Even When You Do It Right

denick

I was asked by a fellow who is starting his own excavating business to look at a problem he had with a customer. He did the site work for a small house. The house was in a wet area and bound to have water problems. He had asked when he first started in business how I build footing drains.
My footing drains I lay a piece of 5' wide fabric out next to the footing. Place a thin layer of stone 2" then set the pipe ( level )
cover the pipe to the top of the footing with stone and roll the fabric over top. If the conditions are clay I will put coarse sand over the fabric.
His problem was that the home owners has never seen any water coming out of the pipe for the footing drain. They wanted him to dig up the drain and do it again. They were afraid the water was trapped and was going to cause some big problem in the future.
He swears he built his drain just the way I explained. I went over to the site and took a look. It struck me how the area at and below the discharge pipe is already greening up when the rest of the lawn was winter brown. I asked him if he had put stone in the trench following the exit pipe? he said he used up all the stone he had left in that section of trench. We got a shovel and dug about 6' back and there was a small trickle of water. The ground is pretty dry right now. My advice to him was next week dig back 20' or so and clean the stone out of the trench and backfill with some clay type material.

Now the home owner can have the water run out the pipe where they can see it and it will create a wet spot on top of the lawn instead of the almost perfect diffuser that was watering his lawn in that area better that a sprinkler system.

I was taught way back in the day of clay tile or orange-burg ( how was that spelled) pipe with salt hay or tar paper cover. That the stone is the way the water moves most of the time in an underground collection drain. The pipe is there and collects the water when the volume of water exceeds the capacity of the stone, or the stone ends.

Nick

jmic

Nick,
A+ on your method. I just might add what I do is a couple inches of stone under the pipe then I stone over the pipe mounding so that it goes 5 - 6" over the top of footings then I cover with fabric. Reason being IMO if you stop stone even with footing I just think there's a slight possibility that water could get trapped on footings and end up where you may not want it, but with the stone over footings it gives the water an easier path to the pipe. But sometimes I'v had people concerned about not seeing water come out of the runoff pipe, unless you're below the water table you may never see water come out, then again if you are below the water table you could be playing by a whole different set of rules. So Nick how have you been lately, things seemed to die down around here lately.

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Joe

Glasshousebltr

A+ from me as well Nick. That's almost the same I do, the only diference is I don't put cloth under, however, doing one next week and I'm going to steal your cloth under plan, that is, if ya don't mind.

One more thing, instead of cloth I use rosin paper. What type cloth are you using?

Bob

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Bob

denick

Joseph,

Thanks.

Good to see your still around. Things are going well. A+++ on your thoughts.

2 daughters home from school, Easter week happenings.

How are things with you and your family. When is that grandchild due?

It seems the good weather might be keeping people away from here. I was wondering, where are the people who belong to the forum that are excavators and sitework people.( there seems to be quite a few that don't sign in on anything)

We should have a marathon night. Get the word out to a few people and see how much good content we can post in one night. Maybe get a Cat, Volvo, Deere, Kobelco or Komatsu exec to come in.

Nick

denick

Bob,

Thanks, no problem.

Use a filter fabric. The same as for over septic systems. Most suppliers of pipe carry it around here.

An engineer once told me if I wanted to know how well a fabric will hold up, spread some stone and put the fabric down. run you plate compactor over it. If there are some small holes OK. If its torn go to a heavier fabric. We have had good luck using stabilization fabric where backfill conditions are extreme.

tgeb

I agree with your method 100% Nick.

Particularly when ground water might be an issue. When no ground water problems, we always just use fabric for cover, and we only use fabric.
Rosin paper is approved for use here but in my opinion is too likely to fail, and fabric, though about 5 times the cost of rosin paper, is still not all that expensive.

I had a similar episode with one of my builders, we installed a french drain system behind an addition that we did the foundation for.

Dug the trench, lined it with fabric, placed the piping, bedded the pipe in stone and wrapped fabric over trench. Back-filled and graded.

Home owner was complaining that water was not coming from the daylight pipe when it rained, and they still had moisture problems in the basement. The builder was requesting that I redo the system at my expense.
I did what I almost never do...... Called a meeting!

I showed up about an hour early, dug a small hole to find the beginning of the system and dropped a garden hose down in the pipe.
By the time everyone showed for the meeting, I had a nice flow of water from my properly installed drains.

And then we heard the magic words, "Well we did have some water leaks in the basement before the addition was put on."

Turns out the owners were looking for some freebies.

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Tom

www.gebcon.com

rino1494

We've had the same problems with homeowners complaining about no water coming out of the pipe to daylight. We always ask them, is there water in your basement. They say no and then I say, what is the problem then. We stone our trench out to daylight too. Most of the water will be carried through the stone and will be absorbed into the ground.

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