Two houses next to each other. Front yards extend about 100 feet from houses toward street. The ground “peaks” in the middle. In other words, the 50 feet closest to the houses slopes gently toward the house. The 50 feet closest to the street slopes quite a bit toward the street.
I’ve always understood you want the ground to slope away from the house for drainage reasons. I get it, but at the same time it doesn’t make sense. Rain around here usually soaks into the ground as it comes down, so sloping the ground is not going to make the rain drain away from the house. I would agree that in a huge downpour, where the rain builds up (puddles) on the ground, then having the ground slope away from the house would be good. But a rain like that doesn’t happen around here (Ok, maybe it does once every several years).
I’m going to be installing sprinklers and redoing lawns/landscaping, this so would be a chance to fix the slope, but it would really be more work than I want to get into. I can’t build up the ground, I would have to cut down the high part. It’s hard to explain what would be involved (one aspect is that the dirt is near the brick/foundation line), just take my word for it, it would be a lot of work to get the 50′ closest to the house to slope away. In 40 years, the basements have stayed dry as long as the drain tile sump pump doesn’t go out.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
Replies
How much slope to the street are we talking about?
A french drain could help catch excess water and drain to the street.
if high enough, you could even dig down and make the perimeter drain gravity feed below the hill.
either way could help the sump pump situation.
Create a trench along the front of house, line with loose bricks to keep dirt out of trench. At one end the water should be taken to street by drainage pipe slopping to street. Should be 8" deeper than top of slab or mudsill.
This sounds very workable. Thanks for the idea.