Proper Drainage & Landscape Tips to Help Protect Your Home’s Foundation

Proper Drainage & Landscape Tips to Help Protect Your Home's Foundation

The landscape and drainage surrounding your home plays a huge role in managing moisture accumulation beneath the foundation. Leaking landscape pipes, overwatered vegetation as well as poor drainage can all add up to foundation trouble.

A majority of the foundation repair projects we see in the valley are the result of expansive clay soils. Particularly here in the arid Southwest and Sonoran Desert, air-conditioning dries the surface of the slab promoting vapor transmission as well as condensation of water vapor as it is pulled through the slab.

Clay suction begins from around the perimeter of a foundation and rings water, as well as other vapors, underneath the slab. This may result in foundation heave.

The clay soil map, published by NRCS, identifies valley areas that have high levels of expansive clay soil. There are steps Arizona Homeowner's can take to help divert moisture away from their home's foundation.

Landscaping & Your Home's Foundation

Preventative landscaping changes can be made to reduce the exposure to moisture. But before we discuss some of the landscaping DIY Homeowners can do to mitigate excess moisture, let's look at some of the common challenges.

Some of the common landscape challenges include:

• Narrow side yards that allow for poor drainage and may allow moisture to accumulate.
• Over watering / irrigating yards may induce foundation heave.
• Trees pull moisture from the soil beneath your home's foundation and may induce foundation settlement.
• Deco drains usually inject water when there are no drain points (most don't have them).
• Sloped topography can accumulate moisture on the high side.

Homeowners can help protect their home's foundation with some landscape changes, including:

• Installing drought tolerant desert landscaping.
• Make sure existing irrigation lines do not leak.
• Relocate plants & trees that require regular watering away from the home's foundation.
• Make sure your pool's deco drain works properly.
• Berm sloped areas to divert water away from your home (see drainage below).

Rain Gutters, Drainage & Your Home's Foundation

Drainage improvements, combined with landscape changes, are DIY steps Homeowners can take to reduce the amount of moisture a foundation is exposed to. Like landscaping changes, the addition of gutters and modifications to drainage plans are not enough to mitigate an existing issue. However, they are the first line of defense against excessive moisture accumulation beneath your home's foundation.

When installing gutters, appropriate drainage should be part of this plan. It does little good (in fact it may be counterproductive) to collect all the roof water and dump it in a concentrated location at the base of the house. Surface drainage in modern housing is not enough to properly drain, because the lot sizes are often too small and too flat to properly drain. Hard piping is required to properly drain the water from the roof.

Underground drainage that runs at least 20 feet from the home's foundation is ideal (see below).

While these tips alone are not enough to mitigate an existing foundation problem, they are the first steps in preventing a potential foundation problem. For those homes with an existing foundation issue, we still strongly recommend making the above adjustments in addition to giving us a call to come take a look, free of charge! We have a number of foundation repair solutions available, including our proprietary MoistureLevel Smart Foundation System, and are the only foundation repair contractor in North America to use licensed engineers in the repair plan process. Our service area includes the entire state of Arizona.

Transparent, engineered solutions is what we do.

Rosie on the House Homeowner Special discount!

Receive $200 off a foundation repair of $5,000 or more for Rosie listeners (cannot be combined with any other offers or coupons).

About Arizona Foundation Solutions

Arizona Foundation Solutions serves the Greater Phoenix & Statewide areas, providing long-term solutions for structures with foundation problems. Owner, Robert Brown brings over 30 years of construction experience. He is LEED Accredited and one of 2 Certified Foundation Repair Specialists (CFRS) in the State of Arizona. CFRS is a Designation of the Foundation Repair Association. Arizona Foundation Solutions also performs radon testing and radon mitigation in Arizona.

July Home Maintenance To-Do | #LeakDetection

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