Whenever it rains the side of my house floods, it is a fairly new home and when building I asked the builder if not having French drains would be an issue and this is something that happened recently. How should I best fix it and should I add something along that whole path?
by princesscg1
5 Comments
You can dig a ditch and add drainage pipes to your down spout and run the pipe to the street or side walk away from the house. They sell everything at Lowe’s to do it. It’s a DIY job
New build has drainage problems? I’m shocked
Looks fine to me, few more good downpours and youve got yourself a place to hide a body – if the need arises.
Your builder definitely cut a corner here because that downspout is dumping hundreds of gallons of roof runoff right next to your foundation, which is basically asking for a flooded basement or slab movement. The absolute first thing you need to do is capture that water. You need to connect that downspout to a solid 4 inch PVC pipe (do not use that cheap black corrugated stuff that crushes and clogs) and bury it down the line to a pop up emitter at least 10 feet away or out to the street if you have the slope for it.
Since that space is narrow and the grass is already drowning I would honestly give up on trying to grow a lawn there. It is just going to be a muddy mess forever because it likely doesn’t get enough sun to dry out the clay. I recommend re-grading the dirt so it slopes away from the brick at a drop of about one inch per foot and then installing a river rock path or a decorative dry creek bed. That way the surface water flows over stone and into a drain rather than soaking into your footing.
Before you start hauling heavy bags of rock or digging trenches take a minute to run this photo through Agrio’s GardenDream web app. It acts like a safety net for DIY projects by letting you overlay different materials like river rock, gravel, or pavers onto your actual yard. It helps you see exactly where the hardscape should go to handle the flow so you don’t end up buying a pallet of stone that looks wrong or doesn’t solve the drainage issue.
Do you know what the two exposed pipes are?
A the very least fill the hole and put a splash block under the down spout,