Do I need a french Drain? Surface v subsurface water?

this is sha with Gate City we're on a job today and I want to talk about a couple of different opinions here and the first one is digging all the way down to the footer which this is a full basement and installing a foundation tile the other opinion is the one that I happen to have which is to keep the surface water on the surface and if you look here what what we have going on is the the land up here it just slopes right into the house and boom and then we have water going in the basement if you take a look at the gutters they're not in very good shape either but the guy just paid a bunch of money for gutter guard before he talked to me and so he doesn't want to replace the gutters even though they need to be replaced these are 2x3 downspouts which are too small for one thing the other thing we have going on is he had these corrugated pipes and didn't know where they went and so the water that was going into the gutters was getting injected in the ground here and it doesn't come out anywhere and so like I talk about a lot on this channel think about water accounting water in needs to equal water out and so what we're going to do today and and my contractor friend actually plugged me into this job because he was going to borrow my excavator he was going to dig this down put a put a foundation tile in and try to call it a day and I came over looked at it and said no no no we need to keep the surface water on the surface and so that's what we're going to do that's what my strategy is is keep the surface water on the surface divert it away from the foundation instead of sending the surface water that hits this all the way into the foundation hoping it gets in a pipe and then hoping it flows away but all that water is being directed towards the foundation so we're going to talk about that in this video today and we're also going to do this job here so I've got about a little over 55 tons of dirt here this is Clay This Is Not Top Soil it's got to have zero organic matter in it and this is going to pack really well it's going to shed the water away and that's going to be a big step in keeping the water shedding away from the foundation so that's what we're working on today this is an example of what I'm talking about with digging out the foundation and and then trying to apply a waterproofing sealant and creating a French drain at the bottom here near the footer and so I use this picture with the owner's permission but this is an example of the absolute worst thing you can do so take a look here what they've done here is first of all they've excavated all this clay and there's no subsurface water here now if you have subsurface water this may be something you want to do but the idea comes from the fact that during new construction you would put in a Foundation tile and that's to deal with any subsurface water and people have expanded and tried to apply that to surface water drainage problems and this is just this is absolutely the worst thing you can do the reason is you're trying to get all the water into the foundation and then you're just hoping that that waterproofing doesn't have a pinhole leak in it and so in this example the installer just completely did the absolute wrong thing in injecting the gutter water into this French drain Foundation tile system and so as soon as this pipe gets overwhelmed that gutter water is being injected into the ground right next to the foundation and this is the absolute worst thing you can do so my strategy is to keep the surface water on the surface and away from the foundation the strategy you're seeing here is to bring the water into the foundation and then hope you can get rid of it so look at that gutter right there he's got that gutter piped directly into the foundation so absolute worst thing you can do here and this is what a lot of waterproofing companies want to do instead of accounting for the water they just want to disappear into the foundation so take a look at this and let me know what you all think this is also way more intrusive and costly than just just diverting the surface water so there's an example for you all here's a job that we did a driveway and a drainage system and the Builder convinced the homeowner to dig out the foundation after we had installed our drainage system so let's take a look bunch of kitchen upgrades they got this walkway in here they did this retaining wall and let me show you they they kind of took over the drainage stuff that we were going to finish we were going to put a catch Basin in here but instead the Builder wanted to dig all the way down and put a dra a foundation tile in there and you all know that that's not how I like to do it my opinion is keep the surface water on the surface in a catch Bas in here and so their solution is to let all this water go into the ground to the foundation and then hopefully get into a pipe and flow out so it's just a difference of opinion I don't like doing it that way they also slope this this way which I tried really hard to slope everything that way with the the driveway the driveway is a big piece of this drainage solution so are the pipes here but they also took this grade down a little bit when they dug it out and so I would have liked to have seen it up higher but that's where it's at today so what we're going to do here these gutters are really not doing what they're supposed to and so all the water lands right here and if you notice there's no way for the water the W the land is just sloping right into here so we've got those three loads of dirt here we're just going to pack it like we normally do I'm going to pull the I think that's a holly stump out that actually think that's box wood but anyway we're going to catch this gutter come up with a riser up to at least here and then just take it around I'm going to pull this Holly and this guy I'm going to try to pull with my little Bobcat I forgot I actually forgot about this one so if it doesn't I may have to go get the big excavator and we're going to dump dirt across here just build it up so it slops away from the foundation we've got a gutter downspout here so again I want a pretty tall Riser on it and then just along that little that new wall and then just end it out here somewhere and he's going to do like a patio so we may be coming back to finish putting the pipe in but there's no sense in messing up with the pipe right now when he's going to be tearing it all up we're going to terminate between here and the wood somewhere around there yeah somewhere mhm top of the ground well if you want to maybe halfway in the ground or so if we can get any fall that'll work too okay go but you can see just how much this whole land is going into the foundation so Dawn and his crew built this wall here and we were kind of waiting for them to get that done before we could build it so one of the things we need to do is get these once we uh get the pipe in or before we need to get all these leaves blown off of here try to get some of this veg raked out of the way okay so that our dirt doesn't land on top of the organic matter okay and then pretty much same thing on the other side look we pretty much have the same thing on the other side where the land is just sloping right into it and so we're going to pull out these little shrubs and stuff and you can really see how much it's sloping it down right there and he doesn't know where these things come out so the first thing I told him to do is get these disconnected because that's just injecting water in the ground and he's got a basement and the Bas is has got water in it so same thing over here we're going to pour or put a little bit of dirt over here catch that gutter Bring It Around catch this gutter pipe it across here and you know you can be you shouldn't be digging anything around around here we should be fine to leave it up above the ground then again you want it about same as the other one yeah but maybe plans toing later yeah just just see what we can do and how it how it shakes out okay so basically that's catching two gutters per sign correct and we're just laying right on the ground yep okay all right so so do [Music] you I'm definitely going to have to bring my big exavator for that little guy but let's see if this small machine will get some of these other ones out of [Music] here anytime you're correcting the grade up against a house like this for drainage purposes it's extremely important to get the organic matter out of here and so any bushes or things like that yeah but we're really talking about the organic layer of the soil here so the O Horizon and the reason is because you want to get down to subsoil and the the new subsoil that you're installing there that will fuse with the existing subsoil and form a waterproof layer otherwise if you just dump the your new dirt on this organic matter there'll still be a layer there that water can flow through and flow along before I mess anything up over here I wanted to show you this this is just a deep hole right here and you can tell where the water just flows in there and go straight down see if I can get a j how deep that is so yeah definitely not shedding water away from the foundation and we're on a pretty good slope right here going down so there's no reason you should have problems here so we're going to fix all this today okay I still have to pull this organic matter out but the guys are getting going over here with this pipe there's not really any organic matter here this is just kind of been washing the whole time and so we're just going to go with that I also need to blow the leaves off of our dirt piles because we it's fall time right now and so the leaves are falling importantly what I got here is I got this organic matter pretty well scraped off of here there's 's a little bit here and there I'm not I'm not super super worried about it but I got the main part and of course the reason for that is organic matter holds moisture and organic matter leaves voids in the soil so I'll talk more about soil when we get back to the shop and so what I'm going to do now is start loading up this dirt now what happened here with the gutters the guy before he talked to me he just got totally ripped off on gutter guard he could have done the whole house twice in new gutters with my guy for what he paid for gutter guard and so I'm trying to get him to to get rid of these 2 x3s but he doesn't want to spend any more money on the gutters because he just spent a ton so we'll be ready for him if these gutters are continuing to overflow or not not flowing quite right the other thing I I really want to do since that is such a steep roof I want to add a down spot right here and so what I want to do is I want to pipe it do a St out right there just in case because that's a huge roof and a lot of water to try to get to stop and then flow horizontally so anyway this is pretty well ready to go as well there was a bunch of communication in here and old wires and 811 I guess you can't see the red line anymore cuz the leaves and I tore it up but power is right here power is right there so the line goes like right across here there should be some remnants of red around here somewhere but I don't see them but anyway got all these stumps torn out of here and so I'm not too worried about a few Roots here and there as long as the main part of the stump is gone and so Don and his crew got this wall up so that'll give us plenty of space to shed away build that up against the wall and then he had this wire here that was going to the building and that's been disconnected for a long time so I made pull that out for him but anyway it's coming along pretty well so far so I'm almost ready to start putting some dirt in here okay now what we need to do is we need to get this pipe beded before we start just dumping tons and tons and tons of dirt on it so I'm going to bring some dirt over here the guys are already getting started and then we're going to bed this really well and then we'll get started let me bring that pile closer to you sure [Music] okay I got this pipe really well beded so it's not going to move around now when we dump the dird on it so that's really really important that you don't get any bellies or anything in the pipe before you set it set all this dir on top of it so it's really well better now okay I think I'm ready to start got a camera set up right here so here we [Music] go [Music] oh [Music] about 68 in up in light yeah okay and if he ever wants to add it he can and it's you know you want the Stout same yep and we can put a plug in there too just for now PL or tap it over tape it over maybe we can plug like 20 bucks [Music] we're going to stub out right here for a future down spout if he ever needs it told the homeowner keep an eye on this make sure the water's not overflowing during the rain or you can look at the ground and see if there's a drip line to see evidence of it overflowing if he does have overflowing he may want to add a down spout here if he doesn't he he'll probably be okay just leaving it so either way me turn straight stubbing out right now is the way to go is straight up and down okay all right push that's [Music] it [Music] okay the guys got the pipe in and I'm going to start dumping some dirt on top of it and getting it beded and they are continuing around the side there so here we [Applause] go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you want a call right there [Applause] yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] all righty in today's adventures and draining with Gate City foundation and drainage we have a job where we have caught a series of gutters there is a gutter on that corner there is a gutter on this corner we laid the pipe out have it terminating out here we may at some point come back and move it out even further it depends on the homeowner they're going to be putting in a patio so depends on what that patio is going to end up looking like we have brought in and spread a good bit of dirt it is a very high clay content such that it is once you compact it going to keep the water basically rolling on down as long as there is a slope and there is definitely a slope don't know if you can see that but there is a good bit of slope both in this case toward me as we're going down the hill but also away from the house that way so that we can coax that water away from the house and away from the basement where the homeowner was having problems we again got this gutter we got this other gutter on the house I got to just finish compacting so that looks all nice for the homeowner there same thing for this area right here the idea we want to slip it away from the house high high clay content basically it's going to shed down and away and around the house you can see Ronald that work we basically put in a stub so that at a later point the homeowner could add a down spout uh from up there to catch the uh uh gutter on the front uh halfway instead of just at the corners we as we continue down we caught this gutter took it at an angle around the chimney we then came down angled back around so that we can make a nice tea connection so we could drop in that particular drain spout and we are ending roughly in the same local as on the other side and the idea again we are just ending here for the moment cuz we don't know what the patio will end up doing it is worth mentioning that in both cases I didn't show it on the other side we do always uh end terminate on a flat surface a flat heart surface in this case slate uh sometimes we use pavers it very much depends this still needs to be compacted but the idea is that once we're done with this side it'll look like the other side and any rain that hits will be sheeting down and away and away from the homeowner's basement and that's today's adventures in drainage thanks come [Music] again [Music] on this side especially and what I tried to do was I tried to give it about the same angle that we're falling this way so we're kind of following this way and this way at the same so it looks a lot more even so if you look at this I think it looks pretty good and the homeowner wants seed and straw on it on top of it so that's what we're doing for him I guess he's going to try to get these trees trimmed up a little bit get a little bit more light in here and get some grass growing and really if he can keep on top of the leaves I think that should be fine I'm going to be bringing my big excavator over to pull this out so I left myself a nice pile there to feather all this out whenever whenever that's finished so what do you all think about keeping the surface water on the surface as opposed to sending it into the foundation different differing opinions for sure so I guess I'll be back over here to pull that bigger stump out and for now we're getting our seed and fra on here and we'll be out of here shortly so I tried to build it out so this water is going to kind of swing out a little bit here and away from that foundation so it's looking pretty good [Music] [Music] it just stopped raining but talking to the homeowner everything's working really well so far he did have this line redone out to his little building here so I wanted to make sure we were done before he did all that there was that other line in there that we saw but wasn't hooked to anything it was just halfway buried so I don't know and then the homeowner got all this great gravel in here and also did this little pathway up to the front door so that's looking really good and this is all looking really good it just stopped raining but check it out there's our dry line you know I love to see that dry line so does the water flow down this hill pretty good I think it is okay that's good news I need to get me some some kind of boot go around it right here yeah they do make adapters I don't usually use them I think I got one on the piece of pipe somewhere here okay I'm not exactly sure I hope you all enjoyed this discussion of sending the idea of sending surface water into the foundation or the idea of of keeping it on the surface and diverting it away from the foundation so in this in this project we had a huge rain about a week and a half ago and there was no water at all in the basement so the homeowner was really really happy about that and this solution has worked very well keep in mind if you have really really sandy soils or if you dig down and you hit water and just uh subsurface water that then this solution may not work for you you may need to go with the Foundation tile style of drainage system and maybe even a pump in there but in our area we have pretty much clay subsoils so that we don't get a huge amount of infiltration of water into the ground just just based on rain and stuff most of that happens in lakes and other surface waters but keep keep that in mind that your area May differ but here where we have Clay you definitely don't want to send the water into the foundation like in those previous examples I showed you so let me know know what you all think about that and let me know what you all think it seems like all the waterproofers around here they all want to dig down and quote unquote waterproof the foundation and then put gravel up against the foundation and encourage water into the foundation I don't see it that way it's a personal opinion it seems to make more sense to me to divert the surface water to keep that surface water on the on the surface and to be able to see that surface water flowing away from the house through the pipe and so let me know what youall think about this discussion and this this style of video where I talk more about a technique and use a job to focus on that technique and exemplify it all right thanks for watching I'll see you on the next one thank you all again for watching and if you have found any value or entertainment in this video you know what to do there are also links in the description where you can support the channel thanks again and happy drainag

Channel: Gate City Foundation Drainage

Views: 55,764

Keywords: Greensboro drainage work, Greensboro drainage solution, backyard flooding problems, drainage problems, backyard drainage, mucking out drainage ditch, drainage ditch, gate city foundation drainage, French drain alternative, do I need a French drain, neighbors house flooding, water from neighbor flooding, Greensboro PVC Piping, PVC drainage pipe

Id: WTysy5tv320

Length: 30min 1sec (1801 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2024