If the yard area that you wish to use for the installation of a hand excavated dry well does not perk well, do not worry. A sump well, or dry well overflow line, installed within the dry well is your answer.

If the area that was chosen for a hand excavated dry well does not perk satisfactorily, after a few days of watching, while you excavate the rest of the french drain system, this is your solution.

Dry wells perk well when broken in.

They either perk right away, or within a few weeks, in the worst of cases. Once broken in, and cracks have formed on the bottom of the dry well, professionally installed hand excavated dry wells work for decades or longer, and dry wells function and last beyond your memory of them.

The groundwater simply continues its journey to the middle earth caverns, running right through the cracks formed on the bottom of the dry well, or sump well, without standing in the dry well long, if at all.

However, when dry wells are newly constructed, they can take a few hours to a few weeks for the groundwater to start soaking below grade.

Homeowners seldom need either an overflow line off the dry well, or the installation of a sump pump in their new dry well, to turn the dry well into a sump well.

Your professional home drainage contractor will give you adequate advice with respect to which method would serve your home drainage needs best.

In severely sloped locations, a homeowner may be well advised to consult with a geo-technical engineer, with respect to their opinion concerning the overall stability of your home site first, and which groundwater removal method would service the home site best in his opinion.

I completed a project this week, where in one location the hand excavated dry well perked extremely well, right away.

The second location for a dry well that was selected was not perking, even after a few days, so I installed an overflow line, which can either be vented to another dry well location that perks better, or day light vented downhill, which I did in this case. You need a downhill slope to make a day lighted vent work.

The bottom of the dry well was 4 feet deep and had been finished on a hard basalt rock bottom. The top two feet of the dry well was dirt. The bottom two feet was basalt rock.

The solution to this drainage problem was to first test the dry well, after it was excavated, and second create a sump well or overflow line coming out of the hand excavated dry well, if it showed signs of not perking adequately.

A few days will not produce much perking in many cases, where in the next week or two after rains, when the dry well is broken in, the same dry well will not hold groundwater for even a few minutes.

I urge homeowners to understand, that when a new dry well is constructed, it will sometimes, even with successful perk locations, take a few days, to weeks, to get newly installed dry wells working well. You will not see this, as your home drainage professional will engineer the amount of groundwater estimated to comply with the location, size and number of dry wells recommended for your home site groundwater project.

Keep in mind as well please; when a septic permit is issued from a city or county, for a satisfactory “perk test”, which is paid for by an applicant wishing to build a home in an area the lacks a public sanitary disposal system, patience is expected, as well as practiced, when testing home sites for perk ability.

The prospective home builder wants to get a permit for a septic system. The function of the dry well perking, and a septic tank perking is exactly the same, except a septic tank captures solid material in a solid tank first, and lets the grey water rise to the top of the tank and flow out the pipe into drain fields, which are actually day light vent systems or bio-swales.

When a perk test is performed, the city digs a large hole, about the size of a dry well first, with a back hoe.

They fill the hole with water from a water truck, and wait about 2-3 weeks before they ever judge if it perks or not, because they know it is breaking in slowly first. Typically the rain does this for the homeowners naturally.

When the dry well breaks in, it runs fast, once groundwater saturation caused by perking below grade has formed cracks on the dry well bottom.

If the test hole has dropped a foot or two in volume of water, or if the water is all gone, the applicant receives a standard septic permit.

If not, he or she will be asked to install a sand filter system, to mitigate some of the grey water, and clean it some, prior to perking it eventually below grade, after first sand filtering it.

The sump well is plumbed with a sump pump installed within the dry well/sump well, inside concrete cylinders with a top on the installation, with rock surrounding the tank.

This system should be installed only well away from the exterior of the home, and never within 10 feet of the homes foundation walls. I see many companies installing sump pumps and low to no grade ditches, right against foundation walls, after first removing the dirt as well.<> This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for the sump pump installer, because he has told you that underground rivers and springs destine you to have groundwater forever, making his sump pump the only groundwater system that will help you.

This is b.s. to the fifth power, and he has just damaged the foundation area, making it worthless for a proper french drain installation, as he has ruthlessly dug up the soil around the foundation. It is no longer load bearing soil, and not able to be used for french drain installation prior to removing his junk and compacting the entire area along the foundation wall.

The sump pump installer has conned you, taken your money, and poisoned the well on the way out the door with your dough.

In a proper exterior foundation sump well system, the groundwater is collected and vented along the foundation, 18″ away from the foundation wall, with hand excavated french drains, in the same manner as always, but the collected groundwater is pumped from the dry well/sump well, before it can overflow. Ball or slider floats up, pump goes on. Sump pump ball or slider goes down when the water is pumped out, which shuts off the pump. No water. No pumping. Fewer burnt out sump pumps.

This method of groundwater collection and removal is a much better way to collect and vent large amounts of groundwater than trying to excavate a shallow sump pump drain system in a basement or crawl space. That is failure, looking for a place to happen.

If you have a downhill topography slope, sloping away from the sump well and the homes foundation, and your dry well is suspect of being a difficult perk site, you can perhaps engineer an overflow line, that is around 8 inches deep, 12″ wide that contains a solid 3″ ads flex ads overflow pipe with a hardware cloth galvanized screen put over the end installed into the side of the dry well.

This overflow line system is back filled with dirt.

This is a better alternative to sump pumping.

The overflow line will always be plumbed in solid flex ads pipe, either 3 or 4 inch pipe.

No sump pump ever needed there after. Let the electricity goes out, and it’s o.k. And besides, it isn’t installed under your bedroom floor either, keeping you awake in rain storms as the pump comes on and goes off constantly.

Not to mention, look in your crawl space after the installation and during heavy rains, to see an immediate difference in groundwater entry, if any at all. In time as the ground firms up more around your foundation, less, to no groundwater comes in, permanently, without electricity.

This is the very best alternative, when overflowing can be accomplished, if your dry well doesn’t look like a good perk candidate.

An overflow line off your dry well should only be installed without sending the groundwater over to a neighbors property, or trashing a lower grade sidewalk with debris, etc.

Spill out groundwater at day light vent locations on a wheel barrow of river rock, to spread out the groundwater and prevent erosion.

Crawl space sump pumps need shallow interior hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems to gravity flow the groundwater that has already saturated below grade to the sump pump.

Spend your money on exterior hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems and get results instead of head aches.

Without professionals installing them, crawl space french drains turn into non functional and damaging, flat sloppy ditches in your crawl space, full of water and debris when it rains, until the groundwater finally saturates and disappears in your crawl space floor, rotting everything and making mold and mildew part of your respiratory challenge as well, in many cases.<

Interior french drain groundwater removal systems are the very last alternative groundwater solution to consider, not the first. Because it is never a solution. It is an expensive ploy, and a failed system for prevention. It does not even do evacuation well, once the whole crawl space is flooded.

Too little, too late.

Just because you talked to the sump pump installer first, and he planted the concept of sump pumps in your mind, first, after the home inspector sent him out to the home, first, doesn’t make him an expert in home drainage.

He most likely installs sump pumps. Get it? And his buddy the home inspector is a clown working with him to influence your opinion, through repetition of b.s concepts, for their own profit.

The key to the exterior sump well construction is having exterior electric power available on the outside of the home to power a sump pump.

Gravity, geology and engineering hold the keys to home drainage success, not electricity.

You may hardwire these sump pumps if you wish, but in most cases, from my experience installing them, with the smaller (1/4hp-1/3 hp ball float sump pumps,) hard wiring is not required for functional common sense and other reasons. The pump should be connected with a 12 guage contractor grade, all weather extension cord or larger in diameter. It should be , installed within a solid abs or schedule 40 pvc pipe conduit, and plugged in to a gfci rated electric circuit, with protection from the rain, in the form of a weather head, or located under a covered area against the home.

Run out of power for your crawl space french drain system, without first installing exterior hand excavated french drains, and you will likely be swimming in groundwater that will be in your crawl space for months, to years, to forever; if you don’t fix the entry problem from the outside first, making a sump pump never needed.

Fixing does not mean just pumping groundwater that should never have gotten into the crawl space to begin with. That is not the definition of a home drainage solution, or of success.”

“With home drainage, an ounce of prevention is worth thousands of pounds of cure”. They help right away when you are bombed with groundwater, yes, but better to not get sick and never need pills, right? Prevent the groundwater from saturating and you cut off the weight of the groundwater pressing along your foundation walls.

Now your getting it, right?

One of the most helpless feelings you will ever have will come as you look into your crawl space full of dirty water, with the insulation floating in two feet of groundwater perhaps, among items of debris and wood pieces.

You know this is very bad for everything and everyone. But panic doesn’t seem to be solving the problem. Time for AAA Home Drainage.

It comes to your senses, finally, that you are literally living over a marsh, and you and your family have been for years perhaps, without ever thinking a thing of it. Maybe even the homeowner knew about it, and simply deemed it too expensive to finance and fix, if the cash was not available to do so. It just was never a priority.

Now all those frog noises below your bedroom floor make sense. Hum. lol.

“We’ll fix it later, perhaps.” Or homeowners just don’t know about the groundwater entry, because they have not suffered viewable damage yet, or tried to sell their home, or never have ventured into their crawl space.

You must collect and vent groundwater on the outside of the home first to solve your home drainage problems. No exceptions.

If you keep adding groundwater weight to the side of your building, you will deteriorate the foundation walls, sink the footings, and basically, over a few decades, send the home to its slow death, without a serious five figure home drainage solution being funded to prevent it, before the structural damage is fixed.

I recommend a 30 amp gfci, 110 electric circuit, hard wired or with a plug in weather head cover installation, if possible.

Sump well systems that use exterior gfci plugs with weather heads, do not need additional electrician charges on the night your sump pump goes out in your crawl space or yard.

The sump pump in the exterior sump well construction is mounted inside stacked concrete cylinders, just like your interior crawl space sump pump should have been installed, with a concrete top.

The concrete cylinders are installed and leveled on a bed of 3/4″-11/2″ river rock in the sump well.

This draws and pumps clean groundwater that has been pulled through the rock below it.

The concrete cylinders are surrounded with river rock.

This draws the groundwater through the rock, and pumps clean water.

The trouble with all sump pumps installed in crawl spaces is that they never pump out all the groundwater, even when installed correctly, so the whole idea fails right away. Many sump pump installers are often just pumping mud through a dirty hole in the ground, and calling it a sump pump installation in your crawl space. I have seen them installed in every wrong way possible I think. I know I am wrong though, because next week I will see another dumb sump pump installation.

Plumb the sump pump with black 1 1/2″ abs pipe, and vent it to the chosen location in the manner you feel most appropriate for your site. Reading this web site will teach you how to install it.

Always install a backflow device on the sump pump as well.

Just remember, pumping is the very last thing you should count on to improve your home drainage, either within the exterior foundation wall area, or inside a crawl space or basement.

Without collection and removal of groundwater near your homes foundation, with gravity flow hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems, nothing is going to change for the better with your home drainage problems. That much I can guarantee.

You might get your transaction closed by installing a sump pump system somewhere, and conning the buyers into thinking that a groundwater solution has been installed, but the drainage problems will remain, that is a lie, and the drainage problems will continue, and get worse, with time and heavy rain.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/53/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/399 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/399#comments Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:21:30 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/399

Happy New Year friends. 2010. Onward and upward in home drainage solution land.

It is another year, and everything is changing fast.

That includes the home groundwater removal business as well.

Very little quality information exists about professional home drainage residential installations.

This site is an effort to bridge that home drainage, information to homeowner, information gap.

Lots of internet drainage pundits and tv personalities are out there on the internet, talking and writing about home drainage. From my personal, every day home drainage perspective, as a licensed, bonded and insured home drainage contractor, where I am called upon to solve home drainage problems every day, each home with a new set of undisclosed or known conditions, as well as individual topography, and neighborhood concerns.

Most of the talkers about home drainage do not get it even close to right.

Many of these guys obviously are not making a living at solving home drainage problems to be spouting success with, what real home drainage professionals know is old failed knowledge, that was replaced 20 years ago with new standards and materials.

AAA Home Drainage goes back to the basics, and practices the old world european way of hand excavating french drain groundwater removal systems, for function, safety, and form.

The standard joke about home drainage contractor wanna bees, among home drainage professionals in my area, is that their sage suggestions are probably stolen from the guys and gals in the plumbing departments at Home Depot and Lowes, as well as off the internet on the sites I have referred to here-in, or from some other source of information on the subject, not quite up to speed.

Perhaps these home drainage contractor wanna bees actually get their home drainage information from some well meaning, long time contractor friend, who also actually knows very little about home drainage, and who probably uses the same folks at Home Depot and Lowes for his advice on home drainage as well.

Homeowners are learning to speak the home drainage language from reading this web site.

As a result, these educated home drainage home buyers and sellers are busting out the truth from home sellers and contractors who would rather not tell them the truth about their experiences with home drainage and groundwater problems at the home.

Home sellers may think home drainage problem disclosure is a big deal killer, and it can be just that, but it is the law for home sellers to disclose too. Sometimes it is a home that the buyers need to walk away from anyway, going on down the road to find the eventual better home.

Home buyers are discovering information on home drainage that they would have never discovered previously, because they are more educated on the subject than the average contractor is by far, after studying about home drainage diligently on this site.

An interesting statistic that I looked at today, with respect to the traffic on my web site, as documented by the web site host statistics is: around 10% of my readers stay on this site, reading about home drainage, 1 hour or more, per entry onto the site, and another 5% stay on from 1-30 minutes reading, per entry onto this site.

That is just fantastic. I am so pleased. You guys are really getting good at understanding this stuff. You have to be.

Home drainage information, as it applies to home sellers, or to home buyers as well, would formerly have been un-discovered.

The sump pump contractor would have sensed the homeowners lack of preparation and knowledge, and would have likely just rolled all over them with his underground rivers and springs nonsense.

If no one called his bluff, he would proceed to suggest some stupid sump pump installation, and perhaps an interior or exterior sump pump installation, most likely, as always, to the detriment of the home and the homeowners.

Contractors that say they understand home drainage, to some degree, like the ones I am pointing out, expect homeowners to embody home drainage ignorance, instead of knowledge. They are used to this as common among homeowners. Few understand home drainage. Very few.

Home buyers can take control of the pace of the home right away by asking questions.

Just asking nice calm prepared questions, and having someone take a trip into the crawl space for you, when a drainage problem is suspected, whether disclosed by the home sellers or not disclosed by them. Watch the home sellers eyes when you say your man will need to look at the crawl space.

Home buyers must use prepared questions, like the ones in my “home buyers due diligence guide”. This can be printed out as a pdf e-book on this site, free. Bring it to every home showing.

Big difference in the end result of the sump pump guy meeting, I assure you.

Home buyers stay in control by asking questions pertinent to the home drainage.

The sump pump guys, impossible to disprove statements about the existing underground rivers and springs, running right under your home, are just institutional b.s., and are only thrown out there to start the homeowners fear process.

This all plays into the sump pump installers contention that you cannot collect the groundwater, caused by rain, on within the top 18″ of the soil. This contention drives the need for the sump pump installation in his mind set. What he wants homeowners to believe.

The sump pump guy is actually sounding homeowners out with his statements, and carefully measuring their lack of defense or questions that could make it necessary for the sump contractor to defend the need for his sump pump installation, and other stupid stuff problably, like ditches, with little to no grade, in your crawl space, right where you do not want more groundwater standing, that he will call french drains.

He is looking for knowledge weakness in the homeowners.

The bad guy, sump pump contractor, in this example, knows if he can get you to believe the underground rivers and springs story, he has you right where to would not like to be.

Get out the check book and be prepared to blow lots of cash on something absolutely worthless, in most cases, if you buy into the underground rivers and springs theory. It may even make the whole groundwater drainage situation worse, or impossible for a professional to come behind and offer a properly installed home drainage solution.

Everyone, in that case, has forgotten about stopping the groundwater from coming into the crawl space or basement in the first place, except the contractor, who is not talking anymore at all.

Home buyers now have professional home drainage information available on this web site, published world wide, available on download pdf for free.

The use of this free home drainage information, as well as learning how to spot home drainage problems when you are buying a home, can make the difference between buying a healthy home or a sick one, from a mold and drainage perspective. And not just once, but for a lifetime. Remember the story about, “if I give you a fish today, you will eat fish today. If I teach you how to fish, you will only require faith and fishing to eat fish for a lifetime.” Same applies in the world of home drainage. Once you learn how to buy and sell without becoming a home drainage victim, it will never happen to you again in all likelyhood. Especially if professionals are utilized for the information gathering and installation processes, which respect to buying homes that are closed following home drainage system installations.

Much of the information that I share in my web site has been held closely in the past, and actually held quite proprietarily professional home drainage contractors who know they are in the minority, like myself. We know what works because people tell us that over and over.

I do not have enough lifetimes, all put together, to answer all the homeowner questions that result from their conversations with sump pump installers. Sump pump installers, have for years orchestrated a dis-information campaign about geology, sump pump effectiveness and have scammed millions of dollars away from unsuspecting homeowners around the world.

This home drainage web site is an effort to turn around a major home buyer and seller injustice, perpetrated upon home sellers and buyers by sump pump installers mainly, who offer no groundwater solution at all, and lie to homeowners around the world about what they will do for they money, and the results they can expect.

This is not just happening in Oregon. Get hip or suffer from your own home drainage ignorance.

Homeowners around the world are bilked out of millions of dollars each year on sump pump installations that do not stop groundwater from continuing to enter below grade, even after the words “guarantee” are throw around, and many times is the only reason that homeowners went that way in the end.

When in fact, the guarantee was not a guarantee at all, it was consumer fraud.

I just finished a job for a homeowner that works for a major, well known insurance company. Just months before he had an interior crawl space french drain system, they called it, installed in his crawl space. When the same amount of groundwater came in after the installation, the insurance exec. was amazed to find he had totally blown his money, without having one bit of recourse, after his emotional discussions with the sump pump contractor who gave him his “guarantee”.

This individual and I discussed his former sump pump installation guarantee, and as he found out, he was unable to get any money from the sump pump company what so ever. This was after they charged him thousands of dollars to run a no grade trench around the inside of his foundation wall, within the crawl space, and install a sump pump. “With a guarantee.” What a crock. Read the find print.

I have interviewed hundreds of homeowners with failed sump pump systems, or ones that never worked at all. It is always the same story. Underground rivers and springs just pushed these homeowners crazy, and they installed a sump pump.

Most of these sump pump guys are non-licensed, bonded and insured crooks or just plain stupid.

Some of them call in the end, telling me of their experience with french drain installation, as they are now out of business, and would like to have me hire them.

Even the ones with all the right stuff legally can have gotten there like some of our most outspoken sump pump installers in this area have. Without a conscience, in my opinion.

These dudes have one thing in mind, get your money. Plain and simple.

I want to see the public interview them soundly, bust their chops, accept or reject them, but do so with open eyes, and not become one of their victims. Plain and simple.

If a sump pump guy wants to sell homeowners a sump pump system, with a guarantee no less. “I am so impressed.” Ask what that guarantee spouting sump pump guy means specifically, if you ever get another drop of groundwater into your crawl space after his installation.

Is he prepared to defend himself with only the story of the underground river or spring, while giving you the puppy dog eyes, while appealing to your sense of fairness, in understanding, that because of this nasty old underground river or spring, you will always have groundwater to pump. Remember, he told you that, and you bought into it. Don’t you remember?

If that is good enough for you as homeowners, fine.

I just want you to be a big boy or girl, and not cry too hard when you figure out you stlll have the same amount of groundwater, or more, in your crawl space, because you did not stop it on the outside of the home first.

It does little good to pump some of it out, never getting it all before it soaks in the ground within the crawl space, leaving you in the same place, minus thousands of bucks.

Ask the drainage contractor if he will reimburse the homeowners for any additional receipt of groundwater in the basement or crawl space, in some form, or if he will forfeit the money all together, lol, or what? Yeh, your right. Fat chance.

How do you get paid back if his guarantee produces more groundwater to pump? Or is his paper even a guarantee at all?

It is not. His b.s. guarantee just means that he will keep a working sump pump in the crawl space, read the fine print, if you can.

Sump pumps seldom go out. I have removed old ones, and replaced them, at the request of the homeowner, leaving the old one sitting next to the sump well in the crawl space, still caked in mud from a bad former installation, and still working. I tell the homeowners to just leave it there in case the new one ever goes out in a rain storm sometime.

Some of the cheaper portable sump pumps, connected to garden hoses, will just burn out when the water is pumped out, and will not shut off.

Find out exactly what home drainage contractors intend to do to your property right away, by studying this very extensive study guide tutorial on professional home drainage installation for groundwater removal solutions.

Start asking the kinds of questions that tell those pumped up sump pump contractors that they will not be successful trying the old stories on you about underground rivers and springs under your home.

Those stories were probably manufactured over a pitcher of beer somewhere, late in the evening while some contractor was wondering how to extract more money from homeowners pockets.

Those stories of underground rivers and springs can be true of course, but are extremely rare, and are always thrown out seriously to loosen up the customers and for the contractor to measure the customers willingness to part with their cash.

They love to start by getting in control with the use of the underground rivers and springs in that area story, because it cannot be proven, but still leaves the homeowners listening to this b.s. and worrying.

Don’t fall for that trite old sump pump installer trick. Ask him questions that you know actually pertain to home drainage engineering for the removal of groundwater before it saturates and perks into the crawl space or basement, and needs to be pumped.

Further explanation on this subject is available in other articles and e-books on this web site.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/399/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/260 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/260#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:34:49 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/260 If you are planning on building a new home, there are many considerations with respect to home drainage, that you will likely not be made aware of through the local planning department, your architect, your home contractor builder, or even your close friends, many of whom have built a home as well. I will tell you some of the most misunderstood concepts in the world of home drainage with respect to new home construction.

When you are building a new home, you must discuss home drainage with your architect first, before submission to city and county approval officials. Specify that you want a foundation that contains more above soil grade concrete than the average proposed concrete foundation usually winds up with, to allow the creation of a soil grade enhancement at the foundation, when planning and having blueprints drawn.

The compacted sloping hard grade next to your foundation, approximately 18″ from the foundation, is called a splash block. It is essential not to garden and dig up your foundation area, and expect any kind of home drainage success, no matter what home drainage system you install. You must also keep a functional rain drain discharge system that vents the roof water through your gutter system, and on to a dry well or a day lighted vent, in most cases.

Pour the foundation about 1 ft. higher than the originally proposed finished backfilled soil grade, so a compacted and raised dirt and clay splash block can be installed around the home, for hard falling rainwater run off, to the inside of a 12″ wide, exposed river rock hand excavated french drain, located about 18″ from the foundation wall at the base of the splash block.

This will probably raise a few eyebrows from the experts you will be forced to deal with. Hold your ground. Specify this condition as necessary and gladly pay for the extra concrete, because it will save you thousands of dollars in the long run, by not costing you mega bucks in repairs to solve home drainage groundwater problems and damaged foundation and post beam infrastructure.

Use exposed 3/4″-1 1/2″ clean washed river rock for maximum groundwater collection around your new home. A compact soil grade slope, away from your foundation wall, will allow you to install a hand excavated french drain at the base of the compacted splash block, and beat the saturation of groundwater along the foundation wall.

Homeowners that are building a new home, contact me to weigh in, concerning their home design from a drainage perspective. They ask me to offer suggestions or alterations to the home drainage plan, if there even is one. Sometimes I just am asked to write them a proposal for work. Todays home buyers wants to make their new home a “green” place to live. Not just a future profit picture alone.

I show homeowners how to use hand excavated french drains to prevent structural problems to their new home, by using groundwater removal systems that work to prevent groundwater damage, before groundwater enters the crawl space or basement.

City planning departments and architects seldom counsel homebuilders to do as I have suggested above, so as a result, the finished soil grade at the foundation is often finished flat or the ground slopes towards the foundation, after the foundation area is backfilled. Everyone just forgets about grade.

Building codes require that the soil level, or other cellulose debris, be at least 6″ below the bottom of the siding. Most building codes mandate a 6″ slope away from the foundation walls, for minimum home drainage success. This is seldom followed in practice however, by the builder. Flat or negative grade at the foundation is a smoking gun for a home drainage problem and should be a tip off to look for evidence of home drainage problems.

Ranch homes are many times built with foundation vents poured too low in the foundation stem wall. As a result, rain just fills those foundation vent areas and the water runs below grade into the crawl space easily.

Many of these homeowners become frustrated and foul tempered homeowners, in the face of home drainage tension, a contractors who opt to install a sump pump in the crawl space, once the groundwater problem becomes intolerable, rather than install the more comprehensive, and usually slightly more expensive, hand excavated french drain system, to actually solve the groundwater problem from the outside.

Sump pumps do not prevent groundwater from entering the crawlspace, and are therefore not a home drainage solution. Sump pumps are just a bandaid marketed with a “guarantee”, that is not worth a cent. I just completed another hand excavated french drain system for homeowners who are in that very position. They spent over $5,000. on failed home drainage sump pumps, before finding my company.

Homeowners forget, or ignore, the fact that if they do not collect the groundwater on the outside of the foundation first, reducing the groundwater saturation and hydrostatic pressure caused by hard rains, the sump pump will always be pumping, just like the sump pump installer said it always would. He has likely told you the b.s. story of underground rivers and springs under your home, and how you are always destined to suffer from groundwater entry into your crawl space. Get it? This is home drainage catch 22 kind of.

A self fulfilling prediction that makes that sump pump guy look good, until you realize his “guarantee”, is worthless, and his method does not prevent the groundwater from flooding your crawl space, and still leaving you with a home drainage problem to solve. Maybe not until the homeowners sell the home, however. That is most typical. Wrong decision.

Sump pump guys love the word “guarantee.” They actually are giving homeowners a bait and switch type of deal. Read the language, or lack of it, within the sump pump guarantee.

The pump will work alright, until the electricity goes out in a storm, or the sump pump clogs or burns out. Back to square one for the homeowners.

Beware of companies offering home drainage guarantees that sump pumps will work. They mean just that. If the old one burns out, they will put in a new one.

Big deal. Nero fiddles, as Rome burns. That is no guarantee. Their guarantee does not say that you will never get groundwater saturation into your crawl space again. It just says that they will always bring you a new sump pump if the old one burns out.

Since most sump pumps last for years and years, this is a bait and switch proposition, disguised as a guarantee. Get it? Even insurance companies will not give you a guarantee for groundwater damage, because they can’t determine all the origin variables, or the quality of, or lack of home drainage systems installed previously, or the quality of previously installed home drainage attempts, that may have made the situation worse. Homeowners may want the moon, when it comes to guarantees, but an old proverb fits here: “He who wants it badly, gets it badly”. Do your homework. You cannot enforce a guarantee that is written to beat you.

Insurance companies just exclude groundwater caused damage all together, most often. Unless you have flood insurance, you are s.o.l.

A reputable home drainage contractor lives on the reputation of the business. The basis for the companys success is through documented referral lists of former customers, that have asked to be on the list, and that are delighted with the results of their hand excavated french drains.

Homeowners don’t need to fall for some tricky worded, fast talking sump pump salesman and his b.s. guarantee.

Almost all home drainage problems are caused by groundwater that is created by heavy rains. There are many other causes of home drainage problems as well however. Some are produced by neighbors, some are caused by broken city water lines and sewer installations.

Most home drainage problems have been made worse by the homeowners themselves, in their attempt to save money. This costs homeowners tons of money every year around the United States. This is not a good way to save money. I suggest stop buying lottery tickets if you want a guaranteed offer to save money.

A reputable home drainage contractor has a strong track record, and also is licensed, bonded, and insured in their area of the world. Your choice of home drainage contractor should be a referred professional contractor/mason. This type of contractor can solve your home drainage groundwater problems, by understanding the use of slopes, or lack of slope, and the way groundwater perks back into the earth. Green home drainage science.

Insist on architect planning and engineering for home drainage, by paying attention to the aspects I have discussed above. Many times it is too late to change grade level. When the foundation is poured, you are stuck with it that way. Sometimes it is too late to un-ring that home drainage bell, once the foundation, siding, foundation vents and windows are set at a particular grade and the concrete has been poured.

Plumb the rain drain discharges properly, and vent them at a grade of a least 2″ per 10 lineal feet, in solid pipe, installed on the bottom of your hand excavated french drain aqua duct. Install them on the bottom of your hand excavated french drains, in solid pipe, and pay attention to city requirements for foundation footing drains too, realizing they will never be needed if your hand excavated french drains at the surface levels of the foundation are installed and engineered properly, in conjunction with a increased grade compacted splash block that I have discussed above, as well.

Read about foundation footing drain installation and everything you need to know about home drainage, at aaahomedrainage.com

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/260/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/390 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/390#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:11:14 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/390 Underground rivers and springs under your home? Not very likely. This is such a common statement however, that is over and over again thrown at homeowners by sump pump installers.

You know that old story. I am sure you have heard it many times.

Neighborhoods with no professional home drainage systems installed, such a hand excavated french drains, are often the best misinformation tools the sump pump installer has, because he has the seeds of that story already planted in those homeowners who just sump pump forever, knowing that the underground spring or river is forever. That is just not true.

What a load of horse pucky. My spell checker loved that word, pucky. It is still is beeping. Never the less, it fits the moment.

You know the old story. The one about underground rivers and springs under your home, which is, in conjuction with that statement, a segue right into the sump pump installers requirement to excavate the crawl space, install a sump pump somewhere, and basically run wild on your property for a little while, making away with your cash in the end.

All at a cost that provides absolutely minimum to zero home drainage help in nearly all cases. Sump pumps do not prevent groundwater from running below grade in crawl spaces or basements.

The homeowners belief in this story has been the sump pump installers go to bread basket and anxiety producing tool, used to worm money from misinformed and fearful homeowners confronted during a home sale with the fact that the home has a drainage problem.

Cities and counties do not often drop the ball and allow building in flood zones or zones with underground springs near the surface. They do not miss low areas.

All professional home drainage students and contractors who didn’t miss class know that the springs and underground rivers story is just a bunch of bunk.

It is the most common statement I hear from homeowners however, next to the fact that they contend that the water table is high, which is another misunderstood concept.

Ask the sump pump guy, why, if there are underground rivers and springs under your home, like he says, and a permanent source of groundwater under your home has likely existed under your home from day one, like he says, right under your home; and the groundwater problem is not a hard rain caused problem that should be dealt with on the outside of the home, and not right against the foundation wall either; if this is true, why are those springs and rivers not running in the summer, or any other time other than winter when everything is already saturated from rain water on the surface and groundwater has not been removed from the foundation area with hand excavated french drains.

No groundwater removal on the surface levels of the ground around the foundation equals saturation, equals hydrostatic pressure, equals groundwater entry below grade into the crawl space or basement.

The reality of the discovery of home drainage problems almost always has nothing to do with stories of underground rivers and springs.

Subdivisions are platted after consulting U.S. Geological survey maps, geo-tech studies, on site evaluations, permit approvals which contain drainage and geo-technical data as part of the feasibility study and the developers list of conditions of approval for the subdivision, and other siting information that determines the non-buildable status of a parcel of residential zoned land.

Seldom do subdivisions escape the permit process due diligence. Lots with steep topography and low groundwater areas are given common area status within the subdivision and are not platted as buildable lots.

Your land may have developed a true spring after the home was built, perhaps years later, but even a true spring, by definition, is fed in quantity by rains, and totally controlled in volume by the rain amount and intensity.

Seldom are any springs actually year round. When they are year round clean springs, they are worth lots of money, just to bottle these days for drinking water.

So are those trickles of water in your crawl space or basement actually springs? If I cut off the source of groundwater feeding them from above, with hand excavated french drains, will the springs just dry up? Yes they will.

The percentage of home drainage problems that still require the sump pumping of groundwater is very small, after grade enhancement and compacting at the foundation and after the professional installation of hand excavated french drains has been completed.

When installing hand excavated french drains during the winters worst saturation, be patient looking for fast complete results. You cannot just turn off the groundwater like it was on a switch once the ground is saturated. The groundwater removal begins right away.

The results are noticed days to weeks later, due to groundwater saturation and a smaller degree of hydrostatic pressure that still remains along the foundation, until a summers warmth has dried the homes foundation area and crawl areas, and a new winter seasons rains can be vented away rather than let saturate next to the foundation.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/390/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.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/298/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/333 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/333#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:20:08 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/333 Installing an interior hand excavated french drain is not going to keep groundwater out of the crawlspace or basement of your home.

No matter what line the sump pump installers give you about a guarantee, crawl space sump pump systems do not prevent groundwater from entering below grade, ever. Their guarantee is worthless. Their methods are deceptive. Their experience may be as little as absolute zero.

A sump pump installation should be used only after you have determined that either a hand excavated french drain and a compacted grade splash block of dirt and clay to enhance rain run off away from the foundation cannot be installed on the outside of the foundation wall to stop the groundwater entry.

There are many types of limitations to optimum home drainage success, with respect to the exterior of the homes construction or topography, that can prevent the installation of the correct solution. This additionally compounds things. Home drainage is often at the top of the made to fail list among all home improvements.

Installing an interior crawl space hand excavated french drain is not a very effective way to collect the groundwater, even if you need one, unless done in a specific way. Most often sump pump installations are simply a bad dream for the homeowners and the beginning of a financial nightmare as they find there way to AAA Home Drainage and hand excavated french drains.

Excavating long lengths of hand excavated french drains along the inside of the foundation wall is futile, they become long sloppy trenches without a grade, and without the ability to perform much at all. Oh sure, the sump pump goes on when the ditches fill up with standing groundwater. Big deal. Failure. The water is standing and only flowing out the end of the ditch when it has been saturating for days and is finally full of water. All that time before the sump pump goes off is damaging your homes foundation and air. That is a guarantee you can count on.

It sounds so good when some dude says his answer involves making a sump well and a trench around your crawl space foundation area. A big fat sloppy ditch is all you get. And a crawl space that will be wet until you remove the groundwater on the outside of the foundation eventually.

Some internet and television drainage pundits, as well as some builder and contractor internet sites, refer to their attempted interior crawl space french drains as trenches or ditches. A hand excavated french drain is not a ditch or a trench. Guaranteed no results is what homeowners get from these sump characters. Money lost.

These sump guy sloppy no grade ditches will not gravity flow water to a sump pump area at all. They do not even overflow fast enough to help remove the groundwater prior to the saturation of the crawl space floor.

The distances of your interior hand excavated french drains are limited to around 20 feet in length approximately. The hand excavated french drains should not be excavated deeper than around 12″ deep at the sump well, and around 8″ deep at the top of the interior crawlspace hand excavated french drain grade, in order to create a grade of 2″ per 10 lineal feet of grade, so the groundwater will flow quickly to the sump pump.

The interior crawlspace hand excavated crawlspace french drain is the same width as an exterior hand excavated french drain, 12″ wide.

Because of these logistical facts, the distance that can be covered in lineal feet for each collection line is limited when installing them to vent at a depth at the sump well of no more than around 12″ deep.

The proper way to design this type of system is to install a series of hand excavated french drains sloping from different directions to a center sump well, located in the deepest area where groundwater collects. A series of perhaps 2-3 french drains all venting through river rock and a perforated pipe to a sump pump well.

If the sump well containing the sump pump is around 18″-24″ wide and 18″ deep, and the shallow crawl space french drain enters the sump well area at a depth of 12″, this leaves 6″ of depth within the sump well in which the groundwater can build in height prior to the sump pump pumping it out. This installation has the 3″ perforated pipe installed in a hand excavated french drain aqua duct at approximately 8″ deep, sloping to 12″ deep. Get the picture?

To make it even a worse deal for the homes health, the sump pump is not designed to pump out all the groundwater at the bottom of the sump well. It either soaks back into the soil around the sump well, which is most common, or it evaporates into your crawl space over time.

The 2″ approximately of groundwater that remains within the sump well after the sump pump discharges what it can, is a good reason not to install one unless absolutely necessary in the first place. Groundwater just soaks back into the soil keeping dampness there all the time.

3″ flexible ads perforated pipe and 3/4″-1 1/2″ river rock should be installed with weed cloth in the same manner as is used for the exterior hand excavated french drain installation, as described in many articles within this blog.

Two 14″ o.d. concrete cylinders or larger, if you can get them into the crawl space, are installed within the sump well. The concrete tiles are stacked.

From my experience, this is your best option. Concrete cylinder installation only, rather than using plastic tanks or buckets, even worse, which do not function the correct way, and do not insulate for cold and sound. Plastic floats up and fails if not anchored.

Surround the cylinders with 3/4″-1 1/2″ river rock a few inches around the sump well cylinders and under them as well. By setting the tiles on top of a bed of rock, clean water is pumped through the system as the groundwater is cleaned as it runs through the river rock.

River rock is also used in interior crawlspace french drains just like exterior systems.

You are limited by engineering depth as well within the crawl space, and that in turn limits the amount of lineal feet your french drain can travel at a 2″ per 10 lineal foot grade, while also not being deeper than 12″ deep at the dry well.

Put a concrete top with some insulation over the cylinders to kill the noise of the sump pump. Try not to install these noisy sump pumps in the crawl space located right under your bedroom floor, if you want a good nights sleep in rainy weather.

Insulate the sump pump discharge, which is 1 1/2″ abs pipe, for added noise protection, and never use pvc pipe to discharge the sump pump. Sump pumps vent with abs pipe.

Do not vent the sump pump out a foundation vent allowing groundwater to simply soak next to the foundation again, effectively recycling the same groundwater over and over.

Beware of installing sump pumps into rain drain discharges that can overflow when the sump pump pressure kicks in. Usually, these sump pump discharges create pressure on the rain drain discharge system itself and over power it with pressure. The rain drain discharges overflow like fountains next to the foundation, unless the rain drain discharge system will take the pressure of the discharged sump pump, which sometimes they do, depending on age and how they were originally plumbed.

The best sump pump installations are vented well away from the home to a daylighted vent, or into a hand excavated dry well, were your exterior hand excavated french drains vent. Nice to do them both at the same time. Right? This is best done in conjunction with the installation of your hand excavated exterior french drain and dry well.

Again, I make the emphatic point that interior crawl space french drain installations will not stop the groundwater from entering your basement or crawl space. They will fail as your foundation footings keep sinking. They do not prevent trapping moisture, a problem in your crawl space, or prevent dryrot of posts and beams. Sump pump installations do not prevent other associated health problems related to groundwater entry from standing groundwater.

Unless prevented by obstacles or limitations of gravity and engineering, almost every time the home drainage groundwater solution in the end has everything to do with the installation of hand excavated french drains on the outside of the foundation to stop the groundwater from entering below grade in the first place. Often this can not be accomplished prior to a new drainage contractor deconstructing a formerly installed and failed groundwater solution attempt first, prior to often installing hand excavated french drains in the same area.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/333/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/162 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/162#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:05:12 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/162 Hand excavated french drains work to remove groundwater at the exterior foundation walls, prior to it saturating the foundation wall, producing groundwater leaking into crawl spaces and basements. Most often this looks like an easy diagnosis, and the sump pump industry is counting on you not being informed drainage educated homeowners. He needs you in this condition in order to attract you to buy into his underground rivers and springs theory/scam.

Hand excavated french drains are the first line of defense in the battle to keep groundwater out of the crawlspace or basement of your home.

A home drainage plan almost never starts with the sump pump installation. A sump pump installation is the last resort when a quality home drainage solution cannot be reasonably expected from the existing circumstances, which often includes former homeowner or contractor installed, failed home drainage solution attempts.

The amount of groundwater that can be collected on the outside of the home during hard rains dwarfs any interior crawlspace or basement groundwater collection system for results, as measured by volume of groundwater removed on the outside of the home that did not wind up in the crawl space.

Even in saturated foundation areas, the objective does not change.

The removal of groundwater around 18″ from the foundation wall, with a hand excavated french drain, that is engineered and installed at a downhill grade of approximately 2″ per 10 lineal feet of grade, is your objective for success. This is accomplished by the professional excavation of the bottom of the hand excavated french drain, and the overall topography of the area.

The subject property area may not be a good candidate for the installation of a french drain, due to the topography of the site, or other conditions, previously existing in all cases. Get professional home drainage contractor input when determining the engineering aspect required to make it all work together and take the groundwater down hill in your french drain before it can saturate and flood your crawl space or basement.

Sump pumps do what they do, but poorly, and always too late to keep a crawl space or basement dry.

Home groundwater drainage problems are always worked from the outside of the home first, and then to anything that exists afterward.

Hand excavated french drains, with a compacted splash block of dirt against the homes foundation, in order to raise the foundation grade, often will solve home drainage problems that have existed for decades, and were made worse as well by former homeowner attempts to solve the drainage problem.

Most often, the groundwater collected in hand excavated french drains, on the outside of the home, will shut down the sump pumps all together, forever.

Hand excavated french drain installation, in conjunction with raising the grade at the foundation with a compacted splash block of dirt and clay, should be the first methods undertaken to solve groundwater entry problems, in most cases.

Individual analysis is required, by professional eyes with experience in doing research into the origins and solutions of home drainage problems. Professional consultation is advised, for best results.

This drainage contractor advise should be free to you, in your area. Just look for someone that specializes in hand excavated french drains, and you probably have found someone at the top of the home drainage food chain, and someone who will understand and communicate to you all the options, if any.

You must collect the groundwater on the surface layers around the home first, approximately 8″-18″ from the foundation wall, in most cases, is the correct placement. Consult the home drainage professional in your area for free advice. Chances are their knowledge is free to you, as you learn where you sit with your home drainage problem and how it effects the value, health, and stability of your home. Groundwater from rain is typically held up in the top layers of the earth for many hours during and after hard rains in heavy clay type soils. This groundwater will easily be wicked to the sides of the hand excavated french drain from around 6-10 feet to each side of the system, prior to the groundwater saturating the foundation area and producing leaking. This dries out your foundation wall down to the footing by staving it of water over an extended period of time. The degree to which the exterior foundation wall area is saturated, combined with the potential variables that exist prior to the home drainage contractor coming along, that must be corrected first in order to install a system at all, all makes for uneasy footing for awhile, until the home drainage professional has time to actually figure out what has been done to the home in the past, and by whom, and when.

Sump pumps do a poor job of collecting the groundwater, whether outside or inside the home. They may even be vented improperly, causing further groundwater problems and foundation damage, as groundwater is actually, in many cases, being recycled by discharging groundwater over and over again. Pumping out groundwater from the sump pump, venting it right next to the exterior foundation wall, where it can again saturate and start the process over again. Cute huh? Stupid, is the correct posture.

When someone says that there is an underground spring or river, that is the cause of your home drainage problem, a little bell should go off in your head. If you can, run the other way, fast. Just kidding.

That is almost always the contractor who says he specializes in sump pump installs. The guy sells hard and needs to grab your concern button and push it hard. He wants you to believe his story.

The logic that the sump pump guy probably wants you to accept is really pretty simple. It is something like this: “since the sump pump is always pumping groundwater, always working, it should be evidence that the sump pump guy was right, that there is always underground rivers and springs producing groundwater below grade to pump.

Except the reality corker is that you are, many times, in addition to having no collection of the groundwater outside the foundation area, pumping the same groundwater over and over again, and discharging it next to the side of the home.

To make matters worse for the homeowners, many of these sump pump installers propose digging away the dirt next to the foundation wall, and lay a perforated pipe at the bottom of a deep ditch with little to no grade, sometimes with a mesh sock over the perforated pipe, which is actually supposed to be used in foundation footing drains only. This guy would call his installation a footing drain though. Read further in this web site if you want to know the distinction between what these guys call a footing drain, and what constitutes the proper installation procedures and materials to install one professionally, and not the way your permit department said was the best, either.

These guys replace the dirt against your foundation, that would have been hard compacted, and would have run rain water off it fast, to the inside of your hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system.

Stop adding groundwater weight to the top soil layers around your foundation.

Keep your gutters from overflowing.

Do not dig up the ground next to your foundation wall and expect that area, in heavy rains, not to become a sponge and eventually cause saturation of groundwater in that area.

Deep bark dusted areas, along the foundation, are also sponges that must be removed and replaced with a compacted splash block of dirt and clay, to speed up the groundwater removal process, in conjunction with hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems.

Cut off new groundwater at the surface levels, between 8″-18″ approximately, and your hydrostatic pressure and leaking will stop. It may take a few weeks to months for it to stop completely, if it is already at maximum leaking saturation levels. Crawl space floors may take the best part of a year to dry out in some cases. Better than never drying out. Which would be the case for the bottom of the sump well at best, and the entire area at worst, which is more typical.

Moisture barriers can be pulled back and fans put into the crawl spaces with the foundation vents open. Basement windows should be opened in summer, to vent moisture, as the basement dries out after being flooded. Remove and destroy all carpets, unless you have them professionally cleaned and dried. The dried part, is why you will fail if you try it yourself. Wall to wall carpet and pads are almost always toast. Chuck them, or grow mold, your choice.

Sump pump installation is quick and easy money for the lazy, “would be”, home drainage contractor. Don’t let that scam roll over on you, costing you additional money and perhaps ruining your chances of correcting the problem professionally. These characters come in many forms, some with new trucks. Snake oil salesmen all over again, with a new product. Sump pump installations.

There is a time and place for a sump pump installation, but not until the exterior hand excavated french drains are installed to shut off the groundwater to the affected areas below grade.

Subsurface groundwater may actually need pumping, but most often, what is thought to be below grade groundwater, and not collectable, is easily collected in the first day, with the installation of hand excavated french drains, resulting in the collection of all formerly leaking groundwater, within hours after installation, stopping the groundwater entry at that time completely.

Installing a sump pump prior to hand excavated french drains is like being the little dutch boy with his thumb in the dyke.

The groundwater just keeps coming. Lose your electricity to the sump pump when it is raining hard, and it’s all over for the little dutch boy, except the crying.

It is written right on your dollar bill, “caveat emptor”, let the buyer beware. This is America the beautiful folks, but most home drainage contractors are not well educated about home drainage. That is a proven fact.

Considering the amount of time and work it takes for a crew to install hand excavated french drains professionally, and leave the area in a clean finished way, this does not surprise me at all.

The installation of a sump pump will not keep the groundwater from coming in your basement or crawl space.

Sump pumps installed right near the exterior foundation wall just store groundwater on the bottom of the sump enclosure, and are always keeping that area wet. Never install a dry well or a sump well within 10 feet of your foundation stem wall.

If your home drainage system includes professionally installed hand excavated french drains, it is likely you will never need to install a sump pump, anywhere under or around your home.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/162/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/388 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/388#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:16:59 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/388 Sump pumps will not solve your home drainage problem. Sump pumps do not prevent groundwater from saturating and running below grade into crawl spaces. While many installers of sump pumps pitch a, “guarantee”, you can be sure that the guarantee extends only to the responsibility to keep a sump pump operating within your crawl space. As if the guy will be around when the doo doo hits the fan. Right!

When a homeowner is interviewing a drainage contractor, and looks ever so seriously at you and asks about if you give guarantees, when they know good and well that to do so, would also necessitate 5 pages of disclaimers, for everything from neighbors groundwater disposal claims, to city water systems, being required by my attorneys, were I to offer such a claim. Use your head there folks. Check for references of success. Don’t let a non-affecting, weak minded word like guarantee spin you out of your common sense fact finding.

Some homeowners, who, to their defense, know little about home drainage, and who are familiar with only with the term sump pump, wonder; if it is not the best method to solve the groundwater problem in question, why does this homeowner keep hearing about installing sump pumps from so many contractors?

Well folks, I have an answer for that one too. There are dozens of sump pump installers for every one home drainage professional, who probably at times, also installs sump wells and sump pumps, but knows that 95% of the time, the home drainage problem will be solved by stopping the groundwater entry.

The only definition of a successful method is one that prevents groundwater saturation and hydrostatic pressure on the foundation area, and success does not include installing a sump pump on your exterior foundation wall either. A method that prevents the groundwater from coming in the crawl space, period, is the measure of success in groundwater removal. Don’t give sump pumpers a minute to spin that weak logic on you, about the fatalistic nature of you as the poor homeowner, always having to have groundwater in the crawl space, supporting his contended need to pump.

Do not fall for the homeowner who says they already installed a french drain either. It most likely is not the truth. This is especially true where you still see evidence of groundwater entry in the area where the french drain was said to be installed.

If it was a professionally installed hand excavated french drain that was installed, the foundation area would not be leaking. If it doesn’t work, it isn’t a french drain, is it? It is a homeowner, bad contractor installed sloppy, groundwater saturating ditch, not a french drain. You still need a quality french drain, even in the face of this homeowners adamant assertions that their french drain works fine. Stand your ground home buyers. Don’t be bullied.

Sump pump installers are literally a dime a dozen, and worth even less, on the average, from my experience. They will use a multitude of different materials and will make a real mess out of a pre-existing home drainage problem. They are, many times, not even contractors. Check everyone certifications with the Oregon contractors board. These so called sump pump “specialists” are making serious cash, being jerks that know better, or who do not know better, and are additionally too lazy or ignorant to do the work the right way. The old fashioned way, with hand excavated and engineered french drains.

Homeowners everywhere suffer from home drainage scams surrounding the need for a sump pump, when all they need is to stop the groundwater, instead of playing into this sump pump dudes hand and having groundwater for life, just like he said you would. Prevent the groundwater from coming in so you never have to see this guy again.

Remember the underground springs and rivers statement. Well, that is the sump pump installers disclaimer against any liability what so ever, for any future groundwater problems. He has already told you that, and you did not attempt to contest it, so it is part of your deal with him, for life. He has told you that you are basically screwed, and that the sump pump is your only alternative, until the electricity goes out or the sump pump goes out, which likely floods your entire crawl space around a foot deep in groundwater, totally ruining your homes habitability. The average sump pump installers liability extends to keeping your sump pump running, when it would never have been needed if you didn’t let the groundwater saturate your foundation area. Your choice pilgrims. Caveat emptor American homeowners.

The truth is that most sump pump installations are huge money for the time spent. They are fast money for little work, done by unskilled labor many times, as well.

The work load is not even close, in comparison to hand excavated exterior french drain installation, where installers are actually, physically excavating aqua ducts and dry wells with an engineered grade, in sweltering heat and freezing cold winters alike. Moving 10 cubic yards of dirt, and then 10 cubic yards of river rock, perhaps even cutting and replacing sod over finished french drains for lawn drainage systems. Maybe even moving the rock or dirt up hill, in wheel barrows. Perhaps moving dirt out to a drop box on the street from a back yard handling the dirt many times. This is the work of hand excavation. It is not for those weak in spirit or body.

Let me hip you to the fact that very few are willing to work hard enough to do it right. Learn about this sump pump subject, or be the next victim, in time. Let common sense be your guide.

Would I, as a professional home drainage contractor, specializing in groundwater prevention, in a seriously affected home drainage market like Portland, Oregon, put that much importance on the method of hand excavated french drains as I do, and shoulder the additional laborious task of performing, and not just talking about, hand excavation, if it did not matter exponentially?

Sump pumps don’t even do an adequate job of groundwater removal once it is in the crawl space, never even pumping it all out of the sump well, making noise under bedroom floors, and leaving you worse off than you were before. Then there is the money you blew too.

The knowledge is out there. Right here, on this world wide recognized web site on home drainage solutions. You have found it. Use it.

Enter “hand excavated french drains” on google or yahoo to see our world wide page ranking on the subject of “hand excavated french drains”. Ask the sump pump installer for his web site, expounding the virtues of sump pumps.

Expect the same hard evidence of success from every one that proposes to install a sump pump, ripping you off.

The only time you install a sump pump is when all other alternatives for outside groundwater collection have been ruled out or used up with professional installation.

Download my e-books. They are free. There is not enough time in either of our lives to court a serve and volley mentality that wastes everyones time, taking trash and not having anything to back it up. Most sump pump guys only do one thing, install sump pumps. Many will have a pre-written contract that it is easy to see, deal only with sump pump installations.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/388/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/379 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/379#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:46:49 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/379 I was recently amused by an article on the internet by a contractor who advocates saw cutting your concrete basement floor and making a channel drain. These guys are really trouble. They are rip off guys most often with one thing in mind, every home gets a basement channel and a sump pump as well as a drilled foundation wall.

The author says that his sump pump installation method and channel cutting of the basement floor is much more effective at picking up the groundwater and sending it to the sump pump than exterior foundation hand excavated french drains are at preventing groundwater from coming in. What a laugh. This guy would be laughed out of the conference if he was among professionals. Yet the public buys into this guys b.s. on an every day basis. Ignorance of home drainage causes the loss of millions of dollars every year around the United States.

While this character, ops contractor, is pitching a sump pump installation by saying that exterior french drains fail where his systems do not, his logic is worse than thin, it is a lie.

Groundwater always comes in was the original assessment by the flim flam man, because of the underground river and the steelhead, remember? Well, just like he said, there is always groundwater to pump. Makes him look pretty smart huh? Wrong! it would be after his installation of the basement channels, bored foundation walls full of holes at the base of the foundation wall and always a wet smell to your basement that his logic seems solid if he has convinced you to abandon the logic of groundwater prevention instead of fatalism. He said there was always going to be groundwater and it was way below ground where french drains could not get it. Only he could get it right? These creeps are just plain stupid or they actually are selling that snake oil logic with the intention of ripping you off from the start. That’s my vote from my experience.

See your real estate transactions go smoothly. See your families health always super and free of mold and mildew caused respiratory problems.

Don’t be scammed by sump pump flim flam man stories that are most often outright lies. Only ignorant homeowners that are without home drainage logical fact finding abilities will be scammed by these folks. I venture that no one that completes my book will ever be scammed by a home drainage contractor wanna be. The educated homeowner will break that contractor bubba dude out in a sweat within minutes by asking him questions rapid fire one after the other while staying in control of the logical fact finding process and the truth. You can sort out the b.s. wanna be contractors easily. They stand out like they are wearing blaze orange. Their game is over when they sense your preparation.

The fact of the matter is that most of these types of sump pump pundits are rip off artists and should be avoided. They are quick to answer the phone call and get out to talk to the customer. They most often do no assessment from a conventional home drainage perspective but look for a place to easily install a channel drain and/or sump pump within the crawl space or basement. They realize if they are to float their scam that time is of the essence. They will need to get there quick, get bought into quick, and get out quick while they get the cash before someone real comes along.

Pure and simple, these suckers would rip off a 90 year old, and I have seen it happen.

These b.s. contractors do not understand the distinction between a hand excavated french drain and a machine dug ditch. Yet they use the example of the failure of some ditch referred to in the article as a french drain.

The character, ops. contractor gives notice of his ignorance in his article concerning the inadequacy of french drains, he does not discuss what his definition of a french drain really is except to let the pro in on what he thinks a french drain is by listening to the comments that installers can use gravel, road cloth, a trencher, etc. Obvious to the trained professional is the blatant weak logic of a rip off artist wanting a check at any cost.

The battle rages between these rip off sump pump artists. Long, long before any one of those sump pump characters even was around or whose fore-fathers who did not have electricity to power a sump pump some guy was figuring how to get sewage away from the village and drinking water to it with aquaducts. French drains were working for civilizations just like they still do from America to Africa.

A hand excavated aquaduct with an engineered grade is the beginning of a hand excavated french drain installation. If you start excavating around the perimeter walls and around the foundation spot footings within your crawl space, or cutting up your basement floor prior to stopping the groundwater from coming into the basement with hand excavated french drains you can expect negative results and more groundwater than before causing more damage than before.

]]> http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/379/feed 0 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/380 http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/380#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:55:29 +0000 DL http://aaahomedrainage.com/archives/380 Professional home drainage contractors will almost always give a prospective customer homeowner a free evaluation of their property to assess suspected home drainage problems. Protect yourself from the many types of home drainage flim flam man.

Watch out for anyone, presumably contractors, asking for up front fees no matter how probable it sounds. I advise homeowners to never pay for services up front with respect to initial home drainage evaluations. These guys, many of whom only install sump pumps, are about to state the obvious to an uninformed homeowner who just needs help and take off with their money without telling the homeowners anything of substance or providing a solution to the groundwater problem what so ever. Just more wasted time and precious money. What? Wasted money? Come on now people, this does not need to happen at all.

A desire to study and get in control of the fact finding and solution action priorities is a must for understanding any home drainage groundwater problem and for the homeowner or prospective purchaser to establish a basis for effecting a solution to the home drainage problem and to understand prior to that why it should or should not be used in that particular case and it’s chances for success given many variables present at times.

Avoid sump pump operators who preach that french drains are not the answer and sump pumps are. What a preposterous statement.

Many of these sump pump installer guys make alot of money while never solving one problem and are big rip off artists. They love to talk about just channeling some groundwater in a crude french drain to the side of your home and they say they will vent it into the rain drain discharge where your downspouts vent. This will clog your rain drain discharges and cost you more money and problems in the future while it will work marginally and silt in the drain as well as overflow next to the side of the foundation always keeping it wet, just what you don’t want.
The flim flam man many time damages the home from the inside of the crawl space up towards the inside of the home as they do there work, yeh work, in the crawl space, and as a matter of fact leave groundwater standing within the sump enclosure itself all the time as it never pumps it all out, promoting moisture and mold within the crawl space as well as a noisy pump going off under your bedroom floor just to add insult to injury.

The presence of some original groundwater is all this type of contractor needs to start the chain of deception by telling the homeowner that they are destined to always have groundwater below grade from springs or underground rivers. Yeh right. I’ll bet the steelhead are running hot down there too. These slicky boy contractor types just crack me up.

Stories of underground rivers and springs are as essential to this dudes audience captivation as the guy who is showing you the pictures he took of bigfoot somewhere in Oregon no less to substantiate his evidence for the existence of the big white guy. These contractor sump pump dudes are to be watched like a hawk from my experience. Trust them not.

There is a time and a place for the installation of a sump pump, in the right place and plumbed the correct way; and hand excavated french drains are not the default answer to all home drainage problems either.

Get the advice of a licensed, bonded and insured contractor in your area that specializes in home drainage and “green” groundwater removal methods, not a sump pump installer. Study this website and get up to speed to protect your money, home and health from home groundwater problems.

So expert, why don’t you just answer the question? Right? Bust these guys wide open and send them packing looking for easier prey. Don’t fall for the flim flam home drainage sump pump man. Empower yourself with experience and common sense fact finding abilities yourself and you will not have those sump pump characters hanging around for long.

So don’t pay up front, ask questions that show your preconceived opinions and home drainage knowledge level and put that dude on the defensive right out of the gate. Don’t even let him have one minute alone to get himself pumped. Start with your list of questions about his methods, your knowledge about french drains. Ask him how a sump pump installation will do any good for you the customer with a desire to stop the groundwater from entering below grade into your crawl space or basement, when in fact a sump pump will never stop any groundwater from coming into your crawl space. It is a last recourse and not at great one at that even when used well.

Even the sump pumps most commonly installed on the exterior of the home are to close to the foundation by code, 10 feet usually, and too deep to solve any problem. They look like they are pumpin groundwater from the lower level but they are just pumping surface groundwater that is being vented to recycle most often near their outside foundation sump well which literally recycles the groundwater. From the novice perspective this guy was right however you are always going to have groundwater, mostly thanks to him.

Read this web site often and target articles on home buyers checklists, buying a home without home drainage problems, and how to perform home buyers due diligence to protect yourself from buying a home with a groundwater home drainage problem. Learn how if you do want the home with a drainage problem you can solve the home groundwater problem, usually in the basement or crawl space, and close the escrow in a timely manner before you lose your home transaction. It is all in this website.

This applies to both sellers and buyers of real estate subject to home drainage problems, as well as all realtors, lenders and anyone dealing with understanding or being responsible for solving home drainage problems.

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