I bought this house 10 years ago. It was my first house and things could always be worse. The home inspector didn't point out what a potential problem this could be. My house is at the low point in regards to the neighbors behind and to the left of my house. I can literally pull myself up at the corner of the house. It's been built too low into the ground...

Basically when it rains real hard water slopes down in my back yard directly towards my house. The one neighbor says a french drain was put in and there are some drains around the concrete slab. We've had some really bad rains the last few years and the drains or whatever system was put in place can't keep up. 3 of my window wells are already 30+ inches below the ground with the landscaping built up around them.

The one rain was so hard the window well filled up and my dryer was ruined because water flooded into it. I don't like how the landscaping is built up so high, especially that the dirt is two feet plus above the cinder block for the basement. I don't believe regular brick and mortar that is the facade of the house is designed to have constant moisture from the soil on it. Maybe I'm wrong.

There is no sump pump and from what I can tell there isn't a need for one. I can't find the other pics of when the water fills up the slab like a pond and the water pools between the neighbors house and the pooling in the back yard.

The only time I get water in the house is when the window wells fill up. If you asked what I would want to do I'd like to pull 20 inches of landscaping away from the left side and back yard. Left side being the right portion of the house in the picture.

I was thinking about putting a channel drain going almost the entire length of my house to catch the water before it runs towards the house. I was going to expand that concrete slab doubling it out and then making it the length of the house to create a large patio. The channel drain I'd like to be in the middle of the new patio layout.

Any thoughts other than bulldozing the joint?

 

There's not a lot you can do when you're the low spot, as there's nowhere else to which you can divert the water. You could be fighting the water table as well. Is there anywhere lower for diversion of the water if you did some grading and such?

 

Couple of items seem to contradict, can you clarify,

You state and .

Is the house on a slab or does it have a basement?

Also you comment.

How can there not be a need for a sump when the window wells fill up and water gets into the house!

 

Grading outside to keep surface water away from the house would be my first step. Yes, it will destroy the lawn but once the work is done you can plant grass and it can look great again in a year. It looks like your neighbors are close so I would get a copy of you plot so you know where your property lines are and come up with a plan of attack.

 

Doesn't look much different from any other ranch style house that has a basement when the neighborhood is on flat ground. Raising the house doesn't affect the level of the surrounding land... and digging ditches seems like it will only create a moat around the house.

First off, your downspouts look like they empty right at the edge of the house. If they go into underground pipes, first thing is to make sure those pipes aren't clogged.

Secondly, you obviously need a sump pump, (or perhaps several) they protect homes from getting flooded.

Any waterproofing company would probably solve your interior water problem with interior perimeter weep tile and sump pumps. That's likely what you should pursue after you do the first thing above.

Adding concrete slab perimeters to the outside perimeter of the house does not stop water or dry the dirt underneath, so that idea is straight out. I have no idea why people think that works. Aparently they have never torn up any concrete and discovered the wet muck underneath.

 

Thank you all for the responses!

The concrete slab I was referring to is off the patio door. There are a few small drains on the outskirts of that slab. There is a window well to the left and right of that patio slab and two window wells on the right side of that pic. When we get a real hard rain water is retained at that slab where it becomes a small pond.

In regards to the sump pump if I understand how one works you drill out the inside of your basement floor around the perimeter and gravel/drainage is inserted all leading towards the pump, right?

If water from the outside flows into the window wells and enters the house coming down the wall how would the sump pump stop that?

 

I don't think you can disappear by stepping into the window well in most ranch houses...lol.\

And I didn't think adding a slab would stop the water. If I were to put a 25 foot channel drain from the edge of the house to the other edge where the garage starts with the drains going to the street I was thinking I could just route all the water to the street. I'd start the channel drain at the edge of that concrete slab.

The square block in my pic is where I would use paver stones/bricks or concrete. The line is where I'd put the drain. That slab already has a slight slope away from the house. If the additional slab kept the same slope and funneled towards the channel drain I would hope it would end up diverting all the water.

I dug around those downspouts and they go to the street.

 

There's not a lot you can do when you're the low spot, as there's nowhere else to which you can divert the water. You could be fighting the water table as well. Is there anywhere lower for diversion of the water if you did some grading and such?

In regards to the water table my neighbor thinks we have a underground stream possibly going between our houses.

The only place I can divert the water is between the houses and both are really close. The drain I wanted to put in to divert the water was like this one in the video except for my driveway it's in the back yard.

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/how-to/...-channel-drain

 

Researching it a bit more maybe have the channel drain route to a dry well in the front yard instead of going to the street. I have a huge front yard where I could install two dry wells. One on each side routing water from the back yard to the front of the house. My problem going to the street is going to be the slope. I may not be able to get the water from the drain to the street because the street may be graded higher. The dry well would allow me to work around this so my pipe could go deeper in the front yard.

 

If the window is the source of the problem, excavate the window well and fill it in with concrete blocks then apply waterproofing to the exterior before your backfill. Your post is entitled "entire house below grade". Well according to your picture, only the basement is below grade, and it's supposed to be!

Basement windows are commonly in window wells... if yours is deep enough to stand in, it's either because the window is longer than normal or it is positioned lower than it should be. Basement windows in a ranch style home like yours are commonly only 16" high, 32" wide and they don't usually have a header over them... they are usually found in the first 2 cement blocks right below the sill plate... putting them no more than 16" below grade.

The soil next to the house on either side of your patio is clearly too high. Nothing wrong with digging that down so that it's the same height as your existing patio pad in order to put in pavers, as long as it all has enough slope to drain away from the house.

 

Sorry my terminology isn't perfect. This is a do it yourself site. When I say below grade I guess I mean too deep. The house was built entirely too deep. And for the builder/previous home owner to prevent water running into the house they just piled the dirt up.

For me to put in pavers around the rest of the concrete slab I definitely won't have the right slope to keep water away from the house and foundation. That's why I wanted to insert a 20 ft. long channel drain that either outputs at the street or into a dry well in the front yard to divert the water. This way I can hopefully have a nice patio and water diverted away from the house.

I'd like to keep some natural light and not fill in the window wells with blocks, water proof, then dirt. Even if I did that I'd have the same issue where I don't believe the house was properly waterproofed in the first place. It's like they just shoved dirt against the brick, planted seed, and called it a day. That sod/grass gets wet, and then it soaks into the brick. My dehumidifier runs non stop to keep the humidity below 45%. I'm guessing that has something to do with the nonstop moisture.

The window wells are already rusted out so I' started digging this morning. For sh**s and giggles I'm going to convert my workouts into manual labor workouts. In one hour I didn't do that bad. I'll see how long it takes to dig out the back right portion of the house down to the footer. I don't have a quote but a guy in the water proofing business said a lot of money can be saved if you dig it out yourself. That's my last issue. In my location my house is probably worth 50K at most. A 15K waterproofing job puts me under so I'd like to save as much as I can while getting it fixed the right way.

And I think the right way is starting at the beginning and going from there.

 

Can you put a swale at the far edge of your back yard to divert water coming down to go sideways and then down the left or right edge to the front and down the driveway?

 

I don't know what a swale is but that sounds like a great idea. I have a decent sized back yard and a lot of water would still just naturally fall in the yard but I will research that. Whoever did this french drain / small drain system did a 'side-show bob' attempt at correcting the problem.

 

A swale is kin to a ditch but softer edges, something you can easily mow.

 

Where does the French drain run and where does it empty to?

A problem with dry wells is that they can fill up especially if much of the water comes from neighboring properties. You would need to have a sump pump inside the dry well . Although any technique could be used, it would be more discreet if your driveway slopes down and out starting at some point and the overflow would go into your driveway at that point.

You may need to do some regrading,around your foundation, possibly re-doing the landscaping. Imagining that the landscaping was not there, the base soil or ground must not be depressed (dished; ditched; yes--swaled) along your foundation to allow for a layer of mulch or gravel. Such a depression would be a collection place for water that would then take its time to find its way into your basement.

You need to have a constant downslope away from your foundation on all sides not counting the layer of mulch. Admittedly this can result in a more pronounced low point in the middle of the back yard and/or in the side yard. For best results there would be a gentler slope from the house to the low point quite far away and a steeper slope up to the property line perhaps with an undulation out there to comprise a swale that is not too low at the extreme rear and achieving a gentle slop around the perimeter to the side and over to a front corner..

 

That's a good question. I don't know where the french drain routes to. it looks like it empties to the small drains surrounding my patio slab. And if it empties there it's been useless the last two summers as my yard has been overtaken by the run off from the harsh rains. I found the end of a drainage pipe that funnels to the slab drains but that pipe if filled with dirt so my guess it's clogged.

I don't think I'm going to be able to have the ground slope away from the foundation because I don't want my house to be buried under a bunker of dirt like it was. I feel like drains, drains, and more drains will be the solution along with waterproofing the house.

I've made some progress on digging out around the foundation. At no point have I been discouraged that this task is too difficult. The biggest issue is pulling out the giant rocks until now where I've reached a layer of concrete and some type of pipe. I was hoping this pipe is a window well drain or some type of drain, but a lot of it is surrounded in concrete. I don't have a power washer so I have to wait for this layer of dirt to dry out so I can brush it away. It doesn't look like there is a drain around the window well. But now my digging of this section has stopped.

Does anyone know what this is and what the concrete around the window well is for? I imagine if I paid a waterproofing company to excavate they would bust up this concrete and pipe anyways. I feel section of house is finally at the point it should be in regards to how it should be exposed to the environment.

Speaking of waterproofing I had a guy come out and give me an estimate. He had an interior solution and didn't even bother to look at the way my yard is graded/sloped. $17,500....yeah I don't think so.