[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house coming up on today's show. We're gonna be talking about water in the basement water in the crawlspace. How do you stop that? How do you make it go away? You have to bring in a company and spend $30,000. No, we've got some tips and tricks to help you keep that basement or crawlspace, very dry and how to keep that water that's outside from coming in.

[00:00:28] Eric Goranson: Maybe you got that backyard. It's mushy marshy. Maybe that flat patio is getting underwater. We can fix that to all in today's show. Now make sure you follow us at around the house online.com or be around the house show on all our social media platforms.

[00:00:46] Intro: When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home.

[00:00:48] Intro: There is a lot to know that we've got you covered. This is around the house.

[00:00:55] Eric Goranson: Welcome to around the house with Eric G. This is where we talk about home improvement [00:01:00] and everything about your home every single week. Thanks for joining us today. Hey, if you need to catch us up on social media, you can find us just about anywhere.

[00:01:09] Eric Goranson: Look for around the house show on Facebook or Instagram or around the house with Eric G. And then if you're over on Facebook, we have our own closed group called around the house. And you can find a, a group over there where you can discuss projects, get some advice. And, uh, you'll probably even see some HGTV, DIY network stars over there helping you through that project.

[00:01:32] Eric Goranson: So it's something you'd wanna miss. And we did it in a closed group. So you could well have a safe place to do it with all the trolls and all those guys commenting in there and jumping in. It's a nice, easy place to do some home improvement, which is a lot of fun. Well, today I really wanted to dive into a big subject now that we're coming into.

[00:01:50] Eric Goranson: So many people it's kind of rainy season, we're getting storms, you know, all that stuff that's been shown up on the news even, uh, California was getting a bunch of water this last [00:02:00] week and they needed it. So I wanted to talk about controlling water around your home. Now this just isn't, uh, you know, keeping the, the storm drains clean out in the street.

[00:02:09] Eric Goranson: This is really about what are the main causes of getting water in that basement or crawl space, or even just having that mucky yard that you can't. So first off, when we're talking about controlling water, let's talk about your basement or crawlspace. The number one thing when I'm looking at a house and I see that they've got some, you know, water or moisture issues, it's mostly, and I'll say about 60% of the time in my experience, it's the gutter and downspout system or lack thereof.

[00:02:43] Eric Goranson: now, if you think about it, if you have a gutter system that's up there and it goes down the downspouts and it drops right next to the foundation, maybe it's kicking it out a couple feet, but you know, it's a very typical system that you see out there. Now that system is putting every time you get an inch [00:03:00] rain, you could get 50 to a hundred gallons of water dropped right there at that single point.

[00:03:06] Eric Goranson: So what's that do that puts a point load of all that water next to the foundation it's seeping down. It's trying to find that crack pinhole joint and what happens, you get moisture and water in. So the first thing I want you to do is to make sure you have gutters and downspouts. And then when those go down, they need to go into a storm drain system, storm drain system.

[00:03:27] Eric Goranson: I'm not just talking about, you know, going out to the street and hooking into that storm drain system. I'm talking about going into like three inch abs PV. Or a polypipe that's gonna get this water away from the home and it needs to go at least 10 feet. Why is that? Well, if you think about water, it's like an upside down cone.

[00:03:49] Eric Goranson: When that water hits that point, each foot that it goes down, it gets wider and wider and wider. Well at 10 feet away, you're away from that basement enough that the [00:04:00] edge of the cone is usually not anywhere near that. So you're within a couple. And it gives you that chance, but you also wanna make sure that that 10 feet is downhill from the point that it's coming.

[00:04:12] Eric Goranson: Right. Cuz you don't want it to wash back into the house again. So by doing that and you can do this as a DIY project. What I've done is I'll go in there, dig a tranch and I'll use, you know, abs as a very inexpensive and easy used product. You can drop that into that cutter, into. Elbow over. And then you wanna have that drained correctly where you've got some slope.

[00:04:35] Eric Goranson: So the water runs away from that point and it'll just go down and it can just run out and you can either go into a, a dry, well, or even if it goes down far enough, I've done 'em into, uh, you know, like a popup situation. They make these really cool popups where when there's water pressure behind it, it spring pushes up this, uh, drain.

[00:04:56] Eric Goranson: So the water can go out onto your. Or when it's, you [00:05:00] know, there's no water pressure there, it sets back down. So you can mow over the top fit or you can put a dry well in, and there's a couple different ways to do it. If you do a dry, well, there's a, a procedure with that. You kind of need to do some figuring how much dry well you need.

[00:05:12] Eric Goranson: But a dry well is really where you're just bit, you know, Get in that big hole and you're filling it up with rock. You're gonna put some fabric down in that and sometimes you use, uh, they do make some really good canisters to keep the dirt from coming in on that for creating your own dry well. So that's its own little show that we're not gonna get into, but put a good size dry.

[00:05:33] Eric Goranson: Well, in that way, the water has a place to go and soak back down into the earth. So that's one way to do it. The other way is, is you could actually keep it going underground. So you make it hard. 10 feet out, and then you continue out and you can create your own little drain field. So then after that 10 feet, you transition over into a perforated pipe.

[00:05:55] Eric Goranson: That's got little holes around the outside, and then you'll set that in gravel [00:06:00] in rock. So that way the water has a place to leave that pipe. And so as soon as it hits that it'll, you know, go into the ground and you can return that rainwater back into the soil and, you know, go out of another, you know, 20 or 30 feet.

[00:06:14] Eric Goranson: And you've got a really good drain field there. That's not a bad way to go. And that way you're returning that water back and you don't have to control it on the surface. So that's one thing to do. Now, another thing that you gotta be careful with that though, is you wanna make sure if you've already got a, a clay swampy yard that might not be the best place to put it.

[00:06:33] Eric Goranson: Now, I, in the past with people's homes, I have rented out closer to the front of their house when they're up on a higher. And let it kind of surface drain down towards the road and into the storm drain system. There here's the problem with that. It can work really well, but it could be against building code in your area.

[00:06:54] Eric Goranson: So I don't want you to put this whole system in and then turn around and look at it. Go, uh, oh, I got a nastygram [00:07:00] from the city saying I have water running into the street. They don't like that. So it's something you gotta take into account. Maybe it's okay. In your. Maybe it's not. So it's something to consider.

[00:07:12] Eric Goranson: The other thing is if you're in an area that freezes a lot, you can have rain and the water's washing now across maybe a sidewalk to get to the street. Now you can always have a wet and icy area right there, and you don't wanna do that to your neighbors or anybody walking on that sidewalk, cuz that's also a liability for you.

[00:07:31] Eric Goranson: If somebody gets hurt, that could be its own. So something to consider, but really controlling that water, getting it away from the house. That's the first thing that I tell people to work on. If they have a water or moisture issue in the basement, because that's really controlling that point load. Now, one of the things I don't like is storing that, and you could do little rain barrels, but you gotta watch it.

[00:07:55] Eric Goranson: Cuz if you get an inch of rain, you could put, like I said, you could put a hundred [00:08:00] to, you know, 75. 50, depending on how many downspouts you have gallons of water into that? Well, I have seen plenty of foundation damage by people sitting there putting in a two or 3, 4, 500 gallon tank right up against the house.

[00:08:17] Eric Goranson: All of a sudden you're putting that load right there and you've cracked your foundation wall. And now you've got a chance of that actually busting through the foundation wall and any in the basement when it's full. You don't wanna do that. So be very conscientious about what you do, and if you're gonna put in a water system like that, you're gonna store it, get with your structural engineer to make sure that you create the right footing, the right pad to spread that out.

[00:08:43] Eric Goranson: And you put it far enough away that you don't hurt that foundation. Especially if you've got an older home, you get into the homes in many places across the country. If you're built before the 1930s, there's probably not rebar in that wall. So it's just. So it's much more likely to crack and much [00:09:00] more likely to damage by putting that load on there.

[00:09:02] Eric Goranson: So I've seen a lot of damage by that. And then the last thing is, is when we're dealing with these gutters and downspouts in many areas, it's illegal to drop that into your sewer system. Depending on your area, that would be against the loss. So don't go drop that into, you know, that clean out or something like that.

[00:09:20] Eric Goranson: That can be its own issue. And if you do well, make sure that people know that it's legal or it's not legal. Just watch that guys. I don't wanna see anybody get in trouble with that, even though it can overload the system. And if enough people do it, it happens in Portland here all the time, because they originally have the storm drains hooked into the sewer system.

[00:09:39] Eric Goranson: And then when it rain. It overflows into the river and nobody wants that. All right. We come back. We're gonna talk about cracks in the foundation and leaking just as soon as around the house returned,

[00:09:48] Intro: be loud, be so hot.

[00:09:55] Intro: So, Hey,

[00:09:58] Eric Goranson: this is Jayden Luke. I am a [00:10:00] singer songwriter from Washington state, and I'm going to be on this coming season of the. So make sure to watch it on NBC as the season premiers Monday, September 19th at 8:00 PM Pacific time. I'll see you then. And thank you so much for the

[00:10:14] Intro: support. Anything you like, cause I'm never going love.

[00:10:21] Intro: Welcome

[00:10:22] Eric Goranson: back to around in the house with Eric G your home improvement source every single week. Thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate you turning into the show. Now, if you wanna see more about around the house or if it's a brand new station or it's a brand new podcast for you. Make sure you can check us out at, around the house online.com.

[00:10:40] Eric Goranson: You'll see a bunch of stuff about the show there as well as we've got a lot of information over there, including a contact us page. So you can get ahold of me. If you've got questions or even a show topic, we'd love to hear you. And if you're listening to us on the podcast, make sure that you click the subscribe or follow button on your podcast player.

[00:10:59] Eric Goranson: That way you [00:11:00] get the stuff during the middle of the week that doesn't show up on the radio show like our midweek special, or when things happen out there in the world that we need to bring up, we'll throw one up there as well. So you don't wanna miss that midweek content. Now, today I've been talking about water and controlling water around your house.

[00:11:18] Eric Goranson: So it doesn't damage it. You know, we talked in the last segment about controlling water into the basement, making sure the gutters and down spouts are dialed in this one here. I want to talk about a big. Cracks in the foundation that are leaking, it could be a foundation crack. It could be even where the water line comes through the wall.

[00:11:36] Eric Goranson: Uh, you know, where it's coming in from the street and it's leaking around there or sewer line, something like that in the past, people would get in there with like a vinyl, concrete patch and they'd. Get the put knife and put it on. Or if they really wanted to work with it, they would get in with hydraulic cement and they would patch that up.

[00:11:54] Eric Goranson: And now the hydraulic cement actually expands when it goes in. So it tends to push out and, you know, [00:12:00] block a hole pretty well, but there's a better product now that completely outdo hydraulic cement. And this is really cool. So if you've got a crack or something like that, this is what you do. And I'll tell you about the product as we go here, but let's go through the process, cuz this is a urethane that actually goes in and it actually is like a foam.

[00:12:22] Eric Goranson: Here's how it works. So if you've got a crack, that's leaking your foundation, you go through and clean that crack out really well. Get all the loose stuff out dirt, you know, clean it up nicely. Don't worry about it getting too big. I mean, if it's getting really big, we don't wanna do anything bad there to it, but you just wanna get it cleaned up in the loose stuff out of there.

[00:12:43] Eric Goranson: So once, once you've got that, then you go through with a product called cemental. It is an ultra high strength, concrete patching compound. So you mix it up almost like to the consistency that you can make, like peanut butter, where you could almost make like a softball out of it. [00:13:00] So you wanna be able to have it formed and then you're gonna wet that wall.

[00:13:03] Eric Goranson: So it doesn't suck that out and, uh, you know, follow the directions on the bag. Of course, I've also seen people use a bonding agent on it as well, but basically you're going to go in and push that into the crack and get that fairly tred smooth. Right. You're gonna get it all detailed out and get that smooth.

[00:13:22] Eric Goranson: And so what you do at that point, As you buy this kit. Um, I get 'em either through, um, geez. One of the great companies is rhino carbon fiber. They're a great one. You can over there, get it from there. And, uh, they have a bunch of retailers that sell it as well. But what you're gonna do now is you're gonna drill into this concrete where the, where the crack was.

[00:13:45] Eric Goranson: So you're gonna drill into that and you're gonna put in a little port, you can pump in this urethane. So this stuff goes in kind of like, well, warm honey. If I was gonna describe the product, it goes in like warm honey. Then you're like, how is that [00:14:00] gonna patch up this wall? Well, here's what it does when you inject that stuff in, it goes in the wall.

[00:14:07] Eric Goranson: As soon as it hits moisture on the backside, it foams up. And that's the cool part of this. Once it foams up, it is its own waterproof compound. So it goes behind the wall, like warm honey hits moisture, and then foams up like urethane, kinda like a polyurethane glue, one of those urethane glues. So it foams up and fills the void back there with a waterproof area.

[00:14:33] Eric Goranson: Now, depending on the kit you get, sometimes you'll have these little glue on, uh, ports as well. There's a couple different ways. They do it. Some drill in some glue in. Depending on what you're doing, then you can go through, inject that in there, and then once you're done, you let it set up and then you can go back and, uh, take off those ports, grind them off, cut them off depending on the kit you buy.

[00:14:57] Eric Goranson: And then you can just patch it up where those little holes are. [00:15:00] Then you've got a crack. That looks pretty good. And then on top of that, you've got something that's waterproof. So it's a really foolproof method. I've rarely. Rarely seen that fail in any situation with it. As long as you've done that process correctly, you've now waterproof it permanently and it's actually done it from the backside, which is really cool.

[00:15:19] Eric Goranson: So you don't have to worry about it pushing the, the patch off the wall or the hydraulic cement not working correctly. It's just a really clean way to do it. Now, if this is a big crack, this would be the time that you wanna look at something like carbon fiber or a crack lock to tie those pieces back together, you know?

[00:15:36] Eric Goranson: And so that's where you wanna probably it's a little crack, not a big deal. You can fix that easily. If it's a bigger crack, maybe get that structural engineer to come in and take a look and make sure that you don't have more, that you have to do, but don't be scared because what you can do with that is you can actually come in with carbon fiber strips and tie that back together in many cases and not have to replace that foundation.

[00:15:56] Eric Goranson: So there's a lot of great things you can do with that. And, um, you know, if it's [00:16:00] really, really bad, you can go in there with steel and put some steel supports in there, or, uh, even in horrible situations where it's really failing, I've gone in there and poured a new interior. Concrete wall. And that actually will hold you, leave the old one in there, put the new one in, and that's a lot less expensive than jacking up the house.

[00:16:20] Eric Goranson: You really don't have to Jack houses up anymore, uh, and have to move 'em. There's so many different ways to repair it without having to do that. If you get into that bad foundation. So that works really well on cracks. Now, there is a place that this doesn't work as well, because it's just such a huge area.

[00:16:39] Eric Goranson: And that is the cold joint between your basement slab, right. And the concrete wall, you know, right where that floor hits the outside wall. Because those were poured at two different times, that wall was poured and the footing was poured. And then they came in and did the floor later. So that's a dry, concrete joint right there.

[00:16:56] Eric Goranson: So that joint is a natural place. When you have a high water [00:17:00] table for water to come up through there. And there's really not much of a fix to that without having to get into a big project. And that big project will dive into in the next segment here, because that's an important one. And it's something that can be a lot for a homeowner.

[00:17:14] Eric Goranson: I've seen companies charge way too much money for 'em and there's some systems out there that I'm not a really big fan of. So we'll talk about that in a minute, but that water coming through that crack, you are really gonna start seeing some water through there. And if that's starting to happen, I have seen some big problems where water is moving so much into the basement through there because of that crack.

[00:17:37] Eric Goranson: Or that cold joint that it's starting to move mud and dirt through there. So now you're undermining that foundation. And so now you're taking that loose soil and stuff that was around the foundation and you're undermining it. So it's washing out underneath that and that could be its own big structural problem.

[00:17:52] Eric Goranson: You gotta really, I I'll tell you a horror story next segment about that because it is a hot mess. So there's a [00:18:00] lot of cool technology to do with that. You know, that you can use to actually fix this and make it. So that's a key right there. Now, one other thing too, and we're gonna talk about sum pumps in all this, but one key.

[00:18:12] Eric Goranson: If you've got that existing sum pump down there, this is just a little side note. If you've got that sum pump and that sum pump is just dropping the water right back outside. It's like what I talked about in segment one, if that's not dropping that water out 10 feet away from the house, you probably have a, a circular pump there.

[00:18:29] Eric Goranson: It's like a fountain you're pumping it. Water's coming back down through the soil. And so you're just wasting energy and circling. Around and back through, and that's gonna cost you a bunch of money round. The house will be right back after these IOR messages.

[00:18:43] Intro: Don't go away.[00:19:00]

[00:19:08] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the round, the house, show yours one stop shop for home improvement stuff all week long. Thanks for joining us. Well, we've been talking about today, just dialing. Water control around your house. That's that water that's trying to get into the basement, crawl space, maybe flood in the backyard and all those different things, because we're getting into that time of year in fall, where this can really happen, you know, in some places, the United States or other countries, what we've got listening, this might be the dry season, but for many of us, this is getting into the damper seasons where we tend to get a little more water.

[00:19:40] Eric Goranson: So this is how we control it. Now here's the thing we were talking about kind of teasing ahead. This last segment about the. Water getting into the basement. How do you control it? When it's trying to come up around the perimeter between that wall and foundation? Now here's the thing. This is where this gets to be a project.

[00:19:58] Eric Goranson: What I like to see if you've got [00:20:00] that under control, you've already got your gutters done and you're still getting water coming through there from a, a high water table. There's really only one good way to fix it. And that's to do a below grade French drain. That's gonna collect the water below the slab, drop it into a sum pump so you can pump it out into another space and get that water outta there.

[00:20:23] Eric Goranson: But of course, you've got a concrete floor in the basement and this can be a trouble. Now there's different ways of doing this. There's a system out there that is a franchise that goes across the country. If you're calling up and getting quotes and it's this gutter trough system, and what it does is it goes around the perimeter of the house in the basement.

[00:20:44] Eric Goranson: And what it's do, what it does is it's meant to catch water coming through the foundation wall on the side. And also collect water below grade and it puts it into this trough gutter and goes back to the sum pump [00:21:00] these plastic troughs. I don't like for a couple reasons. First off when you have that trough system around the, the foundation, you now have a weak spot because if you think about it, that foundation wall has got soil pushing in from all sides, right.

[00:21:17] Eric Goranson: It's trying to push in to the middle of the house. That's just what it's naturally trying to do. Well, when you put a plastic trough around the perimeter of the floor system, now you don't have that same compressive. That, that floor, which is poured in there to kind of hold it all together and lock it in.

[00:21:35] Eric Goranson: You've got a four inch trough or five inch trough there. That's now a weak point. So I don't like that. Now, second of all, this is where the bigger problem is. And I physically saw this in a house that I was at, and it was probably the worst situation that I've seen in a long time. This was a 1920s house that had a spring out in the yard that was pumping water, basically down [00:22:00] into the basement.

[00:22:01] Eric Goranson: And so seven years before I had been out there, they had gone in and put in one of those trough systems around the. To control the water. Well, here's what happened. And this was horrible. They had, the guy had called because he was on his like fifth or sixth, uh, sump pump because he kept basically pumping dirt through it and grinding up the pump, cuz it's not meant to pump that much dirt.

[00:22:27] Eric Goranson: Where was that dirt coming from? Underneath the foundation. So I got out there and I could see there was a void underneath the foundation wall, which is holding the house. So I got my inspection camera out. I've got one of those cool, uh, inspection cameras, the Milwaukee ones, where you can put the little sneak down and look underneath there.

[00:22:47] Eric Goranson: The entire perimeter of the house, there had been so much water coming in that it actually had washed out about eight to 12 inches of soil underneath the bottom of the [00:23:00] foundation. So the only thing holding the perimeter of this house up. Was the tension of the concrete wall and the soil outside. So this house literally on the perimeter, a little earthquake, maybe some wet soil all the way down that would just make it loose enough.

[00:23:19] Eric Goranson: That house could've literally sunk eight inches. And then the bigger problem would've been is the front is the middle of the house, had posts on the middle, holding it up. So you would've had the walls. Moved down eight inches, which would've pushed up the center of the floor, eight inches. It would've completely destroyed that house.

[00:23:38] Eric Goranson: And that was because the water was taking the soil and washing an array. It was just washing it away, underneath, and he had a big problem there. So that system to me had caused that. And so I, I actually just told the guy, I'm like, Hey, look, um, this is so bad. I don't even want to touch this. You need to get ahold of.

[00:23:57] Eric Goranson: An attorney. You need to go after these guys [00:24:00] and, uh, try to come up with a solution because really you're gonna have to probably come in here and pour a secondary internal foundation just to hold the house up and then try to get concrete underneath that wall. There was gonna have to be some serious work done.

[00:24:16] Eric Goranson: It was gonna be very, very expensive and it wasn't something I wanted to tackle. So how do you get around this? Well, I don't like using that system. What I like to do. Is go around and cut basically, you know, eight inches of concrete outta that floor, like a little trough. So I'm gonna cut that along. I'm gonna cut that trough.

[00:24:40] Eric Goranson: And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna dig down and put in that perforated pipe all around. That perimeter of the foundation. Now, I don't like to do all the cuts at once because I still want that concrete to kind of hold the wall out there for moving. So I'll do you know, sections at a time, come back and do it.[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] Eric Goranson: You can brace things. So there's just depending on what the situation is or what the pressures are. I usually have a structural engineer look at it, make sure we don't get into problems, but you cut that perimeter trench. And sometimes I'll go across the floor too. If it's a, if it's a long rectangle, I'll cut across the middle sometimes too.

[00:25:16] Eric Goranson: So that way, if I have any water there. I'm grabbing it as well. And then I bring it into one or maybe two sump pumps, depending on what I've got going and how big a run it is. Sometimes I'll run it either way, get my pipe sloped correctly so that can collect it and run it down towards the, uh, sump drain.

[00:25:33] Eric Goranson: And that way it goes into the sum pump. And then I pump it out and well away from the house. So what you'll do is you'll put some gravel down, you'll put the perforated pipe, put more gravel over the top. Then, what I do is I pour concrete around the perimeter that and smooth that floor out and get it all dialed in.

[00:25:52] Eric Goranson: Then you're pretty good to go. Then what I like to do is I put a nice sum pump in there, preferably with a battery backup [00:26:00] so that you've got some running capability. If you lose power. And then you're pretty good to go. And then that way you can pump that out into, you know, a storm drain system. And if it's allowed in the city, you could maybe jump it into the, uh, trumpet into your sewer.

[00:26:15] Eric Goranson: But again, you need to get permission of that and make sure that that's up to code. And then we would do that. And I tell you what, that was the only true way of getting that water table down and. So you don't get water in that basement that works really well, that combined with the ceiling of the cracks and those kind of things, it works pretty good.

[00:26:33] Eric Goranson: And we were using good pumps. You don't want to use a very inexpensive pump for this because you want that water to get in and get out. Into that sum pump and get out of there. So that's the key, and that really keeps you in a, in a situation where, you know, it's just kind of foolproof. And then I want you to go in and take a look and clean out that, that, uh, sump pump thing every six months per year, make sure you don't have any debris or anything in there.

[00:26:55] Eric Goranson: Inspect that pump. Make sure it looks good and put that back in and just [00:27:00] make sure that that water's going away. Sometimes we've run that pipe. 2030 feet away from the house and did our own system outside just so that would get away from the house. And you didn't have it coming back in. Yeah. A funny, quick story.

[00:27:12] Eric Goranson: Before we go out to break, this was hilarious. I was at a house, walked down to the basement old 18 hundreds house, and I guys got a sump pump running. I'm like, man, where's all this water coming from. It was, he, he was complaining that the pump was running 24 7. Once he plugged it in, it was just running.

[00:27:28] Eric Goranson: You could see it was pumping water. So here's what I did. I went outside and looked and he had a kicking right out about four feet away from the foundation wall. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. So I went over and found, uh, standing outside. He was still back in the basement. It was raining outside. It was a perfect situation.

[00:27:47] Eric Goranson: I went out and he had a, uh, piece of periphery to pipe out there for his gutter system be working on. And I just slid it over the one inch pipe that was coming. Of his foundation that was dropping on the water there. So I was putting it out 10 [00:28:00] feet, eight, 10 feet away. It was so hilarious cuz it was about 45 to 60 seconds.

[00:28:06] Eric Goranson: The sump pump turned off and he goes, what did I do? And I walked him out and he'd been running that thing for two months straight, just running that pump. In a circle. So not only do you have to get it outta the basement, you gotta get it out far enough that it's not gonna come back into the house. All right.

[00:28:23] Eric Goranson: We come back. We're gonna talk about doing that exterior water. Maybe you got that flooded patio out back or that water that's just slushing in the backyard. We'll talk about that just as soon is around the house returns.[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Intro: Welcome

[00:29:01] Eric Goranson: back to around the house with Eric to you've got me flying solo today. We're having a great time here in the studio and I hope you are too. Now we've been talking about water, controlling it around your house. This last segment. I wanted to talk about controlling that exterior of water. Maybe you're on a hill and you got water running all the way down your hill, and you're at the bottom and it's running, backing up onto your patio up against the back of your house.

[00:29:25] Eric Goranson: And you don't know what to do about it. And this can be troublesome, especially if you've got, uh, you know, uh, geez, maybe it's a retaining wall that you've got water behind, or you've gotta just shown up in the back of your yard and you've got a spring or something like that where it's just mush. You dunno what to do with it.

[00:29:43] Eric Goranson: So there's a couple ways of doing it to take care of it. One of course you wanna have that grading where the water naturally runs away from the house. I wanna see that where the soil, if you can, you know, is higher up against the house and it runs out eight or 10 feet that really will help you get [00:30:00] water, at least on the surface like that rainwater from coming.

[00:30:03] Eric Goranson: What can happen is, is when you're backed up to a hill or something like that, or your house is in a low point, you got that problem where everything's trying to flood your house. So there's ways to handle this. And I've done this in the past and it's worked out really well. So it's something to consider and sometimes it takes putting a sum pump, even outside.

[00:30:21] Eric Goranson: To control it. So here's what I've done. I had one project where the backyard was up against this hill and water just kept running down on the surface. He'd get streams, basically running into his backyard. And so what we did is we dug a trench down about two, two and a half, even three feet deep. And I put that perforated pipe down in there at the bottom, and I ran river rock all the way.

[00:30:51] Eric Goranson: To the top of that, I put some gravel on the bottom all the way up to the top and made it like it was a 12 inch wide decorative rock [00:31:00] border that went around the house. What that was is that decorative rock border was where water could come down on the surface, run down into this trench, into this periphery pipe, and then I could run it to a sump pump basin that would collect it and pump it.

[00:31:21] Eric Goranson: Away from the house, this case, it was down into a little canyon that went behind into a nature area. So you could drop it over there and let that run down into that naturally. And it fed back to the nature area. So it worked out really well. You could also do that, where it runs into, you know, another storm drain system and gets it away from the house.

[00:31:38] Eric Goranson: But what you do is you do that whole thing with that perforated pipe, and then maybe you run into a sum pump. Maybe it's. Grab it, push it out to that place out by the street or, or into the street, depending on what it is. I've had a couple houses where the, they wanted you to direct your gutter water.

[00:31:58] Eric Goranson: Coming outta your gutter in your storm [00:32:00] drain system, out to the curb, into the street so they could take care of it correctly. That was really good. Cuz I could always just put that stuff in there and then it would run out and go into the street and it would run down the, the curb and into the, into the storm drain system.

[00:32:12] Eric Goranson: So that worked out great. So know the codes and the rules in your area because that's where it really makes a difference. But what you do is by the time you do this, and I know it seems like a lot. And, uh, it worked out really well because what it did was is it would correct that co you know, collect that surface water and then put it into a spot where you can control it and get it away.

[00:32:34] Eric Goranson: And that works out really well. I would also do that and I would even connect into this system, you know, if I had retaining walls and I've done this before, where I would run that same perforated pipe. On the bottom backside of the retaining wall. So if I had water behind that, pushing that I could grab it and drop it into the system and take it out in way.

[00:32:55] Eric Goranson: So this works out really well. I've also done this type of dewatering system [00:33:00] for yards. The. Ever have that yard that's clay. And whenever your wet season is you get out there and it's just, it's just like you're walking in, in, in soaked clay. This will also do that same kind of thing. And you do that by putting that grid across the backyard.

[00:33:17] Eric Goranson: And making sure that you've got that under control. Now, the problem is many times, and this is where it gets bad is you've got that clay layer and somebody planted grass in that clay area. For that I like to go in and bring out. You know, take that top soil out. I mean, it's almost like what, what happened in Chicago bears stadium last week in the football game, uh, you know, where they just had standing water on the field, they had a poor drained system there and that's the same kind of thing.

[00:33:45] Eric Goranson: So you wanna come in and put a system in that lets that soil drain a little better. So that way in that rainy season, you can get out there. Maybe you've got pets. Maybe you wanna walk across the grass. You don't have that standing water out there. [00:34:00] Ends up being really hard on the house anyway, cause you don't want that high moisture around there.

[00:34:03] Eric Goranson: So the more you can kind of dewater that the better off you are. So that's a key right there to doing that. And you can create that dewatering system that makes for a nice well drained space. And so we really enjoy that kind of space, but then you gotta figure out where to do with that water. So it might take a pretty good size sum pump when in doubt, if you can naturally move that water without having to use a pump to raise it.

[00:34:26] Eric Goranson: You are gonna be better off because when it's outside like this, you can run into issues with freezing. You know, if you're, it's a lot easier to handle this in Georgia than it is in North Dakota, for instance. So these are things you really gotta be careful with. So you don't break things, you don't freeze things and make sure, uh, and then of course you want to keep an eye on, if you've got that kind of water situation, make sure you don't have water lines broken.

[00:34:52] Eric Goranson: Maybe you have a broken sprinkler, sprinkler pipe. You've got that broken water main coming in. And, uh, you know, it's, it's a great [00:35:00] example. My neighbor right now, I feel so horrible for 'em. Uh, they have the flag lot behind my house and such great people, but they're fighting. A water main that keeps breaking, cuz it's that 1970s black.

[00:35:13] Eric Goranson: Polypipe see it, a lot of sprinkler pipe, but in the seventies that was building code in my area and it was easy and cheap. And the problem is, is these a hundred year old or 200 to 300 year old fur trees we have around here are pushing rocks up to the ground and, uh, crimping or cutting that black polypipe.

[00:35:30] Eric Goranson: So they've. between them and the owners before. I think they've had four or five repairs, but it's also 200 feet of digging down the middle of their driveway, which they'd have to repave. So doing that repaving project for them is gonna be an expensive one, but it is putting water out there. And if this was the wet season, we'd have a bigger problem for me right now.

[00:35:50] Eric Goranson: We've had, uh, 60 plus days with no rain. So it's not a big deal. It's actually watering some trees. But if this was two months from. [00:36:00] Getting towards the end of the year, we'd have a much mucker problem. There'd be a big problem with water and trying to control that. And that's a big one, like at my house, for instance, I've got an issue and I'll talk about this for a second.

[00:36:11] Eric Goranson: My driveway's down at the bottom of a hill. So the road is probably, oh, I'd say it's six feet higher than the floor of my garage. and then I've got, you know, 75 feet or so back to my house. Well, what's a nice gentle slope. The problem is, is that driveway all drains down towards my house and then it stops up into a three foot area.

[00:36:32] Eric Goranson: And then when they built this place, they put in a little, a little nine by nine or 12 by 12, actually. Great that the water kind of leans over into and goes to there and goes off into a three inch pipe. That's a perforated pipe that goes off into the unknown. I have no idea where it goes. I've tried to track it and it ends up kind of into a kind of a sump area underneath my car port.

[00:36:56] Eric Goranson: So it's H be designed. So when I redo. [00:37:00] My, uh, draining system in my garage here. When I redo that front garage area, I'm gonna put one of those metal tr graded trough drains that goes down across the whole front of the garage. So when that water comes down, it gives me a great place to drop it into. And then my backyard is lower than here.

[00:37:18] Eric Goranson: So I'll run that around and put it back towards the backyard and use that to, uh, you know, irrigate the back area back there. So I have a much better place for that. And it'll, you know, feed the trees and everything else back there. So it's gonna be a great thing, but right now I've gotta redo my whole driveway to do it, but that's gonna be a project I do in the next year or two here, because I wanna make sure and get that done correctly, because what happens is, is I have to put six months into the year.

[00:37:44] Eric Goranson: I drop a sum pump down into that bin because when water we get into these, where we have an inch or two of rain in an hour that overwhelms that system. So I put a sump pump in there, so I don't get water coming into the garage. and that's my temporary fix. So it's [00:38:00] temporary fix for now, but I'm gonna have to repave the entire driveway when I do it, because I've got these big trees, which makes for a bumpy driveway.

[00:38:07] Eric Goranson: Cause it loves to push up on my asphalt. So that's a big one. Well, Hey guys, we're gonna be running outta time on this segment here in just a second, but I wanted to say thank you. And make sure that you'd catch us on social media. You can find all the stuff I'm gonna be doing a better job of getting more consistent stuff up there on the, around the house show around the house with Eric G you'll find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and of course our closed group around the house nation that you can grab as well.

[00:38:32] Eric Goranson: And then of course, the website around the. online.com and message over there. If you've got a question that you wanna have on the show, if you wanna be on the show with a home improvement question, or if you just wanna send me a note, you can do that over and around the house, online.com. There's a really cool contact us page over there.

[00:38:49] Eric Goranson: And as we go into fall here, I'm gonna be working on going back and doing some of those contests. We gave away some great stuff last year, and I'm gonna be working on setting. Those great contests as well. [00:39:00] So we're gonna see if we can do a few more. We gave some great stuff last year away, and now I'm gonna start putting that stuff together so we can do that again.

[00:39:07] Eric Goranson: So stay tuned and we've got some great new interviews with some great fun people coming up as well. So don't go away. We're gonna go out to break here and come back with. Hour number two, just as soon as around the house returns.