Unlike many of my prior posts, this one is going to be unusually short; there is only so much I can say about water diversion outside of a house! Remember: It is all about that slope!
During the home inspection it was mentioned several times that the yard was sloping toward the house and water would likely pool around the foundation causing mildew and dampness inside the basement. To this day I have not experienced said dampness, but I am not about to wait until it happens to fix it. To remedy this, all you have to do is add dirt.
As is common with MANY houses, the basement window sat at ground level and didn’t have a high enough well so it wasn’t possible to simply add dirt. I broke out the old brick well and installed a corrugated steel one that was 7″ taller. It was fastened to the house using stainless steel anchors, back filled with dirt, and then the whole side of the house was re-sloped toward the sidewalk using dirt from the back hillside. I plan to terrace the hill and put in a wall so there is plenty of dirt to go around. I will eventually have to do the same to the other side of the house, but that is for another day.
This last repair was more of a nuisance fix as it wasn’t causing any problems. When the gutter was installed they ran the pipe into the French drain. The downspout adapter wasn’t right below the gutter, so they had to hodge-podge together a bunch of adapters and angle the downspout so it would reach. It was also smashed into a rounded shape and jammed into the 3″ DWV pipe instead of using a proper gutter adapter. Again, there is nothing technically wrong with this, it is just ugly and got in the way. I extended the pipe and routed it along the side of the porch, then replaced the gutter and elbows so things looked nicer. Check the album below for more photos, but you get the idea!
