On May 26, 10:01 am, "DanG" wrote:
I fight these issues every day. People want to beautify. They
dig along the foundation, put in pretty bushes and/or flower beds.
Add a decorative border of landscape timber, garden wall block, or
custom cast curb and fill up the area with wood chips. Add a
soaker hose or sprinkler head or, worst of all, heavily water the
wonderful new planting areas. It is often easier to do a raised
bed with the timbers that will raise the new surface above the
weep holes in the brick work.

Gee, I wonder why my basement leaks????

If your home is slab on grade you can get away with this as long
as the finish surface is below the weep holes in the brick work or
at least 6 inches below any siding or finish.

If your home is crawl space, you can try it but be very cautious
and monitor the situation. If you are flooding or raising the
humidity in the crawl, I would do away with the plantings.

If you have a full basement, I would avoid foundation plantings
like the plague. Modify the thought if basement has been water
PROOFED (not damp proofed) with drainage plane material and
appropriate subsurface drainage. If you have all this, you may be
hard pressed to give the bushes enough water as the water will go
subsurface rapidly.



A house without any foundation landscaping isn't going to look very
attractive. And as long as you grade the area where there are
plantings properly, there is no reason why you can't have some bushes,
shrubs, flowers near the house. You just have to use common sense
and not create a negative grade, block the flow of water, etc. Very
easy to do right. Every house I've lived in has had foundation
plantings, with no basement water issues.











_______________________
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)


"DaveR" wrote in message

...



On Thu, 24 May 2007 23:33:23 -0500, "DanG"
wrote:

I don't have my code books here. I've not ever had residential
codes. BOCA would be unusual for residential. CABO sounds more
familiar. Our current code book is IBC, and I thought most
areas
had adopted it.

My memory banks for commercial work remember 1/2 per foot for
the
first 10 unless paved.

For any basement situation I would expect it (1/2 per foot)as an
absolute minimum, and pavement at 1/4 per foot. No planting
beds,
sod only, no trees for at least 10 feet.

Why sod only? I was thinking planting bushes might suck up more
water?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -