[tnprogrammer]

Something I've never tried before that I wanted to get you guys' opinion on. I've got a front yard that has a slight slope toward the house. There is also a small dead area in front of the middle portion of the house where there is really no good outlet for water. It is the circled area in the pic. I can see efflorescence on the foundation block from the crawl space, so I know that area is not draining well. My goal is to add a bit of soil against the house to slope away in that area and then add a trench drain about 2-3 feet away from the house. The drain will run under the sidewalk to the left where there is a good slope and exit down to the left side of the yard. The thing I was thinking about doing is laying plastic down before I add soil. The plastic would hopefully help direct the water away from the foundation toward the drain. Would having solid plastic there do more harm than good? Do I need to allow that soil to breathe? Have any of you tried this before?

 

[daveb1]

Is that down spout ending right by the house in the reddish bush? That would be a big part of the problem if so.

 

[carpdad]

Second on the gutter.
I don't think the plastic will work. I did think about doing the same, but I think the soil on top will turn into a soup. The only way is to put material on top to stop the water. For my small front "yard", I am thinking of pavers to limit the amount of rain water that will reach the foundation wall.
Also, if all you have is efflorescence, your water problem is not that bad.

 

[Rienne82]

I imagine it's not really an issue, though I wouldn't go for the plastic sheeting idea as it could act as a trap, as I think you already suspect.

If it really is an issue and I was dealing with it, I'd maybe excavate that soil bed about 2 1/2-3ft down, tamper some fine-dust hardcore down, run some perforated pipe in shingle downslope under the sidewalk, more shingle, landscape fabric, then soil. French drain approach.

 

[vinny186]

I did something like this. I put plastic bags around my plants and bushes in the front of my house to deal with weeds then covered the plastic with mulch. All the plants did fine as they were still getting plenty of water and no weeds. I checked under the plastic one day after it had been this way for 3 years and the soil seemed to take on a clay-like consistency but that was the only negative I could see.

 

[HDS]

How far down is the foundation? Seems you have a lot of mulch up against the brick. That could allow for moisture from the mulch to wick into the house.

Lowering the mulch level and a French drain under the side walk as Rienne82 suggested.

Pavers sloping away from the house may be good too. I'm not sure about the paver brick interface and the intricacies of that setup.

 

[tnprogrammer]

First, to answer daveb1's question. Yes, there are 2 downspouts that empty right into that area. I can't believe the builder didn't connect those two and run them to the left under the sidewalk. Luckily, the amount of water those downspouts carry is minimal, but it is a situation I have to remedy.
I have been considering trimming the front of the house in eggrock. I like stone much better than mulch. The plan I'm thinking of going with is to remove the mulch from around the first 2 feet of the house. Add a bit of soil near the house to help the grade and then lay a french drain at that point that will catch water that sits in that area. Run that french drain under the sidewalk and down to the left. I could also tie the gutters together via a solid pipe and lay that pipe in the trench I've dug out for the french drain. I would not deposit the rain from the gutters into the french drain but basically run two pipes the full length down to the left. The only question left is this....once I remove the mulch, should I lay plastic near the house under the eggrock to help the water flow to the drain?
Thanks for all of the input guys!

 

[Rienne82]

I didn't see the guttering before. Could you perhaps relocate the guttering currently on the right of the entrance, over to the left side? Then test to see if that patch can deal with rainwater from the photo's more visible downpipe. Then if you still need to displace rainwater from that patch, route it across the sidewalk?

 

[tnprogrammer]

The picture doesn't show the roofline well enough, but there is no way to relocate any of the gutters up top. I'm starting to re-visit this issue because last week we had the hardest rain I've seen around here since the big Nashville flood in 2010. Luckily it didn't rain nearly as long as it did back then, but several areas around still sustained some amount of flooding. I happened to be working from home that day and my office is in the basement. The front half of our house is a crawlspace and the back half is a walkout basement. When the house was built right at 2 years ago the builder actually had a local foundation/waterproofing company install one of those in-slab drainage systems for the basement. There is a sump pump in a closet behind the bathroom in the basement. I've always assumed that the sump was just there to run the plumbing for that bathroom. However, for the first time ever during a rainstorm I heard the sump pump start kicking in. At one point it was running every ten minutes. That must mean that the in-slab drainage system also feeds into that sump. I figured that was against codes.
In any case, after the rain stopped I went into the crawl space, which is pretty tall and easy to walk around in. There was actually still a puddle of water against the foundation wall to the finished basement area. Evidently, a lot of water had been seeping either through or under the foundation. I went all around the crawl space and lifting the plastic up I could see that the soil everywhere was saturated.
Best I can tell, my basement floor remained dry. However, I've got to deal with the amount of moisture coming into the crawl space. I have a plan to attack the outside drainage first. I know that the interior drainage systems where you trench all around the foundation in the crawl space are popular, but to me it seems like you should work on the outside first in order to keep as much moisture out in the first place. I've been told that because my lot slopes front to back I will ALWAYS have a bit of moisture in the soil under the house just because of normal moisture movement through the topsoil layer and even an interior trench drain can't be dug deep enough to capture all of it. I'll upload more pics soon and outline my plan, which I'm interested to get feedback on.
Thanks.