We just bought a house with a similar situation. We have a sump crock but no pump and we’ve been *told* there’s never been an issue with water in the basement.
Without correct drainage unwanted water or waste can sit and buildup and cause numerous probelms. In light of this, if at any point during this project guide you require additional help and advice give Property Repair Systems a call on 0. They are experts in all matters of drainage, damp and damage repair an will be able to advise you further. What Is A French Drain? A French drain is simply a small trench, dug to a gradient, and filled with aggregate, that will allow surface water to drain away from your walls, a building, driveway, garden or area that is prone to surface water pooling, or is vulnerable to flash flooding. French Drain detail showing a cross section showing the graded stones. How To Drain Surface Water. A French drain is ideal for carrying away surface water which builds up around walls, on driveways or in waterlogged areas of a lawn or garden. It is a relatively simple and cost effective way of draining land, and it does not require specialist tools or complicated equipment. The main considerations are: where to dig the trench; and where to drain the excess water to. Rainwater and runoff should not be directed into foul water drainage. Read more on the difference between foul and surface water drainage in our guide which contains important information to prevent you polluting rivers and streams with sewage or harmful chemicals. You should check whether you need building regulations for your planned drainage system – see more about building regulations and rainwater drainage. How To Make A French Drain After digging the French drain trench to the required width and size it is filled with graded stones – from fine shingle on the top to large rubble on the bottom. This aids the flow of water and filters out debris. French Drain detail showing a cross section showing the graded stones and a perforated drainage pipe. You can also install a perforated drainage pipe in the bottom of the trench. Using a perforated pipe allows small amounts of water to soak into the ground, but carries larger quantities of water away more quickly to help with flash flooding. French Drains – How They Work. French drains are often installed around a home foundation in two different ways: Buried around the foundation wall on the external side of the foundation. Edit Article How to Drain Water Away from Your Home. Three Methods: Maintaining Your Gutter System Extending Downspouts and Increasing Ground Slope Installing a. Ashland, Medford, Oregon, Drainage Solutions. French Drain, French Drains. Rogue Valley, Central Point, Talent, Phoenix, Applegate Valley, Jacksonville. The drainage should be installed at a low point in the affected area to allow it to drain surface water away to storm drain, or a Soakaway. Water will always find its way to the lowest point in the landscape, so it is common sense that the area most affected is the place you should build your French drain. French drain and soakaway. For a guide to building a soakaway including an image showing soakaway design, go to our Soakaway project. When Can I Use A French Drain? You can use a French Drain in most areas, however before you install a French drainage system you should check that all your other surface water drainage systems are working properly and are not blocked or broken. Make sure your rainwater pipes and gullies are free–flowing and are properly connected to a mains drain or Soakaway. A French drain is not intended to replace existing surface water drains. However French drains are useful where water tends to build up against walls and buildings. They allow the water to seep away into the ground rather than affecting the stone or brick of the building or walls they are protecting. On entering the trench the water will have to run to a suitable drain–off point, and in most cases this is a soakaway or watercourse. If a wall has been continually soaked by water pooling against the building then a French drain will also allow the water to evaporate from the wall and dry it out, during drier periods. The surface of this wall is damaged below the DPC, where standing water has pooled against this Wall. Installing A French Drain. The usual reason for installing drainage is to relieve a build–up of water against a house wall. Allowing water to pool against an external wall may manifest itself in the form of rising damp, decaying brickwork and crumbling mortar joints. This is particularly relevant where you have an older property. For more information on how to create a French drain see our Step By Step Guide to Building a French Drain. Digging near the Affected wall for a French Drain. How Do I Build A French Drain? A French drain should be no deeper than the foundations of a building and, in the case of older buildings, the side of the trench should slope away from the building at no less than 4. This is to maintain the lateral support of the foundations by the ground surrounding them. If the foundations of the building are very shallow then the French drain should be constructed at a minimum of 1 meter away from the building. The surface of the drain may be covered with topsoil to match the surrounding areas, but a layer of weed fabric is recommended for the reasons given above. Will A French Drain Solve A Damp Problem? We feel duty–bound to warn you that it is possible that there can be a danger of a French drain functioning rather too well and drying out the earth surrounding the house completely, which may lead to settlement of the foundations. However a French drain may not solve the problem of damp totally and other means of controlling the water may need to be found in addition to the drain. Insertion of a damp proof course, or tanking. You can also treat the external wall with a damp sealant like Technoseal (pictured below). But you should apply this while the wall is dry, so after a warm dry spell of weather has dried out the masonry. Apply Technoseal to the wall first, as a protective waterproof seal. To make the drain more effective you can use Geotextile Membrane along the wall and leading down into the drain to protect the wall from surface water by directing it down the wall and into the drain. Find out more about Geotextile Membrane on the Property Repair Systems Website. Fit Geotextile Membrane down the wall to the French Drain. French Drain Cleaning And Maintenance. The life of your French drainage system may be temporary because of a tendency for the shingle and stone to get clogged up with earth. When you are including a perforated land drain pipe in the bottom you can make maintenance easier by using weed fabric from a garden centre, DIY store or builders' merchants. A layer of this weed fabric may be inserted into and across the trench to ensure longer life by stopping the 'fines' – fine particles which come from the earth and stone, clogging the pipe and drain. French Drains need Maintenance to remain in Good Working Order. If a perforated drain pipe is added to the French Drain it should be regularly monitored and maintained to make sure it is working effectively. This may include regular rodding of the pipe work. So regular rodding 'eyes' should be included in the run, and a small access chamber should be included where there is a change of direction. We also recommend similar maintenance of your other surface water drains. The NADC – National Association of Drainage Contractors has more information about drainage on their website. If you need any help with any type of French Drain, timber repair, maintenance or other damp problems Property Repair Systems will be pleased to give you completely free, no obligation advice on 0. Watch our tutorial video on building French drains. French drain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A diagram of a traditional French drain. A French drain. A French drain can have perforated hollow pipes along the bottom (see images) to quickly vent water that seeps down through the upper gravel or rock. French drains are primarily used to prevent ground and surface water from penetrating or damaging building foundations. Alternatively, French drains may be used to distribute water, such as a septic drain field at the outlet of a typical septic tank sewage treatment system. French drains are also used behind retaining walls to relieve ground water pressure. History and construction. These may have been invented in France. Later, specialised drain tiles were designed with perforations. To prevent clogging, the gravel size varied from coarse at the center to fine at the outside and was designed based on the gradation of the soil surrounding the drain. The particle sizing was critical to keep the surrounding soil from washing into the voids in the gravel and clogging the drain. The development of geotextiles greatly simplified this procedure. Ditches may be dug by hand or with a trencher. An inclination of 1 in 1. Modern French drain systems can be made with perforated pipe (weeping tile) surrounded by sand or gravel and geotextile or landscaping textile. Landscaping textiles are used to prevent migration of the drainage material as well as preventing dirt and roots from entering and clogging the drainage pipe. The perforated pipe provides a minor underground storage volume but the prime purpose is for the perforations to drain the area along the full length of the pipe and to discharge any surplus water at its end. The direction of percolation will depend on the relative conditions inside and outside the pipe. Subsurface drainage systems have been in common use for centuries. They take many forms, but are all similar in design and function to the traditional French drain. Variations in structure. This variation is similar to the traditional French drain, the difference being a French drain's gravel or aggregate material is open to collect water. A (curtain drain) is covered by earth. Turf or other vegetation can be placed into the planting medium. The length is 2. 00 mm (7. French drain. French drains can lead to a downhill slope or to dry wells or rain gardens where the extra water is held and absorbed by plants. This is useful when city water systems or other wastewater areas cannot be used. Multiple pipes also provide for redundancy, in case one pipe becomes overfilled or clogged by a rupture or defect in the piping. A pipe might become overfilled if it is on a side of the drain which receives a much larger volume of water, such as one pipe being closer to an uphill slope, or closer to a roofline that drips near the French drain. When a pipe becomes overfilled, water can seep, sideways, into a parallel pipe, as a form of load- balancing, so that neither pipe becomes slowed by air bubbles, as might happen in a full- pipe with no upper air space. Filters and envelopes for French drains. These are permeable materials placed around pipe or drainage products to improve flow conditions in the area immediately around the drain and for improving bedding and structural backfill conditions. Foundation. It is laid on the bottom of the excavated area, and a layer of stone is laid on top. In many cases, a filter fabric is then laid on top of the stone to keep fine sediments and particles from entering. Once the drain is installed, the area is backfilled and the system is left alone unless it clogs. When there is no filter fiber, sediments can make their way through the stone as years pass and clog the drain, and when the filter fabric is present, that can instead clog with sediments. It may be wise to provide cleanouts, much as is done with sanitary sewers, to provide access for inspection with a camera snake. Also, a French drain that is not installed with a sump pump counts on gravity alone to drain foundation water, and if the house is not located on a hill or near a steep incline, finding this slope can be problematic. Additionally, maintenance on an external French drain involves expensive exterior excavation, which includes removal of walkways, shrubberies, porches, gardens, and anything else along the perimeter. Installing a French drain around the inside perimeter is most commonly done after the house has been built. Most commonly, this is done in response to a wet basement or right before performing a basement finishing. To install this kind of drain, the perimeter of the basement floor is jackhammered down to the footing and the concrete is removed. A layer of stone is laid down, and a perforated drain pipe is laid on top of it. Water is collected from the basement wall floor joint as it enters, and a pump is installed to remove water from the house and away from the foundation. Once completed, the area, save for a 2 in (5. This gap exists to allow water in from the basement walls. This can be installed very quickly. The system is easy to maintain once installed, and the sump pump will need annual maintenance to perform properly. An interior French drain is much less likely to clog than an exterior, partially due to the fact that it is not sitting underneath several feet of soil. Interior French drain installation is an effective way to waterproof a basement but requires the use of a sump pump. Many contractors will install plastic sump pumps that can quickly break down or neglect to install a battery backup sump pump, making the basement vulnerable to flooding during power outages. Sump pumps should be installed with a battery backup system in a proper sump liner of 2. US gal (7. 6 L) size or larger to prevent the sump from having too little water and turning on and off continuously. French drain has evolved significantly from its origins- starting off as a hand- dug ditch, moving on to ceramic tile, PVC pipe, and eventually to the new French drain innovations on the market. Each new system is able to address weaknesses of the old as the French drain continues to improve and evolve. For example, whereas Henry French used chippings of tree bark to provide anti- microbial properties, an anti- microbial additive can now be included in the material of the plastic channel. Legal issues. Guidelines on the construction of horizontal subsurface drainage systems. New Delhi: International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, 1. Print.^http: //www. French, Henry F. Farm drainage: the principles, processes, and effects of draining land with stones, wood, plows, and open ditches, and especially with tiles. New York: Orange Judd & Company.
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