Going underground

HawkinsHollow · Thursday at 8:15 AM

MossRoad said:
Our first house had a nice, dry basement, but if it rained really hard, the back block wall would weep in a few joints. I found the yard was graded towards the house. So I dug down along the outside block wall a few feet deep, spread waterproofing product on the blocks, stuck heavy plastic to the wall and made a U-shaped pocket with the plastic. I laid in some crushed stone, a perforated pipe in a sock, and angled it down towards the end and then 90'd away from the house out into the yard. Backfilled with crushed stone, and added an 8x8 as edging between the rock and lawn. Then I sank a couple perforated 55 gallon drums at the end of the pipe out in the yard and filled with gravel and put a sock over it. Poor man's dry well. Finally, I graded the lawn away from the 8x8 to form a natural dip that went around the house, so any water that would run towards the back of the house would run around it and out to the front. Anything that hit the side of the house would go down into the crushed rock and out to the dry well. Never had a drop of water in that basement again.

Well done!! My house has a less than ideal drainage pattern as the front yard slopes towards the house. I made the issue even more dire by adding 25' more house right into the natural drainage path. It was lots of extra work but I think my drainage remediation has been a success. Historically, after lots of heavy rain our small basement used to get water in it. Since the addition and subsequent new drainage not a drop in the basement after an EXTREMELY wet late spring. Need to do a few finishing touches on the system this summer as soon as things dry up, but after watching it all spring I feel it has been a successful endeavor. It is always scary to deal with water because it is hard to keep it from doing it's thing. But with planning one can bend it to his will.

MossRoad · Thursday at 10:26 AM

HawkinsHollow said:
Well done!! My house has a less than ideal drainage pattern as the front yard slopes towards the house. I made the issue even more dire by adding 25' more house right into the natural drainage path. It was lots of extra work but I think my drainage remediation has been a success. Historically, after lots of heavy rain our small basement used to get water in it. Since the addition and subsequent new drainage not a drop in the basement after an EXTREMELY wet late spring. Need to do a few finishing touches on the system this summer as soon as things dry up, but after watching it all spring I feel it has been a successful endeavor. It is always scary to deal with water because it is hard to keep it from doing it's thing. But with planning one can bend it to his will.

My father bought some acreage with a partner and they developed a small 17 parcel subdivision. My dad's lot was downhill from half the neighborhood. Our yard was large and had lot of ivy beds running across it. As kids, we'd be running through the yard chasing a ball or whatever, and if we ran through an ivy bed, we'd trip in a shallow ditch. After many years of this, I asked dad why all the ivy beds were sunken like that? He said drainage. If you looked closely, the beds were designed to channel any surface water around the house and down hidden drains that emptied into the lake about 90' below our house.

They were about 8' wide and 6-10" deep. You'd never notice them for anything but the ivy and flower beds. Hidden protection.