that there might be a groundwater problem. Perhaps not, but my money says, go look at the crawl space and use the list of inspections items included herein.

Look to see if the foundation vents have actually been completely or partially blocked, or filled in with barkdust, dirt, or leaves when the foundation was backfilled, or at the time it was built, or by the present or former homeowners.

This is a huge problem with ranch homes, ( 1 level homes with crawlspaces), and the problem does not exist with this type of home only. Ranch homes most often have minimum crawlspace distance from the floor joists to the floor of the crawlspace, and that makes for terrible working conditions if you need to work under there, and a dangerous place to go period if you live in the southern United States or western states, in places where snakes and spiders of not so friendly intentions lurk.

I personally would not like to trade the discovery of the occasional possum for discovery within the crawlspace of a rattlesnake, face to face, on my belly with no room to even sit up or turn around. You are so toast. Watch out.

You might want to call a home inspector professional in some of these types of areas and save yourself a lot of problems.

If hand excavated french drains are constructed and plumbed in front of these low grade foundation vents, most of the groundwater can be collected prior to it flowing into the crawl space.

If the foundation wall is very low, and the siding extends down the concrete foundation wall so low that a recommended splash block of additional soil cannot be installed, that is not fortunate for the homeowners. Making a grade change against the foundation alone can be enough, without the installation of french drains, to stop your groundwater caused home drainage problems. Most often both are required however.

6. As I have stated above, when you are examining the exterior foundation of the home you wish to buy, look to see if the siding on the home is too low to the ground level, or touching the ground, preventing the addition of soil compacted on the foundation to create a splash block which can run overflowing gutter water and rains streaking down the foundation wall of the home prior to saturation of the soil at the foundation.

Most building codes specify a minimum of 6″ between the bottom of the siding and any dirt or celulose debris, ie. leaves, bark dust, twigs, etc. along the exterior foundation wall. It is nice if a good drainage grade exists and the minimum clearance or greater is there or can be achieved.

If you are building a home from scratch and have a choice in the matter, design and work with the architect to get an additional 10″-12″ of concrete< foundation wall put into the plans that can be used to raise the grade with compacted dirt and clay at the foundation grade level for better runoff of rainwater from the side of your home or what overflows your gutters to the inside of your hand excavated french drains.

The french drain should be located about 18″ from the foundation wall to collect that rainwater runoff and dry out the border of earth between the foundation and the hand excavated french drain all the way down to the foundation footing in time by starving that area of groundwater created by the saturation of rain water on the surface of the ground or overflowing the gutters off the roof gutter system or groundwater bubbling out of the rain drain discharges installed at the edge of the foundation which accept the downspouts.

7. Look for the presence of concrete poured right against the foundation wall. This is seldom a good thing. These areas cause problems most of the time if the concrete is not floated, ie. sloped away from the home at an adequate grade to prevent the rainwater from running against the foundation.

If the grade at the foundation is flat, or slopes to the foundation, it should red flag you to check the basement or crawl space for signs of groundwater entry.

As the concrete cures it shrinks and forms an air space between the foundation wall and the concrete, it happens in dirt too, and the space in the crack may be enough in size to allow rainwater to start the bad habit of running right down the foundation wall during hard rains, flooding the basement or crawlspace.

Look under decks built right on the home as well. Determine if the slope of the ground under the deck runs away from the home or towards it.

What does the ground look like under the deck? Can you see holes, or grooves made where the rainwater drips through the cracks in the deck and runs to the foundation wall. Does it look like there is a slope towards the foundation under the deck

Are there french drains under the deck around, installed around 18″ from the foundation wall? You may think that these items do not matter. I assure you they do matter.

I have advised many homeowners to demolish or temporarily remove their decks, to allow the compacting and grading of the soil under the deck, as well as the creation of a splash block along the foundation wall for better rain run off, and the installation of hand excavated french drains under the deck to stop groundwater entry below grade.

A couple of years ago I advised a very talented and educated former Oregon governor to remove a deck so I could plumb a rain drain discharge and install hand excavated french drains.

He and his builder probably thought me to be quite mad when I first advised it, but I got the nod anyway, and subsequently hit it out of the park.

The drainage groundwater problem in that home was that groundwater was perking up in cracks within the basement floor, even after two sump pumps had been installed by previous homeowners.

The home was a new acquisition for my friend our former governor, and an addition had just been completed. I designed the drainage systems, as I have described within this article, and two sump pumps mounted ever so professionally looking, encased in concrete cylinders in the basement concrete floor never ran again, and groundwater never came up through that floor again I am told.

8. Look to see that the downspouts are plumbed into black abs pipe discharges above ground, and not some other type of pipe like ads flex or solid pipe, or perforated pipe, or pvc pipe.

If the home is older, look for the presence of the old concrete or clay tile downspout discharge systems. You will see the top of them standing next to the foundation with a downspout in them.

These types of old style downspout to rain drain discharge systems, either in clay, concrete, or cast iron, are probably plugged and overflowing at the foundation wall due to the spaces that exist between the 18″ long tiles, in the case of clay and concrete tiles, and cannot be replaced or cleaned out.

Dirt plugs them because dirt is backfilled over them when they are laid and the entire system consisted of pieces of pipe with spaces between them to begin with.

In time these clay or concrete tile systems plug and fail.

Connect the rain drains with new solid black abs and ads solid pipe and vent them to a daylighted vent or drywell to protect your crawlspace or basement from groundwater damage caused by roof water running through downspouts unable to vent, and backing up along the foundation wall.

Look for a cavity in the dirt at the ground level of the foundation, behind the rain drain discharge, that has formed behind the downspout location and shows evidence of the overflowing downspout running water over the rain drain discharge, as it is plugged.

9. Look for a white horizontal chalk line along the base of the exterior foundation wall, and look for white horizontal lines in the basement or crawlspace as well.

This is called effloresscense, and it is the lime that was forced away from the concrete in the foundation wall, due to groundwater lying on the foundation or running down the basement or interior crawlspace walls.

The evidence of effloresscense is a direct result of groundwater damage that causes foundation deterioration and groundwater running below grade.

In time this effloresscense is identified by a white powder that comes off to the touch.

The loss to the concrete itself, of the lime strength in the mix, through the loss of lime as effloressence, will actually weaken the concrete in the foundation wall to the degree that, over decades, the foundation will crumble to sand literally.

Extreme cases of foundation damage like this cannot be repaired. If the condition is caught in time, and hand excavated french drains are installed, a home drainage contractor/mason can reconstruct the basement or crawlspace foundation without having to jack and hold the entire house up, while a new foundation is poured under it. This is very expensive work.

This may seem like much to consider about the home prior to purchasing it, but if a clean bill of health can be given to the home as a result of the satisfaction of these concerns, your money is likely to stay in your pocket in the future. This is especially true if the home has hand excavated french drains that are properly constructed and plumbed.

Many homeowners who become sellers are aware of the condition of their home in great detail. These homeowners know that there is a state required home disclosure that is required to be given to the prospective buyers of the home by the sellers. This home disclosure asks specifically if the homeowner is aware of any groundwater drainage problems. It also asks what was done to solve the groundwater problem.

Some sellers tell the truth and will offer the history of their procrastination that has brought the condition of the drainage to the present where it is evident that a groundwater problem has existed for many years.

Other sellers will not disclose these seasonally evident home drainage problems, and will swear to the bitter end that they know nothing about any groundwater entry at all.

The home inspection indicates groundwater evidence and these sellers dig in their heels and profess complete ignorance. These types of homeowner/sellers are the ones to watch out for.

They are easily discovered in the process of doing your due diligence.

Unfortunately there are lots of these types of non-disclosing sellers out there. Beware, be smart, ask questions, and make informed decisions. You can tell the sellers that do not disclose what they know, as they weasel around the issue and have answers to your questions that do not make sense.

This information is also offered on the web site, as a PDF download e-book, for those home buyers that wish to print it out and take it with on home showings.

Just keep asking questions, and the facts will come out. This information is designed to flush out non disclosing types of sellers, who have had a home drainage history with the home, and will not disclose it, even if the law requires it, and they know good and well they are legally responsible to disclose all issues, be it failed or succeeded.

Using the home buyers check list will leave you with a healthy home and produce a fun home buying experience, lacking any drama attached to home drainage issues during the closing of escrow on the home.

Stop home seller non-disclosure of drainage problems.

You don’t need to buy a home drainage problem, and these sellers don’t need to get away with it, and be taught bad habits.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/123/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/308 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/308#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:55:21 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/308 Bring home drainage expertise to the planning table when you are designing and building a new home.

Get better results by having a home drainage professional install your rain drains and hand excavated french drains, rather than… winding up with a grab bag of bad home drainage, attempted by builders who hire laborers to attempt something they know nothing about.

Consult this website and professional home drainage company for important home drainage and groundwater removal information that can save the quality and structure of your home from dry rot problems and bad air.

We can make a difference where others have failed.

The home drainage information within this website, specifically groundwater removal science and home drainage, specifically, information explaining the logistics of, and effectiveness of, hand excavated french drains.

Studying this web site diligently will prepare you for success, when dealing with architects, planners, attorneys, lenders, engineers, landscape architects, and builder/contractors, none of whom will add much to your home drainage successful plan, without you first promoting the need for it.

Learn to speak the home drainage language that professionals use to identify and make sense of home drainage problems.

The original home drainage planning must start in the architects office really, by making sure the foundation wall has enough space between the ground and the bottom of the siding, after the home is built, planted and back filled, to allow the increase at the foundation, in grade, installing a compacted soil splash block to run groundwater away from the home and into a hand excavated french drain.

This knowledge and expertise must get to the homeowner, and be passed through to the job site, where the home drainage contractor installs the home drainage, in different ways, and at different times than the builder would select. Also getting quality long lasting results, where the builder would likely not achieve the same.

When you want groundwater removal and home drainage science done right, don’t leave it to your builder or city planners to represent common sense methods of home drainage groundwater removal. You will lose most of the time.

That is in part why there are so many home drainage problems out there in the Portland area that are unsolved.

Most are unsolved because they were discovered after the cost to solve the groundwater problem had exceeded the homeowners budget, or their desire to do so.

Reading this web site will teach you the difference between a ditch with little to no grade, called a french drain by some, and a hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system that is engineered with a hard bottom grade of at least 2 inches per ten lineal feet, as it parallels the homes foundation, around 18″ from the foundation wall.

Practice “green” home drainage science to achieve a better air environment within your home, as well as a healthy exterior foundation environment.

Groundwater removal from within 2 feet of your homes foundation wall, every time it rains hard for days and days, will prevent groundwater entry into below grade areas, like the crawl space or basement.

Read other articles on our home drainage consulting services within this website.

A pay pal link is posted on the home page for your peace of mind and banking security.

The home drainage information here-in, offered for free, can save you thousands of dollars, and add decades to the life of your new home. As well as provide your family with a better environment for healthy living.

Use this information to your benefit. Don’t spend wasted time trying to disprove it.

Learn how to protect your property and home from groundwater damage using hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems.

Learn how to practice green home drainage science, to enhance the quality of life for your community, neighborhood, and family.

Make “green groundwater removal” work for you today. Teach your neighbors to respect their property in the same ways.

Call for a free home evaluation today.

Install hand excavated french drains.

Duplicate what is already happening as a natural process on our earth.

Perking of groundwater below, into the center of the earth, is natures way of filling our drinking water supply.

If you do not think perk science applies to todays world, call your local planning department and ask them how much the fee for a “perk” test is, and how long it will take them to evaluate the findings once compiled, as it pertains to the cities issue of a standard septic permit.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/308/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/209 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/209#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 11:09:33 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/209

Exposed rock hand excavated french drains are both ancient and modern.

Hand excavated french drains cost less than they pay in any market, but especially in a buyers market, with record high home inventory and falling prices.

Todays home buyers have much to choose from. The bank will love the fact that professionally installed hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems were previously installed, as they know how well they work when installed properly. Tough real estate market? You bet.

Tough real estate marketing conditions exist most everywhere in the U.S. right now. This makes it necessary for properties to show value added features in order to get the kind of home buyers with strong credit who can get the deal done.

Many of these home buyers are first time home buyers who want “green” homes, and are home drainage smart and studied. They know it is not a subject to be taken lightly.

Eventually the home inspection report identifies the groundwater problem however, and the gig is up. The home sellers are left kicking and screaming all the way to the bank as they are forced to deal with it finally, as the new proposal price is twice what it was 10 years ago when they bought the home that way.

Now these sellers are left to deal with it, under the worst of circumstances.

Homes with hand excavated french drains, professionally installed, are value added features. They are capital improvements actually, from a tax standpoint, as they are not a home repair, and are value added groundwater removal systems, that did not exist previously at the home, and are recognized by the I.R.S. too.

Home buyers should come to home sellers with pre-approval letters in hand, solid credit, and a great plan to sniff out any home drainage problems that may exist at the home they are looking at right away. In the first 15 minutes.

If these home buyers use my home buyers due diligence check lists, provided for free on this site, and created to help home buyers find drainage problems, home buyers can pull honesty out of the most hesitant non-disclosing types of home sellers, with respect to finding out the truth from them, or their desire to hide it, and identifying any existing home drainage issues at the home that may exist.

When home sellers install hand excavated french drains at their home, the home stands out among the inventory of homes for sale. It has a value added feature that most do not.

There are few homes without the need for home drainage attention at some level around Portland, for example. All homes benefit from having hand excavated french drains installed. Some just benefit more than others.

Few homes will actually have hand excavated french drains professionally installed.

Very few homes in America that is, compared to all the homeowners wasting their money on sump pump installations that do not prevent groundwater from running below grade into crawl spaces.

Some homeowners feel they should not disclose groundwater problems, even after they have been solved. Many have not been solved, and they know opening up their mouths about home drainage will likely cause them to make a much fought trip to the bank required again, to pay for solving the drainage problem that belongs to them.

The non-disclosure of home drainage problems, past or present, as it pertains to a home, is in violation of state disclosure laws in Oregon.

Many homeowners have cosmetic enhancements, or a nice water feature to highlight when selling their home, but fewer homes have structural or environmental enhancements, such as hand excavated french drains, that positively impact the health of the home in many ways.

Hand excavated french drains are value added features that prevent dry rot, maintain the structural health and stability of the home, and remove groundwater that accumulates in basements and crawl spaces, before it saturates to that level, just to name a few. Groundwater can cause mildew, pests, mold and dryrot in your crawl space or basement.

Saturated foundation areas create moisture and mold problems in the home. When installed in conjunction with raising the foundation grade, as well as using a compacted splash block in that area, and installing rain drain discharges to vent gutter systems, hand excavated french drains pay huge groundwater removal dividends.

Be a home seller that proudly references the groundwater removal systems that were installed at the property to protect the infrastructure of the home.

Show off exposed river rock hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems proudly.

Hand excavated french drains are well known among professional contractors, by name, but poorly understood and installed by them in general, as a result of their limited experience with many types of home drainage problems.

Home sellers who have solved home drainage problems with hand excavated french drains should give home buyers a copy of the completed contract for drainage work. It probably was not cheap, and the buyers will also see the hand excavated french drain installation as a capital improvement and not a liability.

Home buyers are actively looking for properties with these home drainage solutions, and they will gladly pay for them in the home they wish to buy, unless they feel they can buy a home without them cheaper and install hand excavated french drains themselves at that home.

Sellers are obligated to at least disclose their experience with drainage problems, if not give the buyers a copy of the completed home drainage proposal, increasing their chances to be seen as honest sellers. Provide a copy of your completed french drain contract and many buyers will believe the honesty of your statements there after, and they will have a connection to whom ever did the drainage work, and likely be more inclined to meet you half way in negotiations, as a result of your honesty.

Stand out in the crowd and sell your home by showing off and promoting the ownership of hand excavated french drains when many homeowners flounder with groundwater problems and do not even have the courage to disclose them, and in legal opposition to state home quality disclosure laws that mandate them to disclose everything they know about the former and present health of the home, to include home drainage.

Show off your success with stopping groundwater entry. “Green home buyers” will like the fact that this will not be one of the many homes that they will find on the market with seller undisclosed groundwater problems, at least.

Many home sellers do not have any moral or karmic problem at all withholding information on home drainage systems that were formerly installed at the home, or anything to do with the subject for that matter, because they feel that the disclosure is a deal killer. Pure and simple and worth being a home drainage liar over apparently in many cases.

Actually it works just the opposite. The home buyers who go on to the next home, after the disclosure, would have done so anyway.

If a home buyer wants the home, a home drainage solution is value added, not an encumbrance. If they don’t want the home, it does not matter to them either way really. If they want the home and a problem exists, they will negotiate to fix it prior to closing of escrow and still buy the home in most cases.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/209/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/7 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/7#comments Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:15:50 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/7 If you are a prospective home site purchaser, that is to say, your objective is to buy a piece of land to build a home on, you need to understand the importance of doing your home drainage homework, prior to choosing and closing on your home site.

This means addressing an issue seldom discussed, home drainage and groundwater removal, as well as groundwater damage prevention methods. Land buyers must have the training to look at a large parcel of land and determine likely groundwater flow patterns that could impact the location for the homes foundation.

If the home is within an area not served by sewer, a contingency within your earnest money agreement must make your earnest money refundable, subject to a satisfactory perk test to establish the ability to get a standard septic permit for a septic system, so you can get the proposed new home financed and built.

There are other topics to discover as well, such as neighborhood and site home drainage considerations. Learning the infrastructure of where all that groundwater goes.

#1. At the head of the list is, looking at the soil grade of the site, with drainage in mind. Other important considerations to study within the due diligence phase of your real estate transaction to buy the land are:

#2. The geology of the underlying area, which is available in the county planning office, or by using US geological survey information, that is public record.

#3. Look for any geotechnical reports that were submitted by the developer, if there is one involved, as part of the satisfaction of county conditions of approval for the subdivision, when the subdivision was originally platted and approved.

#4. Find out if there are any pre-approval requirements of property and homeowner for financing made available for building a home in that area, and the terms that apply to the financing, such as the loan to value requirements, term length, fire safety issues, and other pertinent conditions of approval, made part of the loan program, by the lender.

#5. Write earnest money agreements with clauses to protect your earnest money, should you find disturbing information during your due diligence phase, prior to removing all contingencys and proceeding with the purchase of the land.

#6. Discover and inspect any community groundwater systems that service the community, if the land is within a platted subdivision or minor partition.

Review any easements that may affect your prospective home site. Is the site a servient tenant or a dominant tenant. You must know if you are providing an easement of some sort, or if you are the beneficiary of an easement, in which case you are the dominant tenant.

#7. Scope out the topography of neighboring lots that sit above grade to your home site, and reflect on how they might impact your home, from a groundwater run off perspective, during hard rain periods.

#8. Look for installed road culverts, community drainage systems, and road ditches that were installed to handle groundwater running off ingress-egress roads connecting the subdivision.

#9. Check out the geology reports on any hillsides above grade to your property not built on yet. Slumping is common after trees and shrubs, once holding soil together, are cut down, and big rains pound bare hillsides.

Ask yourself: why has this lot not been built on yet. Ask yourself if the adjacent hillside lots have enough brush and trees, with roots strong enough to bind the soil to the slope during hard rains, preventing this dirt from winding up in your driveway or over your retaining walls.

10. Look for evidence of underground springs, especially if you see them running on the surface of the land you wish to buy in the summer months prior to the rains coming.

They do not have to be large during the summer months to become a real problem during the winter, as they really kick in due to the increased saturation of groundwater and hydrostatic pressure.

Ask the land sellers about the existence of any hand excavated french drains around the site or within the area, and if the seller has ever noticed any groundwater problems at all on the property, or in the general area. And last, but not least, ask the neighbors, as they will be your most truthful source of direct experience on the subject of home drainage in that area. Neighbors will tell you everything about the home and the current sellers, their neighbors. You will get the picture by just having a friendly chat with them.

No doubt this list will take some time to research, but the knowledge you will gain will serve you well.

Go to your zoning and planning department at the county level, after tying up the property on an earnest money agreement, by putting a contingency in the earnest money agreement to provide a reasonable amount of time for research of facts concerning the geology of your site, and the other aspects described above, prior to closing on your land or lot.

County planners can help you in this regard. Review any geotechnical information they may have available on the area. Look for records of any failed septic permit applications for the site. Ask the planning department for assistance in reviewing geo-technical data that is available on the type of soil and rock present within the area, the average well depth, and any past earthquake activity recorded. Ask about any recorded history of ground movement in the area.

Ask yourself questions like, “will the rain water run to my proposed home site, or away from it”? How will my road cuts affect the drainage. Where do I need culverts so drainage can run under roads instead of washing them out during floods.

Determine if this site will require collection for rainwater, do to the fact it is below grade to surrounding areas, other lots, or streets. If the area lacks curb and gutter and your site is below grade to the street, watch out. The lot at the lower end of a cul de sac, with all street areas funneling groundwater to the lower end lot is the one to stay away from, unless it has curb and gutter, and perhaps even then.

You may require hand excavated french drains just to keep your site from washing away. Everything changes once you pave “paradise and put up a parking lot.” Joni Mitchell.

Drainage issues must be in the budget from the beginning to make it all work. If you have not thought of it before, you will not budget it there after. Hire a licensed, bonded and insured professional home drainage contractor in your part of the world, to help you with these issues.

Most professional home drainage contractors will design your groundwater drainage systems for free.

Simply ask them for a free home drainage assessment, and if they are what you are looking for in the way of a contractor, respect the fact that their work is very difficult, hire them, and benefit from what they know that others do not know about hand excavated french drains.

Hire a seasoned home drainage/masonry professional contractor. Make sure your home drainage contractor is familiar with the concepts of groundwater removal that you will see explained in future articles within this home drainage informational web site.

Better yet, from your perspective as a land buyer and future home builder, is to contract directly with a home drainage professional contractor in your area, to install rain drain discharges at an engineered grade instead of installed flat on the outside of the foundation footing, like most still install them when the home is built.

Install hand excavated french drains around the home when the home is built, and get a longer lasting and a much better system.

Exclude the amount of the drainage contractors bid from the price of the home builders contract, and if you get a great deal of guff from the home builder about it, it is probably a good idea to find another builder.

Many contractors say they understand the complex issues of home drainage. In my experience most do not. They huff and puff and threaten to blow the house down when confronted with the issue, but it is your decision.

I have addressed the fact that home builders are not competent to be trusted with the installation of hand excavated french drains, and they almost always lay rain drain discharges and foundation footing drains flat on the outside of the homes foundation footing, without a grade to clean the solid pipe of debris. The flat installed systems plug within months to years.

Many contractors simply have a professional drainage contractor/mason come into the picture from the beginning and contract directly with the homeowner, as they know they do not understand home drainage from their own experience. Landscapers many times say they are home drainage professionals as well, but they almost never are. Most are really just bluffing it with a pick-up truck and a trailer with a few lawn mowers and rakes.

My experience has been that most landscapers do not understand the degree to which hand excavated french drains need to be engineered and installed.

This is the pacific northwest of the United States, Oregon specifically, and this is where home drainage problems separate the men from the boys, when it comes to the installation, design, and perforamance of hand excavated french drains.

Many websites addressing home drainage installation are posted by landscapers, home repair advice writers, tv shows, and other non full time professional home drainage contractors and are not even close to reality. I do not agree with most of what they say, or their definitions of french drains, and/or their proposed groundwater solutions, for that matter.

It is for this reason, as well as others, that this forum on home drainage is being offered for your review and consideration. Study of this website will put you in a knowledge based position to hire a professional home drainage contractor and know who you are talking to and their likely abilities, as well. Don’t be fooled again.

Many homeowners will use the information to help them install their own hand excavated french drains. Many other readers will use our telephone consultation service or on site supervision service to help them design and manage the installation of the appropriate home drainage system in their area of the world.

Most of our readers will be Oregonians with home drainage problems, that will have come to this site as a choice, and not by any mistake. These readers know what they are facing, and have been lead to this informational source for a very important reasons. Study. Arm yourself with knowledge.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/7/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/298 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/298#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:34:45 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/298 10 home drainage conditions the buyers need to investigate. This is an Overview, read further for detail on each point: 1. Check the quality and age of the gutter system.

2. Inspect the rain drain discharges that vent the water from your gutter system away from the home.

3. Inspect the overall topography of the earth at the foundation walls.

4. Look for mature trees and shrubs planted within 2 feet of the foundation, or even up to 6 feet for large trees.

5. Look for evidence of a hand excavated french drain installation.

6. Ask the homeowners about home drainage issues.

7. Look for sump pumps installed.

8. Is there curb and gutter and is the property below grade to the street.

9. Does the home contain any funny smells when you go into the crawl space.

Prior to writing an offer on a home, you would be well advised to have a prepared list of home drainage due diligence questions with you when you jump into the home buying process.

Control is everything. You must control the stream of information coming to you, or you will be fed less than the truth in many cases dealing with some homeowners who want to hide home drainage problems and attempts to solve them as well.

Learn how to swim with the big fish without getting eaten. Don’t buy home drainage problems. You don’t need that kind of garbage.

It is easy to forget to look for existing or potential home drainage problems when the families focus is more on the neighborhood, the basketball hoop, where the bus stop is, patio dining possibilities, the overall size of the home, parking space, colors, water features, pool, and other items of cosmetic nature or comfort, which are important as well.

It is human nature for home buyers to forget about home drainage items that are not spotlighted, or disclosed to them by home sellers.

Oregon home sellers must present to the home buyers a home quality disclosure history form indicating everything they know about the condition of the home and its amenities.

This is done on a form that every home seller is required to give every Oregon home buyer, most often through their real estate broker. The form is an Oregon home condition and history disclosure, representing what the home sellers know about the subject property.

Ignore it as a home seller and you leave yourself open for lawsuits.

Non-disclosing home sellers can sell the home in the summer, sly as a fox. When the return of the homes groundwater problems show the new homeowners that they someone has been lying to them about never having a home drainage problem, moods turn into filing law suits many times.

Realtors are not trained to look for drainage issues at all. Actually, most realtors are not exactly dressed for a romp in the crawl space anyway.

The crawl space fact finding adventure should be the buyers first responsibility to themselves, if for no other reason than to provide the buyers with the truth about the condition of the crawl space, and most likely the homes health in general.

A crawl space will tell you lots about the over all age and health of the home, just from the smells or lack of them.

Focus in required to investigate the condition of the home from a home drainage perspective.

I will teach you how to protect yourself buying real estate and have fun doing it.

Whether the sellers are aware of the home drainage problems or not, you will be aware of them right away, and you will get down to the reality of what you are facing quickly by asking the proper questions in real time. Thrilled aren’t you.

You may benefit from having another person at the showing with you as a crawl space and overall property condition guy. Perhaps a handy man crawl space guy or a friend, to be dragged along just to be used for such important information gathering purposes as crawl space investigation.

That person can just be uncle Louie to the realtors and homeowners and say little at all to anyone during the process, but report to you. You will teach him what, where and how to look from this site information and your prepared and printed out list. Here-in enclosed.

1. Check the quality, age, and type of the gutter system installed on the home first. Ask yourself what the materials are in the gutters and downspouts. Are they aluminum, wood, or plastic. Look for gutter spikes protruding out of the facia boards on the end of the roof joists, where the gutter is nailed. They need to be nailed back into the end of the rafter tail if the gutter is still hung correctly.

Look for cracks in plastic gutter systems and the presence of gutter helmets, or similar types of supposedly no maintenance gutter guard systems. Gutter helmet types of no maintenance gutter protectors allow rain water, during heavy rains, to run right over the gutters producing the same effect or worse than you would have sustained if your home had no gutters installed at all. In soft rains they work as intended.

Even homes with quality french drain groundwater removal systems installed professionally have trouble keeping up with the huge flow that can come off a large roof during heavy rains where the downspout rain drain discharges are plugged and everything is overflowing at the foundation, and also most likely overflowing like a water fall off the gutters to the ground next to the homes foundation.

The end of the home is many times a gable end with no gutters, as it has a severe pitch to the roof line. These ends of the home can suffer worse from snow and rain running over the roofs end in that location.

Gutter spikes attach the gutters to the facia board which is nailed to the ends of the rafter tails at the top of the gutter. Make sure that they are securely attached, and that the gutters are not dented or bent over and are hung at a slope to the downspout, where it attaches to your gutter system. Where the downspout drops to the ground and vents into your rain drain discharge, which is located at the side of your homes foundation, right where it can overflow and bomb your crawl space with roof water, turned into groundwater if your gutters plug up your rain drain discharges.

Look for drip lines under the gutters on the dirt. It could be evidence that the gutters are overflowing during hard rains. Look for rusted gutters that will likely leak in hard rains.

2. Look at the rain drain discharges, which I have described above. Determine where and how the gutters are plumbed to them and what they are plumbed with, as well as the gutters approximate age and the quality of the materials used. Are those rain drain discharges made of flexible pipe above ground, and not hard glued abs pipe, as they should be?

Usually 3″ abs glued pipe is mandated for use above ground for plumbing rain drain discharges. The rain drains may attach to a 3″ solid ads flex pipe as well for allowing underground turns and twists in your french drain systems aqua ducts.

3. What is the overall topography of the home site, and can you determine what basic type of the soil exists at the exterior foundation wall? I just mean, does it look like thick bark dust around the foundation, which acts like a sponge? Does the ground slope toward the foundation in general, and has it been dug and gardened, or is it firm and sloped away from the home, and naturally hard and compacted?

Ask yourself if the concrete areas are poured sloping towards the foundation, or flat against the foundation, like a patio at the rear sliding door. This can be a tip off to the source of the groundwater into the crawl space or basement in that area, when you see bad rainwater collecting slopes running right towards your home.

Look to see if anyone in the past has placed any kind of rock, sand, or gravel right on the foundation wall, after removing dirt against the foundation wall, either all the way down to the depth of the foundation footing, or perhaps even just a foot or two? I do not mean a thin layer of river rock covering the sloping compacted splash block against the foundation wall, which gravity flows heavy rain water away from the foundation wall.

Splash blocks are installed approximately 18″ away from the foundation walls and adjacent to the hand excavated french drain installation, which is itself approximately 12″ wide.

The finish layer of 3/4″-1 1/2″ river rock is to prevent erosion of the compacted splash block against the foundation wall, and to enhance rain run away speed into the french drain.

Rock placed directly on the foundation should red flag you to look within the basement or crawlspace for potential home drainage problems. Although, like I just said above, the river rock may only be on the surface of the splash block at the foundation in a proper french drain installation.

Look for evidence of a home drainage groundwater problem at the ground level, at the exterior foundation wall, where a white chalky substance called effloressence is usually present. Put your finger on it, and you will get lime on your finger. A conclusive test for evidence of groundwater entry in that area due to groundwater saturation produced by water laying against the concrete foundations surface for extended periods of time.

The presence of efflorescense shows the lime within the concrete foundation wall that has been displaced by groundwater laying on the foundation wall over long periods of time.

4. Are there mature trees planted within 2 feet of the foundation that, in conjunction with bad topography sloping to the foundation, probably have sent roots down along the foundation, which often causes groundwater to run below grade into basements and crawl spaces?

Are there deep layers of barkdust or chips near the foundation, which will certainly act like a sponge to absorb groundwater?

Where the grade at the foundation wall can be increased by the creation of a compacted splash block, in conjunction with the installation of hand excavated french drains, home drainage success will follow.

5. Does the homeowner contend that there is a french drain installed along the home, but you see no exposed river rock on the surface of the ground which would perhaps evidence the french drain installation. This does not mean that the french drain was engineered or excavated correctly, because no one can deconstruct the french drain to determine if it has the proper slope and depth, as well as the correct hard finished bearing ground slope of at least 2″ per 10 lineal feet, to make it work well under hard rain conditions.

Digging into the sides of the french drain installation would further deteriorate the ability of it to collect groundwater over a long time, as the silt and mud created by loosing the soil sides of the french drain, and then being periodically flooded, can reduce its effectiveness to some degree or invalidate it all together.

6. Ask the homeowners about their experience with home drainage issues as they pertain to the home. Do so without much of a warning. Do the homeowners fidget, and seem a little reluctant to answer, as they find the right words to answer? Did they look at each other before responding? What is their body language like after you ask these questions?

7. Are there any sump pumps installed? If there is a sump pump installed, where and how does it vent? What do the sellers say about who put it in, why, and when? If there is a sump pump installed on the outside of the home, how close is it to the foundation?

It is not good to install a sump pump in a sump well, installed against the foundation wall, or within 10 feet of the foundation for that matter. Portland city code wants a 4 foot deep by 4 foot in diameter, rock filled dry well, to be at least 10 feet from a foundation wall.

A sump well also retains groundwater that was not pumped out. This leaves the remaining groundwater soaking into the ground below you at the foundation wall if that is your installation.

Even if a solid tank is used, the sump pump will never pump out all the water. A few inches will always remain to keep the area musty smelling.

Many failed drainage systems exist in the Portland area that also have the dirt dug away from the foundation wall a foot or two, maybe with a back hoe, maybe by hand, and are then are connected with the ditch that was crudely dug and the dirt was replaced with rock. A sump pump on the outside of the foundation wall, at the end of a ditch filled with rock is not quality home drainage. Lots of these failed attempts are out there. Thousands in the Portland area alone.

7. If there is a sump pump installed in the crawlspace or basement, does the home also contain hand excavated french drains with exposed river rock on the surface, installed on the outside of the home, located about 18″ from the foundation wall, with a compacted soil grade against the foundation which is called a splash block? This would be a very good thing to discover.

Does it appear that groundwater is sloping to the inside of the hand excavated french drain from the foundation splash block? This should be the correct engineering for the compacted splash block and hand excavated french drain installation.

Sump pump installers do not prevent the groundwater from entering below grade areas with their sump pump installations. Without hand excavated french drains installed, the groundwater will continue to enter below grade areas such as crawl spaces and basements.

If hand excavated french drains are installed, and a sump pump exists as well, the homeowners probably had the hand excavated french drains installed after the homeowner realized that the groundwater was still entering below grade, even after the installation of the sump pump. While I am sure some sump pump guy would love to try to convince everyone that it was the french drain that was installed first and that the sump pump prevented the groundwater from entering below grade, this would be a preposterous lie, without a shred of truth to back it up. Everyone knows it is just the opposite.

8. Does the home have curb and gutter at the street? The lack of these systems can send groundwater from streets onto home sites and saturate lawns as well. Groundwater problem can follow.

For some procrastinating home drainage challenged homeowners, this can really become an industrial problem more than a residential one in scope and budget, and a street rainwater problem that eventually winds up to be that cities or counties problem, if enough tax paying homeowners get together to light a fire under their butts to address the issue and probably sue the city, or work with them, to give their street curb and gutter as well.

Is the home below grade to the street?

While these conditions can many times be changed, it is extra money for you to budget if you decide to purchase the home that may require hand excavated french drains to collect street groundwater prior to it ruining you lawn and saturating the foundation walls.

Memorize or bring this list with you to the home showing, and don’t be sidetracked. Always return to your list of questions. Look for the conditions that I have showed you. Asking yourself the strong value questions puts you in control of the home buying process totally.

You will blow them away, and almost find yourself at times witnessing the admission from homeowners caught off guard and not prepared for someone that comes off like a home drainage and geology student more than a home buyer. Memorize the list, or just read from it, and everyone certainly will conclude that you are the boss. No exceptions. Not a bad place to be coming from in this case, I think.

Contractors and homeowners, as well as realtors, all are pulling your mind away from the fact finding process, and trying to turn everything into getting the buyers to accept what is said to them as fact, and move along, without their own investigation or knowledge weighing in.

My experience as a home drainage contractor, land developer, former commercial-investment and residential real estate brokerage owner and broker, taught me that you can see deeply into the secrets of the environmental and structural health of the home when you look deeply.

9. Does the home contain funny smells that seem to indicate groundwater problems may be a reality? Time for further inspection. Where is the crawl space hatch door? Probably in a bedroom closet floor. Find it, open it and smell the crawl space.

Nice. Now you can appreciated what I am saying right? You will learn lots about the home doing this simple exercise. Get a good flash light,, coveralls and gloves if you are doing it yourself, and a mask is also advised in many crawl spaces. Perhaps not all of them.

Do you have any suspicions of mold or mildew because of smells? Does the carpet look old, with a touch of funky smell, even though it looks recently cleaned or new, or at least not that old? Perhaps it was once flooded if it is in the basement, and the homeowners made the cheaper attempt to dry it out rather than replace the molding carpet. It never works.

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