So one day after we dug the trench and before we installed the pipe or rock or sump pump we had a rainstorm. And the crawl space didn’t flood! But the trench did fill with water so it did its job!
Month: November 2016
The trencher!
We have now gotten to the part of our renovation where Steve gets to play with big tools!
To get proper drainage we needed to install a French drain. So what a French drain is a trench with a perforated pipe to collect the groundwater and transfer it down the trench. In our case the trench ended with a sump pump to pump the water away or into rain barrels. The trench is then filled in with rock to allow for water movement through that area.
So for us the first step was digging the trench; our trench needs to be 100 feet long, one foot wide and three feet deep so it is a big project! In order to accomplish all of this we rented a trencher (from Home Depot of course) and got to digging. Since it is a huge amount of work we had a lot of help! And Steve loved operating the heavy machinery. 
A new kind of crossfit
So we have been working on the foundation for a while and have had a couple of big rainstorms. Because the foundation is all open we have a great view of the crawl space and it floods with any heavy rain.
Because we didn’t want our new foundation to get damaged we decided to take a detour and put in a drainage system. We also figured out that the flooding in the garage was because of our extra driveway. I don’t have great pictures but we have a two car garage with a standard driveway and then a third section of driveway to the side that goes next to the garage as well. Having the cement right next to the garage was funneling water into the garage with rain.
So our outside project begins with jack hammering up the third driveway. It was hard work! The jackhammer is heavy and we all had bruises by the end. Also, the French drain needed to go through where the cement was so my friend Charlotte and I were following behind the jackhammer and tossing chunks of concrete into a pile. It was basically cross fit.
Here are some pictures:
abbyandsteve.com 