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Health & Fitness

Will Grading the Yard Stop a Wet Basement?

Garden grading is easy to fix; pump up your flower beds and landscape beds adjacent to the house.

So your yard becomes a pond after it rains and remains that way for a couple days after. Your well-meaning neighbor suggests grading the yard will drain away all the water and prevent the basement from ever getting wet again.

Surface Water and Ground Water…The Differences Between the Two

Surface water is much different than ground water, and again, much different from a high water table. Surface water comes from above, while ground water and the water table come from beneath your home.

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Surface water can be defined as water that collects on the ground usually as a result of precipitation. Surface water can often be diverted away from your home to help protect the foundation. Keeping as much water away from the foundation as possible is always a good idea.

This is accomplished by grading and extending out the leaders and downspouts.

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The grade is also called slope, incline, pitch or rise of the land. How much slope is there? Sometimes the slope of the land is working against the home and could require a regrading of the yard to redirect the water around the property. The ideal slope is a minimum 1" per foot from the home for the first 10 feet. Then a gradient decline until a minimum of 1” per 10 feet is achieved.

Garden grading is easy to fix; pump up your flower beds and landscape beds adjacent to the house. A few bags of topsoil can make a world of difference. Pump the beds up and make the slope as deep as possible from the house to the end of the bed.

The other main cause can be easier to remedy. Gutters and downspouts are designed to collect and divert water away from the home. Clogged gutters and downspouts terminating against the home can put a tremendous amount of water around the foundation in a very short time. That water is going to follow the path of least resistance which often times is into the basement or crawlspace. Properly maintained gutters and downspouts extending at least 10 feet from the home can go a long way to keeping the basement dry.

The upper surface of ground water is the water table. After heavy rainfall this zone becomes saturated. As the rainfall continues, the water table rises. Water tables can become elevated when they receive more water than they drain off. This can be from unusually high amounts of rain, or excess water from higher elevations.

High water tables are often above the level of basement floors or crawlspaces. This almost always causes flooding in these areas. When the water table rises up to the level of your basement there is nothing you can do to stop it.

The next time you see a puddle in the yard after a 2-day soaking rain, remember the water table. It is very likely that the puddle is the top of the water table that has temporarily exceeded the grade of the yard. The water table typically rises over a very wide area, not just around your house. The water table is part of the earth and re-grading your flower beds will not alter it.

Should I get my Basement Inspected?

A-1 Basement Solutions provides free basement health inspections to New Jersey homeowners. Contact A-1 Basement Solutions at 908-322-1313, or  info@A-1Basements.com for a free in-home inspection and detailed quote.

A-1 gives full service guaranteed work and competitive pricing every day.

We do everything for you. By taking care of all the details, A-1 Basement Solutions makes the job worry free. Our motto is No Problems…Just Solutions.

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