Grading & Drainage with High Soil Lines

this is a action home inspection group bringing you another inspection moment through the eyes of the inspector today we're at a home in Fort Worth Texas this home is approximately thirty four years old and we're going to be discussing grading and drainage you can see here that the ground on the back side of the house is sloped towards the home this is called negative or poor site drainage ideally what we want to see is the finished grade or the ground always sloping down and away from the home now we don't expect all homes of this age or any homes of this age to meet current building standards but ideally what we want to look for is the ground sloping away from the home dropping at least six inches within the first ten feet again we don't expect ideal conditions but we do at least expect positive site drainage as illustrated here in this diagram one of the other deficiencies that we found or finding with this particular home as well as you can see that you have a high soil line high soil line meaning where the brick and the foundation mean you should have a minimum of four inches of clearance now again with a home of this age we're not expecting perfection but we do want to have some type of clearance between the brick veneer and the foundation the reason for this is to help prevent water intrusion within the wall cavities and also within the structure having a high soil line is also conducive condition to wood destroying insects like subterranean termites that we have in our area this will cause the lower seal plates within the wall cavity to become moist and damp which is an ideal condition for subterranean termites also it will prevent the detection of subterranean termites since you cannot see the dirt tubes going up the edges of the foundation you can also see here where we have the negative the poor site drainage towards the home on this side of the house as well add it to this negative condition you can see where the downspouts missing the lower turn spout with the high soil lines if you were to go into the garage right now you would be able to see that there's water stains on the baseboards of the garage indicating that we do have water intrusion in the garage because of this condition so as a home inspector all we would do is just recommend improving the negative site drainage and correcting the high soil lines to help prevent water intrusion within the structure and correct the conducive conditions the subterranean termites a action home inspection group has several more videos posted on our website that's at a - action calm a that little - sign action calm if you find these videos informative don't forget to rank them in post comments a action home inspection group is here when you need the correct answers to your inspection questions

Channel: Brian Murphy

Views: 192,677

Rating: 4.3076925 out of 5

Keywords: home inspection, poor drainage, home inspector, a-action home inspection group

Id: n1UTqt8UPic

Length: 3min 8sec (188 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2010