Ask the Builder: Effective Drainage Depends on Proper Design and Use of Materials

The first thing to understand about subsurface water movement is that it doesn’t always head straight down.
Ask the Builder: Effective Drainage Depends on Proper Design and Use of Materials
This is a 4-inch diameter perforated drainpipe. Almost everything about the installation shown in this photo is wrong. Tim Carter/Tribune Content Agency/TNS
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Water drainage is misunderstood by many homeowners, builders, YouTube personalities and building inspectors, if my email in-box is any indicator. I’ve lost count of the thousands of drainage help requests entered on the Ask Tim page of my AsktheBuilder.com website.

Geology was my college major, with a specific focus on hydrogeology. That’s the discipline of subsurface groundwater and groundwater movement. I was also a young builder when geo-textile fabrics were becoming mainstream in road and parking lot construction. They’re often required to block silt from flowing overland on construction sites. Let that sink in.

Tim Carter
Tim Carter
Author
Tim Carter is the founder of AsktheBuilder.com. He's an amateur radio operator and enjoys sending Morse code sitting at an actual telegrapher's desk. Carter lives in central New Hampshire with his wife, Kathy, and their dog, Willow. Subscribe to his FREE newsletter at AsktheBuilder.com. He now does livestreaming video M-F at 4 PM Eastern Time at youtube.com/askthebuilder. (C)2022 Tim Carter. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.