Q&A / 

Water Drainage Tips


DEAR MARION: While I don't have accurate statistics to support my feelings, I suspect you're in a vast majority of homeowners who have varying degrees of poor drainage issues on their land or near their homes. You're correct in assuming that ponding water is not a good thing for houses.

This standing water next to the building is unacceptable. It can cause many different problems. There are several ways to solve the problem. Photo Credit: Tim Carter


My college degree was in geology. I gravitated to two disciplines within geology: geomorphology and hydrogeology. Geomorph, as we students affectionately called it, is the study of the Earth's surface features. Hydrogeology is the study of ground or subsurface water, or at least that's what we focused on the three years I was a geology student.


What does all this have to do with the water at and around your home? Simple. If you could look at a topographic map of your lot before it was developed, and in many locations these old maps are available, you'd see that your lot was shaped differently than it is now.



To provide great drainage around your home, you should always have the ground slope away from your home. The building code used to require that the ground should have 6 inches of fall in the first 10 feet of horizontal run away from your home. That can be confusing to some.



Surface water is but one challenge around your home. You also need to deal with subsurface water that flows through the soil towards your foundation and crawlspace walls. You can capture and divert this subsurface water by digging a narrow trench in the center of the artificial channel around your home.



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3 Responses to Water Drainage Tips

  1. Useing the perforated. pipes do you put the holes on the bottom or top. In a heated discussion about this I say holes on top need an expert to get an answer.

    • You're wrong. Holes on the bottom. Your way the water has to build up nearly FOUR inches to get into the pipe! Plus, rounded gravel can easily CHOKE / CLOG the holes when the trench is backfilled.

  2. Dear Tim; Thank you for your. Quick response and I will have to admit to my husband those awful dreaded words, I was wrong, I sure do hate to eat crow lol again thanks. I definitely will use your website again.

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