Water Always Wins

Big week.

Hot week.

Quick question before we get into it:

Does a swale that never got cut eventually cut itself?

Asking for a warranty call.

The Good News: Single-family permits ticked up 0.6% month-over-month to 886K. Small win.

The Bad News: Mortgage rates climbed to 6.52%, up from 6.48% last week. Material costs are still running 3.0% higher year-over-year.

Also, water still follows gravity. Every single time.

Okay, okay, okay.

Swales.

Don't put your fence posts in them.

But more importantly — make sure your landscaper actually cuts one that's worth the water it's supposed to divert.

You know…not one that gently introduces runoff into the homeowner's backyard where it can puddle up and start its own little ecosystem.

In this case, the homeowner putting fence posts in the swale was definitely part of the problem.

Me not making sure the swale was deeper and actually connected to the front-yard drainage?

That one's on me.

One warranty visit and two full days of my landscaper maneuvering a skid steer around decorative yard gnomes will be permanently burned into my memory.

Moral of the story:

Water always wins.

And apparently so do lawn ornaments.

This one…

Not me, thankfully.

That's bad, right?

Oh yeah.

Foundation's in. Yard is rough graded. Driveway is poured.

At that point, so many trades have touched the job — grading, concrete, sitework, landscaping — and somehow nobody stopped and said:

'Hey…this doesn't look right.'

Because this definitely does not look right.

Honestly, this house should've probably been raised another 8 inches. Maybe more.

You need fall away from the house.

Especially when your lot already sits lower than the road and the ditches that are supposed to carry runoff.

Anything is salvageable if you've got enough money and a good concrete saw, I guess.

The rule is simple:

Surface water has to drain away from the foundation.

The grade has to fall at least 6 inches within the first 10 feet.

If site conditions make that impossible, the code allows drains or swales to move water away from the structure.

Translation:

This is the code that keeps your house from becoming a damp little science experiment.

If the dirt slopes toward the house, water wins eventually.

And when water wins, it usually shows up as crawlspace moisture, settlement issues, wet basements, angry homeowners, or all three at once.

Good news is grading problems are fixable.

Bad news is they're a whole lot cheaper to fix before the driveway gets poured.

See you next Friday.

Try not to inherit anybody else's problem before Monday.

— David