Grading, Gutters, & Downspouts: A homeowner's guide to minimizing water issues

Gravity. It's more than just a sci-fi flick in which Sandra Bullock and George Clooney float around space for a while. It's what causes rain to fall and when that rain falls, it doesn't just sit on the surface of the ground for long. It slowly continues to work its way downward, into the soil. The more water that builds up in the soil, the more pressure that it puts on your basement walls and foundation. Eventually water finds its way in through cracks and gaps and, all of a sudden, your finished basement has a built-in pond.  

Grrrrr

Rain will fall. Snow will melt. These things are unavoidable, but for most of us, the name of the game is minimizing the water that builds up near the home and reducing that pressure to healthy, less-threatening levels. There are three easy ways that we can avoid unnecessary water around our basements and crawl spaces.  

Grading

Grading is the process of shaping and sloping the earth's surface away from the home, diverting the water in a healthy direction as much as possible. This works best with a dense material like clay that doesn't absorb water as quickly and easily. Mulch or sand are less efficient for grading because water flows right through them. One final consideration would be to keep the top of the soil about 4 inches down from siding to help avoid damage from termites.   

Clean Gutters

When gutters get clogged and water no longer moves freely through them, precipitation begins to spill over the edges along the perimeter of the home. You might as well not have gutters at that point. Gutter cleaning should be done at least once a year, if not more, dependent upon the potential that the home has for build-up from surrounding foilage. Many hardware stores have a variety of screening products to help eliminate leaves and twigs from making their way into the gutters.

Downspouts

When my wife and I were searching for our first home, we viewed a foreclosure in Lansing, MI. Upon entering the door, the smell of mold immediately hit us. When we viewed the basement, the first thing we noticed was that large amounts of water had been entering through the basement walls at the back corners of the home. The cause was easy to deduce. The lawn care company that was maintaining the yard for the several months that it was vacant had removed downspout extensions to make mowing easier. Since the home was vacant, they felt it was not necessary to replace the extensions after each mowing and instead left them laying on the ground alongside the house. As it rained, water puddled at the corner of the basement and eventually found its way in. As much as possible, downspouts extensions should be used to direct water several feet away from the home's foundation to avoid this. Ayers has products like our RainChute to help navigate water away from the home. As an added bonus to the lawn care company, they're recessed into the ground for easy mowing. It’s the best of both worlds. Our Lawnscape Outlet blends into your yard and works great on the end of buried extensions to facilitate water runoff with little to no grading required. They're also easy to mow around.

These aren't difficult concepts for most homeowners to implement on their own. It is important to understand that while these principles will not prevent water seepage in a basement altogether, they could help to delay or minimize issues dramatically. Call us if you would like to give the RainChute or LawnScape outlet a go on your downspouts or sump pump discharge line.