Keeping your yard clear, tidy, and healthy throughout the year isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Your yard’s drainage system is all-important when it comes to keeping your yard free of standing water. It’s critical to ensure that heavy rainfall doesn’t lead to water pooling by your foundation. So, regular drain maintenance is a necessity.
If you’ve left your drains unattended through the year and they have become clogged, there are some steps you take do to get them back in shape quickly. This article shares eight essential tips for fixing clogged yard drains and maintaining them to keep your entire property in good condition.
Having properly functioning drainage, whether with gutters and downspouts or other systems, is essential. Malfunctioning drainage around your property and poor foundation drainage can lead to issues such as flooding, oversaturated soil, water in your basement or crawl space, and foundation damage.
All these problems compound, leading to additional issues that threaten your home’s structural integrity and your family’s health and safety.
If foliage or other debris has covered drain grates in your yard, water may be slow in reaching your drainage system. This can lead to standing water in your yard, especially during heavy rainfall. Clear away all plants, organic debris, and clutter from the grates to ensure water actually gets pushed into your drain system.
If you are able to do so, you should remove the grates and check for large pieces of debris in the spaces below. Removing debris with a net or scoop, gently so as to avoid damaging the drain itself, could help with drainage hugely.
You’ll likely need to call a drainage expert for repairs if you find large blockages such as tree roots or large soil deposits.
One of the most likely causes of a clogged yard drainage system is a buildup of organic debris like leaves in the pipes themselves. Use your garden hose to flush the system; the force of the water from the hose should be more than enough to shift organic debris deposits from inside your pipes.
If you are able to locate and access the inspection portals for your drainage system, you should watch them while you flush with your hose. If you can see water moving in the inspection portal, there may be stubborn clogs in the system. If there is no water coming through, or if the amount of water going through the system is greatly reduced, you may have a more stubborn blockage.
A drain snake is one of the last resorts available to you when it comes to cleaning stubborn clogs from your yard drains. They can be rented at most hardware stores, too, if you want to give clearing your system a go. If this doesn’t work, you may have a severe issue like a root invasion on your hands. At this point, it is best to seek a professional opinion.
If your drain grates are too widely spaced, they can let debris into your drainage system and cause damage. Replacing these grates with a fine screen or less widely spaced grate can make all the difference.
Forming the habit of checking and clearing your drainage grates on a regular basis will not only prevent avoidable blockages but will also enable you to notice problems before they snowball into more significant issues.
Regrading your yard is a little extreme, but being careful about which plants surround your yard drainage can make a real difference. Certain plants create complex yet delicate root systems that hold the soil together and manage the levels of moisture. The right mix of plants and flowers in your landscaping plan could actually help your yard drainage system by reducing or controlling runoff water.
If you need help with drainage solutions around your home or want professional advice about this and other waterproofing, don’t hesitate to contact the expert team at JES for a free inspection.
Get Your Free Inspection!You can improve foundation drainage by keeping gutters and downspouts clear, grading the yard so water flows away from the home, and addressing any existing foundation damage. Interior drainage systems, sump pumps, and other waterproofing solutions may also help manage water around the foundation. A free, professional inspection can determine the best repairs for your home’s drainage issues.
Your foundation is the bedrock of your home—literally. Whether you have a concrete slab or brick and mortar beneath your family room, you need that stabilizer in place if you want to keep your home in one piece.
As such, you’ll want to take steps to ensure that your home stays as stable as possible while you’re still living in it. That is where foundation drainage comes into play. Most materials used to make up home foundations do not naturally drain. These materials also tend to react poorly when exposed to excess moisture or groundwater.
The presence of water near your foundation can cause the molecules in your building materials to rapidly expand and contract. In doing so, your foundation can come under significant stress because of this hydrostatic pressure. In order to cope with that stress, the materials you have supporting your home might crack, thereby allowing even more moisture into your space.
A cracked or leaking foundation is a foundation that not only may begin to sink into the ground but that might also put other structural supports within your home at risk. For example, a damaged foundation can allow enough moisture into your home to cause your floor joists to start decaying. This means that you might find yourself contending with a sinking floor on top of the damage already done to your foundation.
Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to tell when your foundation has suffered from damage. You can work with a professional, however, to walk through your home and look for any signs of damage that might be concerning. Some of the clearest signs of moisture-based foundation damage include:
In short, enabling foundation drainage means that you can protect your home from significant damage later down the line. Some of the best tools to use when trying to ensure that your foundation drains consistently include interior drains and internal sump pumps.
The installation time for CrawlDrain™ varies depending on your crawl space’s condition, size, and necessary repairs. Our team at JES Foundation Repair works efficiently, typically completing installations in one to two days. Contact us for a detailed estimate and schedule your free inspection.
