Category: Drainage

Drainage issues around houses cause water to enter the dwelling, can cause damp or dank smells and degradation and rot of the structure. We help solve drainage issues.

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Drainage Tips & Tricks

Solving Drainage Problems for Houses on Sloping Blocks

If water is getting into your basement, through your retaining wall or pooling around your house on a sloping block — this page and the video above are for you.

We’ve been solving drainage problems around houses on sloping sites for over twenty years. The good news is that most drainage problems follow predictable patterns, and most of them have practical solutions. The bad news is that the solutions have to be applied in the right order — starting with the water source furthest from your house, not the wall the water is coming through.

This is the most important thing to understand before you spend any money on drainage work. If you treat the symptom — the leaking retaining wall, the wet basement — without addressing the source — the upslope water that’s causing it — you will spend money and the problem will not go away.

Work outward to inward. Always.

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Categories
Drainage Home Maintenance and Repairs

What is a Spoon Drain in Residential Construction

Spoon drain by Cornell Engineers

Hi. I’m Matt Cornell. Today we’re talking about spoon drains, why we use them to improve drainage around a house site, what a spoon drain looks like and when they are better than grated drains or agi drains.

Join Matt Cornell for an introduction to Spoon Drains
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Categories
Drainage Footings and Slabs

Factors That Makes Houses Crack

Slab movement caused this wall to lift away from the slab

Here’s a list of things that make houses move and crack. How many of these can you identify in your house:

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Categories
Drainage Footings and Slabs

Water Around a Waffle Pod Slab

Water sitting near a waffle slab
Control site drainage from the start until the end of construction

Water around a waffle pod slab house being built on a reactive clay site is a problem and it’s not an easy fix.

That’s why the Australian standard for footings and slabs AS2870 says that the surface drainage of a construction site shall be controlled from the start of site preparation until the end of construction.

Why? Because it is easier to get good drainage around a waffle pod slab house while it is being built than after the house is finished.

Check out our detailed video on why waffle slabs are so affected by site drainage and what to do about it.

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Categories
Drainage Footings and Slabs

How Agricultural Drains Wreck Houses

Did you know that an agricultural drain can easily wreck the house it was installed to protect?

If agricultural drains are specified or installed incorrectly, they can easily be the cause of uncontrolled movement and cracking in your house.

Agricultural drains (also known as ag pipes, agi pipes, ag line, french drains (as credited to Mr Henry Flagg French – a farmer from New England), soakage drains, and slotted drainage pipes – phew!!) are sometimes used by homeowners and engineers to improve house subsoil drainage.
(Breaking news – check out our brand new article about improving drainage on sloping sites)

Sometimes agricultural drains are used to fix slab heave and reduce cracking in houses.

When agricultural drains are installed improperly, they can become a problem.

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