Getting Water In Your Basement? Try Fixing The Grading Around Your Home
If you have a problem with water getting into your basement, it could be from poor grading around your home. A slight slope is necessary to help the water run away from your home instead of seeping into the ground and pooling against the foundation. Thankfully, you can fix the grading by following these steps.
1. Gather Tools & Materials
Get started by gathering the following items:
- Wooden stakes
- Shovel
- Ruler
- Tape measure
- String
- String level
- Garden tiller
- Topsoil
- Grass seed or sod
2. Identify Trouble Spots
Look for areas around your home that have standing water after a rainfall. Use wooden stakes to mark these areas, because you will need to identify them later when fixing the grading.
3. Measure The Slope
A good amount of slope around your home is about 2%, which means the elevation will drop approximately 2.5 inches for every 10 feet of distance from your home. You can check the grade using your wooden stakes, string, a string level, and a ruler.
Tie a 10 foot string at the exact same spot on two stakes. Have one person rest the stake on the ground against your home, and another person pull the string so that it is tight without any slack. A string level will let you know if the string is completely straight. Use the ruler to measure the distance off the ground for the stake away from your home. If it is less than 2.5 inches, you will need to add more of a grade to the soil.
4. Add More Soil
You can use topsoil to increase the evaluation around your home. Use the string to help guide you with a gradual slope, using the shovel and garden tiller to spread out the soil. Keep in mind that a bigger slope is not always better. If a slope is too big it can cause erosion when it rains, which will ruin the new slope that you just fixed. Try to keep it around 2%.
5. Cover The Top Soil With Grass
When you are happy with the slope around your home, you should cover the topsoil with grass seed or sod to fill in the area with new grass. If you use sod, just make sure that the additional thickness of the sod did now skew your slope that you just created.
While a better slope can help fix the problem with water seeping through your foundation, it is only one of many ways to keep water out of your basement. If you do get water in your basement, the best way to ensure that it is clean and sanitized is by hiring a water damage restoration company such as All American Repair Services Inc. that can properly clean your basement for you.
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