| Keeping your home dry.
Unwanted water is the big enemy of your home.
Excess water around the house can cause heaving of patios and walk ways. Water that seeps in through foundation walls can cause mould on the interior.
There are several ways to get rid of unwanted water but the most effective is surface drainage; get the water to flow away from your house before it has a chance to soak into the ground.
During a heavy rainstorm (without lightning), grab an umbrella and go outside. Walk around your house and look around at the roof and property. A rainstorm is the perfect time to look at how the roof, downspouts and grading are performing. Observe the drainage patterns of your entire property. The ground around your house should slope away from all sides. Downspouts, surface gutters and drains should be directing water away from the foundation.
MONITOR THE FOLLOWING:
Poor drainage.
The ground should slope away from window wells and outside basement stairs etc.
Window wells and stair wells have to drain to a storm water drainage system or discharge at a lower grade or into a sump pit that collects and discharges the water away from the building.
Sometimes grading problems can be solved by adding fill to the low areas.
The dotted line in the illustration represents where the grade should be.
Filling in this low spot still leaves the grade below the siding.
How much slope should there be on your lot? There are numbers available but instead of trying to memorize numbers, consider this; If the area directly around your home is paved, just enough slope to allow water to flow is adequate. If the area is not paved but is lawn ar garden, a clear slope should be visible without having to measure it.  If after looking, you are not sure if there is slope, there likely isn't enough slope. If the high area is higher than the top of the foundation, that area may have to be cut back. The second illustration shows this scenario.
Sometimes my home inspection clients are surprised when I stress the importance of lot grading.
When we moved into our present home, the basement was reported to be a wet basement. All I did to correct the problem was correct the grading around the house; the sump pump hasn't ran for about 4 years now. That is a much better way to correct the problem than dig up all around the house to install a drain.
Hillside. Where a building is situated on a hillside, it is more difficult to slope the ground away from the building on all sides. On the high ground side of the building, the slope of the ground toward the building could be interrupted by a surface drainage system (a swale) that directs the rainwater to the lower areas.
(Catch basins are a possibility if you don't have enough room on your property for a swale but installing catchbasins etc can be a costly job.)
PLANTERS
Check the planting beds adjacent to the foundations. Planters are often installed in a way that traps water. The structure around the planting beds acts like a dam and traps water. Flower planters should never be installed in contact with the siding.
Puddles are not good. The ground surface beneath decks and porches etc. should be checked. It should not have any low-lying areas, but should be sloped so that water will not collect and puddle there. Settled backfill allows water to collect next to the foundation wall and seep into the basement.
Downspouts need adjustment. Water from the roof reaches the ground through gutters and downspouts or by flowing directly off roof edges. Downspouts should be extended so they discharge six feet or so away from the foundation.
The force of water leaving a downspout is sometimes great enough to damage the adjacent ground, so some protection at grade such as a splash block or a paved drainage chute may be needed.
Sump pump should not recycle. When a sump pump is used to keep a building interior dry, the discharge should be away from the building and should not add to the subsurface water condition the sump pump is meant to control.
Retaining walls. If possible, weep holes and related drains should be looked at following a heavy rain to make sure they are working properly. If they are not discharging water, the drains should be cleaned out and observed again in the next rain.
Retaining walls made from railroad ties or something similar, will usually drain adequately through joints etc.
If you have any suggestions or requests for next month's topic, please let me know. I will do my best to accommodate requests like that. |
