Drainage

[faultymechanics]

Got another question for you kind folks. I need some guidance.

Wife and I are preparing for our next big project which is to have drainage done. Our house has a very steep rake on the roof with no gutters(not an option in our climate and with our roof valleys).

Tons of rainwater is currently falling this spring but with cold ambient Temps, the ground has no more space to absorb the water thus we have a ton of water under our basement. When I turn on the radon system I can hear the fans vacuum sloshing the water (under the slab)around. Additionally we are just starting to get seepage marks around some of the settling cracks on the floor of the basement.

Our sump pump works but mainly just for the area around it. The plan is to do something about the water by implementing a french or foundation drain and some heavy regrading of our property.

We have gotten some eyewatering quotes and are trying to figure out what we really need.

How do we determine if we need to excavate 5-7ft to the foundation footing for a foundation drain, or do we just need to go 2ft down and do a french Drain?

The price difference is quite large, around 5-7k so we want to be fiscally responsible. That being said, we would hate to do a french Drain, find out it didn't do the job and have to redo the entire thing going down 7ft this time.

Thoughts?

 

[Corey]

Going to be hard to say without a full overview of the situation...something the pros could help with. But, IMHO, there are two main sources of water - surface water and ground water. As examples:

For surface water, certainly having no gutters sounds like it is going to put a lot of surface water down right at the foundation. I would think some possible ways to deal with that would be: You say gutters are out, but any chance to install something like a rain handler or other method to disperse the water further out from the house? If you are grading, can you put down any sort of clay pan to make a semi or non permeable layer and grade away from the house? Or as you say, possibly the shallow french drains would help here.

Ground water is a bit of a different story. As an example, years ago, my neighbors decided to 'water the foundation' by leaving their garden hose going. They forgot and later that night and through the next day, my sump pump started running. The water went down around their foundation, hit the clay pan we all sit on and started moving laterally until it came over my way. So the short moral of that story is that even though I keep my gutters in good shape, my water situation is strongly reliant on the ground water situation and that depends on various locations all around me. Since I can't control those, I'm mainly stuck in a 'deal with it' situation. You'd have to look closely at your overall layout and determine if there is any other locations where you are getting the deep ground water. If so, all the shallow drains and sloping around the house won't help. You'd need to eliminate the source (if possible) or deal with it by pumping (and typically back-up pumping) so you don't flood if the primary fails.

Good luck - likely a very complex situation!