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aemeijers

wrote:
On Mar 30, 10:16�pm, "John" wrote:
"aemeijers" wrote in message

...

(snip)

had to remove all the sidewalks and steps
that suurrounded a good bit of the home. then regraded entire yard,
installed new downspout drains going to street and daylight, replaced
entire yard........

If it hadnt been DIY it would of likely cost 20 grand...........

guess what?

Well the water no longer bothered the walls but still came up thru
floor with every heavy rain........

had interior french drain installed, that fixed it finally............

conclusions exterior work costs a fortune and may not be
effective........

the costs for backhoe, gravel, dump truck to haul away excess dirt the
gravel replaced, rebuilding lawn, tons of hard labor,new sidewalks and
steps, well it all looked nice and gave the home curp appeal, we sold
it some years later.

but the interior drain worked better and only cost 3 grand.

sometimes water table actually rises and all that exterior work is a
grand waste of time and money/

smart builders install interior french drains in new homes, today its
frequently a building code requirement

Builders in your area still offer basements? They have mostly vanished
around here. (I think it is stupid, but that seems to be the way
'standard practice' is heading.)

2 different problems- surface water saturating the topsoil and coming
through wall, and high groundwater levels. A lot with high groundwater
really shouldn't have a basement, but if a basement is considered a
'must have', and lot can't be resculpted accordingly, yes, interior
drainage may be the only way to go. I remember a McMansion on north side
of Indianapolis I worked on in early 70s- no other house in the sub had
a basement. Thus guy absolutely insisted on one. The hole kept filling
with water. We finally put in exterior and interior perimeter tiles, an
X of tiles across middle of slab, a 5 foot deep 30 inch sump pit to
collect it all, with an overflow tied to an exterior sump pit (really a
precast manhole) in front yard, that could be used to pump from in an
extended flood situation.

I still say water should be redirected or stopped outside the basement
perimeter. If that can't be done without heroic measures, well, maybe
that was a bad place to put a house/basement. (Not all lots support
basements, and not all lots are buildable.) Making interior french
drains code-required strikes me as giving designers, civil engineers,
and builders, an easy out. It may be a solution for an existing house
where you didn't know beforehand (My sister's house had them added
before they bought it), but in new construction, it screams 'cheap
shortcut'. Gotta do the homework before you build a house, including
test holes and having an engineer do a site survey, at least for the
first houses in the sub. And, of course, the lot has to be graded right.
I see sub after sub with lots as flat as dinner plates, or yards that
slope all the way to the foundation.

Maybe code should require leaving the hole open for at least one
rainstorm plus 48 hours, to see what the seepage patterns are, before
you do the foundations? :^)

Having said all that, I'm glad it worked out for you.

--
aem sends...