French drain or concrete ramp?

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jmr106

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I'm back again after taking a little hiatus. I had a lot of questions before regarding a crawlspace, but I'm about to tackle a lot of issues within a short time now.

I have plans already to replace that crawlspace door with a custom steel-framed poly door and grout in between the door frame and the foundation rocks with a grout bag to seal the cracks and make it look neater. There were two large concrete blocks buried in the dirt underneath the outside of the door, which I have already removed in the photo. The blocks were allowing water to just flow right under the door. Now there is basically a little ledge under the door that keeps the water from running in unless it puddles up to the door and runs down the concrete ramp inside. However, it was also pine straw and some dirt washing in under the door, which is irritating.

Yes, the yard has a little slope towards the house. Too much trouble and too much money to fix that and I don't want to re-grade the yard. It might be "rigging" it, but oh well.

Which is more feasible for this? As you can see, the part on the side of the house basically slopes down and drops off about half of a foot or so into the grass (gutter extensions will be addressed in the near future). Could I dig a shallow spot under the door and make an inclined ramp with sides maybe 3" deep from the area under the door to the side of the house to the side? Water would just run down into the grass. Or is it more feasible to dig out the area under the door and run an angled french drain with corrugated pipe in drainage gravel with a metal grate of some sort over the top of the gravel?

https://image.ibb.co/fKKdWa/upload.jpg

I'm not a very good concrete former, so I'm wondering how difficult making such a ramp would be.

Basically I'm talking about a very long concrete gutter splash that would channel water away from under the door and to the side of the house, instead.

Something very similar to this:

http://www.sportys.com/media/catalo...0ec09b1e35df139433887a97daa66f/8/4/8454_3.jpg


Looking for some alternate suggestions other than grading the land. I know that's not the "right" way to fix it, but I'm fine with that.
 
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So If I understand it right you want to run the water around the side of the house where ground is lower? And pick up the downspout water to. Is that right?
 
It is just the water that would go under the crawlspace door that I'd prefer to channel to the side of the house. I want to keep the downspouts separate. The door will be changed soon with a poly door and steel frame, but I just wanted to be sure that I have the water under the door under control beforehand.

As for the gutter downspouts, long extensions will help with those, of course. I'm wondering if there's a means for me to do something like this, however: http://www.structuretech1.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Downspout-connected-to-yard-drain.jpg I didn't put the markout symbol on it, of course. Just an example of what I thought might be possible.

Would there be enough pressure from the downspouts to bury the pipe and extend it out into the middle of the back yard with some type of flat discharge drain slightly above ground level or would I have to just have it discharge into some drainage gravel underground? I'm thinking that may not work above ground due to lack of pressure, but I'd like to not have the pipe laying on top of the ground. It would be a pain when mowing, Also, the sump pump pipe is a pain to mow around already and I'm pondering burying that PVC pipe and finding some kind of flat discharge drain for it. Not sure how feasible that is or if the PVC pipe would freeze underground in winter. The same for the downspout pipes, if buried.
 
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They do have yard drains that are just a grate or pop up with water, the proble with both of those is there is a place for water to sit in it and freeze So it is better to run the pipe out to drop water into a lower area.
 
They do have yard drains that are just a grate or pop up with water, the proble with both of those is there is a place for water to sit in it and freeze So it is better to run the pipe out to drop water into a lower area.

Maybe I'll just keep the pipes on top, then. What about some type of leech about half of a foot or a foot under the ground for the water from the downspouts to just run across and run into buried gravel without anything sticking up out of the ground to trap water? Or would that just cause a backup of water up to the drain spout?
 
Maybe I'll just keep the pipes on top, then. What about some type of leech about half of a foot or a foot under the ground for the water from the downspouts to just run across and run into buried gravel without anything sticking up out of the ground to trap water? Or would that just cause a backup of water up to the drain spout?

It's hard to tell, that water may just be going right inside. depends on where the water table is. If it is down a couple feet then yes it would go in the gravel.
 
What about some type of leech about half of a foot or a foot under the ground for the water from the downspouts to just run across and run into buried gravel without anything sticking up out of the ground to trap water? ...
That seems like the basic definition of a drywell.

As far as the concrete ramp is concerned, the first question to ask yourself is how will that affect access to the door. Far simpler would be a concrete curb up to the bottom of the door. Put in a pipe with a lawn grate just outside the door and run that pipe to any convenient lower ground.
http://www.homedepot.com/s/lawn%20grate?NCNI-5
 
As far as the concrete ramp is concerned, the first question to ask yourself is how will that affect access to the door. Far simpler would be a concrete curb up to the bottom of the door. Put in a pipe with a lawn grate just outside the door and run that pipe to any convenient lower ground.
http://www.homedepot.com/s/lawn%20grate?NCNI-5

It doesn't look like it in the photo, but there is already about a 1.5 or so "ledge" under the door. Not sure how far it extends down and of course I would need to dig that a lot deeper. I'm pondering a pre-made drain. While looking for options, I had no idea that they sell things like this at home improvement stores/websites:

77520347-97ec-4908-9385-ac7a6719d1cc_1000.jpg


It appears that these come in sections and that the pieces may have to be bought separately, but I really like the idea of it and it is so much less work. I would need to measure the length and probably cut off a piece to make it stop at the corner of the house. Not sure what kind of base (if any) would need to go underneath that before it could be put down. Concrete or just gravel? Or can it literally go right into the dirt like that without anything else?

As a note, the crawlspace door is soon to be replaced with something similar to this:

door.jpg



This frame will recess into the door opening and be screwed into the foundation rocks. I'm planning to use some type of mortar in maybe a grout bag to basically squirt in between (inside of the crawlspace and outside of the house) the foundation rocks and the steel frame once it is attached to seal the cracks that will remain (the rubblestone foundation on each side is not flush in all areas for the frame to be an exact fit and I want no cracks in it). Not a fan of caulk for something like this. Once unlatched, the entire door just lifts off from the frame, so no need to worry about anything scrubbing on whatever I put down.

In the process of my search, I came across something very interesting called concrete cloth: http://infrastructure.milliken.com/concrete-cloth-gccm/

There seems to be quite a lot of companies that sell it. Fiber matrix embedded with concrete mix. Comes in 5, 8 or 13 mm thicknesses. Waterproof pvc backing. Apparently after it is put down, it can be hydrated either by spraying or by being fully immersed in water and can't be overhydrated. Workable for a couple of hours after that. Hardens to 80 percent of its final strength in 24 hrs., and is 100 percent cured within a week. Comes in 4ft wide rolls that are about 165 pounds and cover 100sq. ft. Not sure if it is available for consumers, but I'm going to look into it for a variety of things. Out of curiosity, would this work to line the inside of the existing walls, floor and sump for for the water issues in the same crawlspace that I have been fighting water in? It would take forever to manually mix concrete down there to do something similar. Anybody had any experience with this stuff?
 
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Alright, so scratch the concrete ramp. I'm going to put in a yard drain under the door. Those drains have holes in the bottom for attaching corrugated pipe, so I'm planning to dig a channel across the yard have it exit at an area over there next to the fence where there's a hole about a foot deep from an old tree that used to be there. It would punch through the side of the top of that hole via the trench and drain into the hole, which would fill up and disperse into the ground sort of like an open drywell. I may put some gravel or something in the hole just because. That's probably kind of a tacky idea, but it would keep the water farther away from the house, at least. I had been considering running a 10 foot drain from under the door all the way to the side of the house and just letting the water run out of the drain there, but that doesn't seem very feasible. Because of that, I can't see a reason to run the drain anywhere else but under the door itself.

Obviously, both the drain itself and the pipe need to have a constant angle going all the way to the fence to keep the water moving in that direction. I presume that these yard drains need to have gravel put down first in the trench before they are put in. Is that right? But then that is surely to look odd if one side of the drain under the door is down and the other side is up.
 
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