Drainage Solutions in Clark County, WA

Almost always a combination of Clark County clay subsoil, compaction from construction equipment, and a grade that does not fall anywhere. Clay drains extremely slowly, so once the top few inches saturate in November, additional rain has nowhere to go until spring. The fix is giving the water a path out rather than waiting for it to soak in.

It depends on length, depth, whether we can get a machine to the trench line, what the trench has to cross, and how far the outlet is. A short run in an open back yard is a very different job from a hundred feet of hand-dug trench between a fence and a house. We price it after walking it, and the number we give you is fixed.

Occasionally, if it is a genuinely isolated dip. Usually it moves the problem rather than solving it, because the water still has nowhere to go and simply ponds at the new low point. If the water is arriving from uphill or from your roof, filling does nothing.

Simple private drainage usually does not require one, but connections to a public storm system, work in a critical area or wetland buffer, and anything that changes where water leaves your property can. We will flag it if your project looks like it needs a call to the county or city first.

Water standing more than about a day after the rain stops, moss taking over the lawn, a soft or spongy area that never firms up, water in the crawl space, or a retaining wall that has started to lean. One puddle during a downpour is normal. Ground that is still saturated three days later has nowhere to send water.

A French drain is a perforated pipe in a gravel trench that collects water along its whole length — it is for broad saturated ground. A catch basin is a grated box at a specific low point that takes surface water at one spot. Wet lawns usually need the first, ponding hollows the second, and plenty of yards need both.

This is the question that decides the whole design, and it is the one cheap drainage jobs skip. Ideally to daylight somewhere lower on the property. Where there is no fall, options narrow to a dry well, an approved connection, or a sump. A drain line that stops in a gravel pocket in flat, poorly draining ground has simply relocated the puddle.

A buried chamber that holds a volume of water and lets it soak away slowly, used where there is no gravity outlet. It works well where the ground below can actually accept water, which is the catch — on the poorly drained low ground in our basins and drainageways, a dry well can fill in winter and stay full. We test the situation before recommending one.

Usually yes, and it is the highest-value drainage work most houses can have done. A roof sheds a startling volume of water in a Pacific Northwest winter, and dumping it at the foundation is how crawl spaces get wet and how the ground beside the house stays saturated. Tightlining it to a proper outlet removes the problem at source.

Most often surface water and roof water arriving at the foundation rather than groundwater rising. Downspouts discharging at the wall, ground sloping toward the house, or a patio built up too high are the usual causes, and all three are fixable outside. It is worth ruling those out before anyone sells you an interior system.

It is arguably the best time, because we can see the problem. In August a wet corner looks like ordinary lawn; in January it tells you exactly where water collects, which way it travels and how long it lingers. If you are planning drainage work, photographs taken during a February downpour are genuinely useful to us.

Trenching is not tidy — expect open trench lines, spoil heaps and machine tracks for the duration. Lawn areas recover quickly and we reinstate them, and where a trench has to cross a patio or driveway we will say so before you sign rather than after. Hand-dug runs through tight side yards take longer and cost more than open ground.

It fixes it when the water is arriving from the surface or from saturated soil beside the foundation, which is the common case here. It does not fix a high water table, a plumbing leak or a failed vapour barrier. We would rather diagnose it correctly than sell you a trench that does not address the actual source.

Sometimes, and only with the right permission. Connections to a public storm system are regulated, and so is discharging water into a wetland buffer or critical area, or in a way that pushes it onto a neighbour. We will tell you when your design needs a conversation with the county or your city first.

No, and it is one of the fastest ways to turn a drainage problem into a legal one. Concentrating water and directing it across a boundary is a genuine dispute waiting to happen. Every design we do has to have a legitimate destination for the water on your own property or into an approved system.

Decades, if it is built with clean drain rock, proper perforated pipe and geotextile separating the rock from the soil. The systems that fail early fail because fine soil migrated into the gravel and silted it up. Cleanouts at sensible points let you flush the line rather than dig it up.

A little. Keep the grates and outlets clear of leaves and needles, especially in autumn, and flush the lines through the cleanouts occasionally. Most of the failures we get called to are not broken systems — they are outlets that quietly disappeared under bark and leaf litter over five years.

Always, and this is the sequencing mistake that costs people the most money. Drainage lives under everything else, so fixing it after the hardscape and planting are in means digging up work you have already paid for. Grade and drainage first, then hardscape, then planting.

On a site with somewhere for the water to go, corrective grading and a swale can do the whole job with no pipe at all, and it is the cheaper and more durable answer where it works. Piped systems are for when there is no surface route out, or the water has to cross something. We will tell you which situation you are in.