Is PVC worth it? Crawlspace and Basement flooding, backgrading, and no fall

[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] this is Sean with Gate City Foundation drainage we're on a job today in Greensboro so let me show you what we've got going on here so we've got this house and the crawl space has been flooding and so they've already got a schedule 30. drainage system in here a pipe and so we did run some water the homeowner and I and this thing is Flowing it's just not flowing super well so one of the things we're going to do here is we're going to clean it out the other thing we have going on is we have a sump pump in the basement and they put this like I guess it's like a catch Basin right here and it's the water is supposed to come out of the sump pump and then go down in there and then flow the problem is this is bat grading right here so what we're going to do is we're going to take the pipe and take it directly into the schedule 30 right here somewhere the homeowners got this piece of corrugated so the sump pump like discharges out but we want to get it out to the street the homeowner has reported back that when it rains really really hard the water just like erupts out of this catch Basin right here and so I'm pretty sure it's backgrading when we ran the water in it to test it this filled up a little bit more and it did flow to the street but we're going to take this whole thing out of here and just put it straight glue it straight into our our pump so that should solve that problem and then before they put this corrugated on here the water was just getting pumped out and then going back in and getting pumped out again so it was just in a cycle so that'll solve all that and then in the back here let me show you what we've got going on [Music] so we have this patio that is it kind of floods on the Far Side over here this one here does flow so we're going to clean that one out but what we're going to do is we're going to add a pipe and catch this downspout and so the major issue we have here is there's really no good place to take the water to let's just take a look at the run from the corner here to the back there's really no good place to take this to and then there's another property right back behind the fence and so I don't know the grade often doesn't show up on the camera but I don't know if you all can see this or not but if we bury a pipe we're going to be four six inches in the ground and there's just no no way we can get that fall back if we go down so I think that run to the front is going to be the ticket and so I was out here a couple years ago when they were having some big problems and there just isn't a good place to take take the water too and so they were working on some other projects at that time and then we're we're back over here now after a couple years they're ready to do this project and so I think the best way to go here is to take this water in an above ground pipe we're gonna have to be above this dryer vent which is kind of annoying but that'll work to give us some fall across here and through the fence and I think we should have enough room to take it to the street out there the other thing that they had is there was a huge tree right there and so now that tree's gone that's going to give us a pretty good run to the front I'll meet you back around the front here okay around the front here we've got one and then two that doesn't really have a whole lot of roof that it's catching but since we're going to be right here with a pipe we're going to go ahead and catch that and then we're going to send it to the street and core the curb so we're gonna have to really really mind our fall here but I think we'll be able to get it so if I go out here and stand on the street you can kind of feel like you've got a little bit more fall here it's just it's going to be really really tricky though so that's what we're working on today I wanted to show you all all this mosquito habitat we're about to ruin Ed oh nice there it is I love it look at all that yep look at all that water still coming nice [Music] isn't it weird how it holds like that I know right and it keeps draining extra capacity for all of those uh mosquito larvae you want to raise yep it's great stuff great stuff for contributing to the environment yeah and you know it's you do that you give some of your blood maybe host a disease organism there you go you know good stuff plasmodium has rights too right yep like all life it tries to live all right all right I assume we're tossing that ultimately the corrugated yeah we'll probably I mean we can leave it here I guess but it don't matter to me she has no idea where this goes at the moment nowhere yep got it I'm gonna away from The Vinyl [Applause] foreign those kind of dull blades work well on this because it doesn't catch as hard there you go thank you sweating um foreign [Music] next thing actually all right go ahead you good yep all right if you want I can slide it a little bit right there yep wow get it relatively flat over here that's called a bunch of people bitching about the connection there oh that you don't have a square around that way you can do a clean out yep I've got one in the truck so maybe I'll talk about that okay over here on the fence I think we're going to go right above this 2x4 here so I'm gonna go ahead and get that cut this is a four and a half inch hole saw which is the exact outer diameter of our pipe here foreign a little bit too tight let me try to wallow it out a little bit before you no hang on oh okay okay all right yeah leave it there for now I think okay yep sweet all right come on that's it that's it that's it what good good all right we got this above ground pipe on here and it doesn't look great but we have achieved a ton of fall here and this this one gutter look at this thing it's coming up here and it's getting like well over half the house well over a quarter I'd say and so getting this gutter out of here and like completely taken care of was a big deal so even though this doesn't look great it's going to work really really well nope seen the water because I haven't tested enough that's just cracked you can see the water so it's not doing too well yeah so I don't know check out this connection that they did check out this connection that they did so it was definitely better than nothing but this corrugated pipe is holding a bunch of water in here [Music] and she said it just kind of like overflows right here so it's not helping anything so we're gonna get this all out of here before you do that you can actually see the sediment all accumulated and just so that everybody knows you can see the cobwebs so there's no way we've adjusted that oh wow if you can see all that yeah that thing is clogged nice nice all right over here in this landscaped bed we're going to stay high with our pipes because they can always come back in here and put some pine needles or whatever and hide the pipes but we've got to get some fall going here if this thing is going to work right [Music] all right so you see how on this side looking grinder there you see how this side is all brick that's there's nothing there's no content there so I would move it to where you have like maybe the edge here oh there you go so now you see that we still have some brick but now we have whatever else might be going on here I got you I got you it frames it a little bit better yep all right maybe not quite that much but that actually puts you in the center yeah just off center yeah okay but those are the kind of things I think about because a lot of times when I'm reviewing it I'm like man because like the sky will there'll be like this much sky and this much when I'm looking at and I'm like I should have yeah yeah so um sure I'll be honest for a second I thought you were talking to the audience when you said that about me oh yeah I was like that's why I was like oh he's talking to me well you never know yeah all right is that where you want it uh that looks tell me tell me is that the line I think so yeah let go I'm not talking okay yeah I think it's gonna I think that's it I think that's it sweet well does it need to come over a little I only ask because it's a short enough piece it's going to be stiff yeah I would here let me um yeah I need to go that way a little bit this way okay which means he's actually gonna need to go that way okay because that now puts it there which looks good okay but what about that side it's that side where you want it yeah okay so here's where we're burying it yep all right cool of course I moved this in the way all right we got our pipe laid out and marked so now we just need to trench it and we got to be real real careful here not to go too deep with the trench here because we've got to land over here we've got a fixed point foreign anytime we're going to be trenching near a ground up stump which in this case we went right across it I always bring the excavator and this six inch trenching bucket so the trencher wasn't really able to get through here so I'm hoping that I can get through here with the excavator in the the stump is not too too shallow below the surface so we're not there yet [Music] we are having a terrible time with this stump like we always do so Jeremy's been crushing it with the ax and we're gonna try this thing so we've had varying levels of success with the Sawzall blade and the pruning thing but let's give it a try it's not the Rocks it's the roots if it's not the roots it's the Rocks if it's not the rocks or the roots it's the roots and the Rocks yep all right springy too yeah so I'm hoping that that's pretty much [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] blades just do not work on roots and I got all the chains on now the chainsaw works really really well until you hit a rock and then it trashes the chain instantly so we did get a little bit cut out you want me to try hitting with the excavator oh yes got it done yet yeah couldn't afford that quality right there there's the bouncing uh-huh [Music] you want me to cut a little more that's low enough if not you're gonna have to whack it again all right all right Jeremy let's see how we did all right I don't know you hit it too damn low and then the water's going back on the side of the damn gutter yep oh my God look at that under the ground too and we got a full bubble yep how's the elephant's ass back there hey as long as it drains we're good all right I sucked it I was very interested in physical science in any math [Applause] now I need Mr Graves to teach me he was a Diddy's damn principle like 150 years ago this man was older than dirt but that could teach you math okay it was quite a struggle especially through here where this stump was ground out of here but we finally got our pipe in and we got it falling the way we want it it's falling really good we stayed above ground up here and it's pretty much flattening out and we barely have any fall through here and then once we get about right there it's going down again pretty good so sometimes all you need is barely okay we got everything in place got everything covered up and we should be in really good shape for this side of the house so I did want to talk a little bit about what we're doing here we're leaving this above ground because we needed to create some fall here because this property is so so flat and the other thing I wanted to mention is when you have a rectangular downspout going into a ground coupler you have a pretty big space right here and I like to leave that space because it lets me get a hose in there that lets me get a hose in there if I ever need it and actually let's let's demonstrate that real quick so take a look right there [Music] yep there it goes all right so if I ever need to access this pipe I can stick that hose in there there it is okay all right it came through there you go [Applause] [Music] okay the other way you can do this is you can use one of these adapters and I don't like these in these because it Seals Everything You can't fit anything in between there and so you may think it looks better and they make these in white as well to have it completely sealed but I won't install these adapters for that very reason so if you don't like the looks of this we can plant a bush or something in front of it the point is it's a lot more functional to be able to access the system if you need to [Music] oh over here at this sump pump discharge line I think what I want to do is I think I want to pipe it in to this right here and then have a clean out here that'll also vent it to I like that idea because this this run is so flat across here I like the idea of being able to access it and this is an inch and a quarter sump pump discharge line here so I've got an inch and a quarter to inch and a half bushing and that will take it to the standard inch and a half so that one bushing right there saved me okay I think that's gonna work [Applause] [Music] okay what I've done here is I piped this directly all glued all sealed into this pipe here and I've also given a clean out here been to clean out so I'll be able to access this system if I ever need to clean it out and this is already has been in place and working for a long time so I think I think it's doing okay but we're going to clean it out tomorrow it's getting kind of late today and I may actually use this clean out for tomorrow too so that is all now sealed together whatever they had going on before where this like dumped in the catch Basin and then hopefully it ran away is not going to happen anymore this also is sealed now so it shouldn't be backing up and overflowing like it was before all right we are all finished for today we did not get to getting the existing schedule 30 cleaned out so it's getting pretty late in the day so we're going to be back in the morning with our Jetter hose and our pressure washer I'm back out here it's the next day and I've got my pressure washer with my Jitter hose and I'm going to try to get this cleaned out so I already went in from the downspout over there and now I want to pull this clean out and get going from here too [Music] [Music] out here at the curb we do have a little bit of water coming through here so I'm hoping to get a better flow than that I got to come in from this side though because they used regular standard tees instead of sanitary tees so it's hard to get the sewer jetters the hose to get going the right to go the right way see this that's a standard T instead of a sanitary tea all right I've got my Jitter hose laid out here and it will definitely reach the entire length here from the street so I'm gonna go in from the street and see how we do I got pretty much that hole I think it's 75 feet in there foreign why would there be water here [Music] hmm okay I showed you yesterday these adapters and they don't let you access the system so let me show you what you have to do to get in there you have to go in through the top of the downspout so that's that's why I don't use those adapters you all think they look better I think they work a lot worse so that's why I don't use them so let me climb up this ladder here with a Jitter well that was a disaster I guess I'm gonna have to take apart this connector here not only do these awful adapters seal the system to where you can't get in it but they also represent an obstruction to debris flowing through there so let me see if I can find some footage from where they clog up really bad they're just a bad idea I know they look better but they're a bad idea just don't use them okay I just finished cleaning everything out and the water is Flowing really really well now but there is one troubling thing take a look over here there's a ton of water coming from somewhere right through here and I don't know if it's just my sprayer that's that's leaking or it seems like there's too much water here so I wonder if one of these connections is maybe leaking oh you know what look at that that connection is leaking right there that I wonder if that pipe is full right there that it's leaking out like that but that thing if she has any more problems The Next Step would be dig this up and take that thing apart all right we are finished with this job so we got these three gutters caught and the homeowners are going to do some kind of landscaping or something here to help hide the pipes and then in the back here we got an above ground pipe and since we didn't have any fall going across here we had to stay high to create some fall and so we're heading down to the street right there this existing schedule 30 system though something's going on here there's a there's a clog down here somewhere I would guess near where this tree was but this is probably the the first connection and that's the mechanical connection there and the water is leaking out of there so we have water coming up through here now I did get it flowing a little bit better but we'll have to see if if it's going to work or not because we may have to get into this pipe and replace part of it so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it I brought my sewer snake back out here to see if I could do anything with this pipe now there's a chance we could have to replace it but check out what just popped out of it so I ran the sewer snake through there and that water root just came out and so I'm hoping that that might be it [Music] I turned the water off and I don't like how it's still flowing so I'm not sure if there might be something else in there or what but that's what came out of it so it looks like there's still a constriction there somewhere so we might have to replace this pipe I'm back out here at this job it's been probably a couple months or so and we got some pretty good rain coming down and this thing is really flowing look at that so that's all water that was Landing in the back by the patio with nowhere to go and I wanted to check on the one that we cleaned out and see if that was flowing so that one's flowing pretty good too look at that and I guess the question we still have here is is this cleaned out enough that it's going to keep up so we may be at some point replacing that run of pipe but the homeowner and I are kind of keeping an eye on it so yeah that's been working really well I'm back out here where we did this drainage work and the homeowner had started filling this in here and I guess I didn't tell them that I could do this grading work so they ordered some compost and it's the wrong stuff so it rained the other day and if you notice the water just goes right through this stuff and so that's why you don't want to put organic matter up against the house you always want to put soil with a high clay content so I've got some soil here with me subsoil and I'm going to move all this back to the back I guess I just want to reposition it for later usage this is good stuff but this is more like topsoil the homeowners called me back shortly after we had finished the work over here and I guess it had just poured and they put some tarps over this and it just turned into a gigantic mess and I guess I didn't tell them that I could bring in soil I just talked about yeah the pipes are going to be above ground and you can put some dirt in over top of them and so I'll take the blame for not letting them know very clearly that I could have done this work and so they had this dirt brought in and I'm not sure who brought it in but it's basically topsoil it's it's high organic matter and whoever dumped this really should have known better and told the homeowner don't you don't want to do this but the guy came and dumped it anyway and so there wasn't really a good place to put the topsoil and so I ended up just piling it here on the driveway and they're going to do some raised beds I guess in the springtime but I did zip over there to get this all cleaned up and then I brought in some soil with a high clay content to get this grade correct against the house I wanted to show you really quickly I've got all the mulch dug out of here and we're pretty much down to subsoil now there may be a little bit of mulch left in there but the more you can get out the better the reason is this dirt if you place it on dirt here it will it'll eventually form a waterproof barrier if you just pile the dirt on the mulch there'll still be a a similar material there that water could travel along so it's really important to get this mulch out of here and get our soil with a high clay content in here [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] [Music] [Music] okay this is looking pretty good and this is a little bit extreme but they had water coming through right here under the crawl space and they've had like Rivers flowing across there so I really want to build this up and shed that water away from the foundation so let me hit a little bit more right here all right I pretty much got this where I want it I've got to come over here and cut this downspout off and so I left myself a little pile of dirt to fill that hole in and then I'm just going to run a pipe across here I don't think there's a huge amount of water coming from that one downspout right there so I guess we could potentially tie it in there but I don't think it's that much according to the homeowners so I've got to do this side over here but everything's really really wet and heavy and it's getting late in the day and so I thought about dumping the dirt and leaving it for the homeowner but I think I like this loading it with the or unloading it with the mini and not making a big pile somewhere so I hate to leave it like this but I kind of I'm trying to squeeze this in and get it done for them so yeah that's where I'm at I'm under the crawl space here in this house and look at this it looks like they painted all the joists and the flooring under here look at that I wonder if they knew there was moisture under here it's weird but I'm gonna go crawl around in here and see how it looks [Music] everything looks really good under here and so there is evidence of Muddy Water staining this plastic but she said it's only happened once on this side so it may be that front gutter backing up so we may need to replace that front schedule 30. [Music] all right [Music] I'm back out here to check on this it's been about four months I guess and I just talked to the homeowners and they said they haven't had any more problems out here and they got some of the Landscaping done so check out how nice that looks they had this other side I didn't get a chance to film it because I was hustling really hard to try to get it all done before the rains came and it was close to the holidays and all this and that so look at how good this looks now and then I did want to show you too there was a clean out here so I installed this little lid so there you can see it right there and so when I was digging out the organic debris in here I found that and so you gotta you gotta leave access for it so I had to run or actually the homeowners ran to the store and got that little Riser thingy so yeah this is looking really good and they said they haven't had any problems so there it is it just rained this morning and this is still flowing really well and the other one is flowing well too and so like I was talking about before we're keeping an eye on this one and if it stops flowing or whatever we may have to dig this up again and replace it but for now it's good so that's what matters this was definitely an interesting project and the main problem we had was achieving fall from the backyard there when I first went out there to look at the property there just wasn't a good place to take the water to we were we were talking about taking it to the back but that would mean that water would still be a problem either for the for the homeowner or for the neighbors and so fast forward a couple years they were they got some other stuff done at the house they were ready to get the drainage stuff done and they had taken out that tree in the front and so that changed everything and so that that meant that we could go to the front and when when I was talking with the homeowners I was telling them that we needed to go high in the back and have that above ground pipe as you saw and I said it's going to look bad and pretty much they said we don't care what it looks like if it solves the flooding problems then do it and so I've run into that before where if you think the pipe looks bad then you've never experienced flooding problems the homeowners love the way the pipe looks because they know that it's solving their problems and so like I say a lot on this channel looks looks can be mitigated so you you can't fake the results but you can fake the looks and so that's what we did there we we kept that pipe really high on the front and we packed in some dirt the homeowners went in there with some Mulch and some landscaping and made everything look really really good and so the main thing is that the pipes are working correctly and remember I consider the pipes installed correctly when I can text the homeowners back it's been four and a half months and say how's everything been going and they say everything's been fine and when I go back out there and during the rain and there's water flowing out of the pipes so that's when I consider the pipe installed correctly anything else looks wise we can fix that make it look better and so this was definitely an interesting one we're keeping an eye on the schedule 30 on the right side of the house to make sure that that's going to continue to flow the sump pump thing that thing hasn't even been coming on so that like that is just good to go now and so as long as that schedule 30 is still flowing okay then that should be fine like I mentioned the next step if that is clogged up or if it is backing up like it used to The Next Step would be to dig that schedule 30 up and just replace it with glued together joints so this was definitely a really cool project and the homeowners also scuba dive and you all know that I scuba dive and so I spent a lot of time out there talking about them or talking to them about scuba diving and places that we've gone so that was definitely a cool project and I hope you've enjoyed this project and thanks for watching I hope you all have enjoyed this video and you can support the channel you know what to do here I also have links in the description if you'd like to become a channel member give me a super thanks become a patreon or buy me a coffee thanks again for watching and I'll see you on the next one

Channel: Gate City Foundation Drainage

Views: 63,182

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: IDblo3MVRp0

Length: 51min 51sec (3111 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2023