Lot grading, water percolation & french drain on the property line along the fence..How2 drain t 5

[MiniMe4Eng]

I am now trying to understand if the current water drainage on my lot is wrong. The previous owner excavated the soil around the house and he probably spread the soil around the house in the backyard

Also my neighbor's property is on a higher grounds and I suspect his drainage is not 100% fair.

Below you have a representation of the rear side of the house, the left side house is mine.!

**The purple line** is the general slope of the terrain, as mentioned my neighbor's house is on grounds slightly higher than mine.

**The blue and brown lines** show the backyard general grading. The 8' strip that you see along my patio is not sloped correctly and I intend to fix that.

**The patio** drains toward the red spot where I intend to install a catch basin and I plan to drain that to a dry well south east of that corner

**Problems**

-the yellow line on my neighbors garage is a gutter that he extended on the soil and that currently drains on his property on the paved walkway that you see there

-by design both properties seem to drain the water toward the property line and that should at least affect the fence. As a matter of fact one of the poles is completely cut (rotten) at he base

-I believe that under the soil (subgrade) the water moves toward my house anyway due to the general slope of the terrain

**Questions:**

1. Looking at the measurements of the space between the garages **do you think that the water that the water that comes out his gutter (yellow on the figure) will infiltrate the soil and move laterally toward my property and my garage?** Just next to the garage the former owner built a small parking lot, paved with precast concrete blocks and I suspect that the base of that parking spot will suck all the water that makes it to it. Am I too worried about this?

2. Looking over the fence at my neighbor's patio one can easily see that when he built that he accentuated the slope and that now all that water drains toward the fence. I think that the only remedy here is to build a french drain along the fence which I should drain in the dry well that is in the plans for the patio. Is this a correct plan? **Will this french drain affect the fence in any way?**

3. **Is the distance between the fence and my house long enough to keep my house safe from that water which probably collects underground on the property line?** (not sure where it goes from there)

 

[oldestguy]

The earlier link is a start as to looking into capillarity, but much more may be involved
at your wall. There also may be an osmotic movement, especially where the efflorescence takes place.

It so happens that concrete is a pretty good osmotic membrane.

However, by viewing the attached videos and looking at the “dry treat ad”
You may have a better handle on working with your situation.

Note a photo in one of the ink videos of efflorescence at a brick wall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70x98CdErbE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph-7tQuIbz4

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/diffus.html

http://www.drytreat.com/

 

[MiniMe4Eng]

Sorry for not getting back with any feedback to you guys
Here in Ontario we are just after a long weekend with lots of things to do at work
I hope to get a few moments later today to comment on the above

many thanks to all of you for the above

 

[MiniMe4Eng]

Quick question: would it work if I drill holes parallel to the wall down to the foundation like showed in the picture below in order to dry up the wall?
I am just trying to determine if the wall is drying up too slowly or there is a constant source of humidity at the base of the wall.

Yesterday and over the weekend it rained. I was away in both cases and I did not have the chance to see how the water is flowing on my patio. I am now running a dehumidifier, a lower capacity one and I can say that it brings the humidity from 60% down to 45% quite fast. That and the fact that probably less and less water accumulates in that corner makes me believe that this is still an exterior problem (wishful thinking ) and I might be a little too impatient with this drying up process

 

[oldestguy]

Og here. My opinion is that drying needs circulation and not much if any with open holes.

If you really want to test your treatment, get out the garden hose and let her run for a while, say a few hours..

 

[MiniMe4Eng]

What would that prove?
I don't have a crack there on that side.
If the crack is not there what else can I test?
If I let it run for a few hours I am going to find out what I already know: if I have increased humidity in soil in that area the wall will get wet

I can see just two other options here in order to see if I am making any progress:
-make some marks on the wall around the wet spots to see if they shrink or they increase after long periods of no rain or shortly after a rain
-try to dry up the spots with a plumber gas torch an see if it gets wet again ..

 

[oldestguy]

Maybe you can do enough observations, cleaning, etc. to satisfy yourself you know sufficiently enough to make any future modifications.

Looking at some of the reference links sent earlier, and researching "moisture tension" (the Brits use "suction") you may be able to more accurately figure out what is going on.

When I get into a situation involving variable moisture in concrete floors and how it affects glued down flooring, I install devices to measure soil moisture tension in the concrete.

Some can be done with portable meters. In your case I'd look at a meter with a probe. I'd then drill a few holes in the medium I was to test, of the same diameter as the probe.

I have not used those for plants but it sounds like they would do the job.

An interesting result comes when you test real dry stuff. That vacuum effect shows up quickly.

For plants there are some with water in a tube.

It may take sealing at the surface to do the job right. Some of them are pretty cheap, probably available at a green house.

Check out this link as a starter and maybe also search "tensiometers".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_moisture_sensor

 

[oldestguy]

OG again with a suggestion for an electrical engineer. Us soils guys do some exploration into the earth with a device called resisitivity.
Some times that is used to find depth to water table or rock.
It measures electrical resistance between probes in the ground. There is no reason that the same general principle cannot be used to monitor moisture content
of masonry or concrete between two buried electrode. Then in the walls perhaps with them in different locations along a possible path for moisture movement.. I'd do some calibrating with the same medium first by varying he moisture content of the medium against the resistance.
Of course one has to take into account solvents in the water that affect the resistance. Osmosis effects also may be involved then. A little research on this also may help
in setting up the procedures. Remember concrete has a bunch of different chemicals in it, some of which dissolve readily. However, I'd still expect to see changes in resistance
mainly due to changes in moisture content. Some of those moisture meters used for growing plants make use of electrical resistance as the basis for the meter.
Maybe the end result will be a paper published about how to evaluate efflorescence prevention methods.

 

[MiniMe4Eng]

Quick update:
-it rained quite heavily...the slope of the patio is good the water drains where I wanted it to.
-the humidity in basement did not increase anymore
-I found the source of smell in the open ceiling of the furnace room. As soon as I started keepng closed that door the smell diminished big time and it is now localized in that room only! I will get back to you with some questions about it


Q: can you take the quotes of your lot using the altimeter function of a GPS ? Crazy idea that I read about on a contractor site

 

[cr1973]

As someone said before, you guys are WAY overthinking this. This seems to be a clear surface water drainage issue. The patio might be pitched properly, but the clay impervious layer beneath may still be backpitched, allowing water to flow through the limestone screenings down to the clay, and towards the home.

A simple regrading and use of swales would be the likely fix. Possibly a drain at one location should water pond.

 

[MiniMe4Eng]

I beg to differ
This guy (

http://www.pavingexpert.com/blocks2.htm)

seems to be very good. The site is exceptional for this topic
As you can see below there is no slope for the subgrade
Another detail: for a couple of weeks I had the limestone removed next to the wall all the way to the soil level
It rained but no water made it to the wall via under the bricks and limestone which invalidate your theory
Right now I believe that I have water trapped in the cinder blocks of the foundation walls on that side.
I need to dry out that wall, probably from inside, drilling holes into the blocks and by using a dehumidifier (a professional one)

 

[MiniMe4Eng]

Quick update

It seems that what I see on the wall is not exactly water, otherwise I can not explain this:
I took a hair dryer and I tried to dry up one of the spots
One year ago they looked like this

A month ago they looked like this

The white efflorescence that you see at the bottom of the first picture disappeared by itself (not sure if it is because the rain washed that). The second picture is taken after I fixed the patio

I expected that, by using the hair dryer, I would be able to temporarily dry up one spot and after that I would have expected the humidity to come back and to rebuild the wet spot. This did not happen. The hair dryer had no effect on those spots. I am inclined to believe that they are some sort of salts although I would say a salt should be whitesh not greyish

Any idea why I could not dry up that spot and what are these spots in fact?