I have spent the last two years or so improving the drainage around our house. I installed gutters and made the drain pipes empty out far away from the foundation. I installed a swale in the backyard to direct water flowing down hill away from the house and into surface drains, which empty out far away from the foundation. I installed a French drain under and around our new deck, once again, making sure that the drain pipe empties out far away from the foundation. All of those things have helped as we have less water in the basement than we used to. Still, if conditions are right, the basement floods, usually by water coming up through the floor drains.

I am convinced that the pipe which the floor drains empty into has been compromised by tree roots. It is an older pipe made from tar impregnated fibers, known as Orangeburg Pipe (manufactured in near by Orangeburg, NY). This was pipe was very common before PVC was readily available. It is fairly fragile and can disintegrate over time. It does not resist tree roots at all and once damaged can not be easily repaired. It is also hard to use rotary cutting tools, such as roto-rooter to remove roots because once the pipe is compromised, it usually collapses. I think digging this up and replacing the span that goes from the basement drains (and also the footing drain) out the the roadway ditch will help the basement flooding issue greatly. If the footing drain is made from Orangeburg Pipe as well, it may be time to replace the whole thing, so there may be a lot of digging going on next summer.

I suppose the question is, how far do I go? While I have the excavator here to I did up around the whole foundation and replace the entire footing drain, or do I wait to see if replacing the drainage pipe works. And, If I end up digging around the entire foundation, do I fix the problem with the front foundation wall? It bows in slightly, which makes me think that it is substandard and should be worked on.

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