In article ,
aemeijers says...


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. (

It's never been explained here that I've seen - exactly **why** is an exterior
perimeter drain preferable to an interior tile drain??

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? :^)

They do something like that - percolation tests. I heard from a neighbor my
house was on a lot with a marginal test.

Banty