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So I'm in NW Raleigh. Single family home with crawl space. We thought we had a leak but we've had two people look at it and they say no. We just had someone from are irrigation company come out. He thinks we just have poor drainage in/out of the crawl space. We are on a bit of a slope so it's possible rain water is coming in from the golf course above us and not draining out to the street.
Any suggestions for someone who could take a look at the drainage situation? I did a Google search and found one local company. But the reviews are so good and there are so many that I'm a little doubtful they are real.
Can you explain what work they did? Vapor barrier, etc
I can't remember all the details, but they put some landscaping rock, a pump to pump out any extra water, a pvc pipe to push the water out of the crawl space. Over the rock they put thick gray plastic. The whole thing took about 2 days. The first day they prepped everything and laid the rock. The second day, they installed the pipe, pump and did the plastic, I think. Then, within 1-2 days, they sent someone (site manager?) to walk through the whole thing with us.
We used Shamrock Waterproofing and were pretty impressed with their work.
I used Shamrock Waterproofing to address some drainage issues in my yard and to replace the low point drain in my crawlspace. Very impressed with the job they did, and the price was reasonable. I actually need to have them come out and do some more work.
Step 1, make sure all water is moving away from your house. Do you have good positive slope away for a few feet all around? Is the crawlspace door at or below ground level? Foundation vents at least 4” above grade?. Do your downspouts run away from the house at least a few feet?
Step 2 Make sure you have good vapor barrier on 100% of the floor.
Any suggestions for someone who could take a look at the drainage situation? I did a Google search and found one local company. But the reviews are so good and there are so many that I'm a little doubtful they are real.
Well.....get ready to be frustrated because I've talked to a lot of drainage contractors who offered various different solutions and all of them cost several thousand dollars with no written guarantee of effectiveness.
Some companies take the one size fits all approach and use the same product solution for almost every customer. Others won't really tell you exactly how they plan to fix your problem because then you can take their ideas or proposed solution and do the work yourself denying them from getting the contract job.
Then there's at least one company around here that will charge you an up front design fee to design a solution which would be refunded only if you chose them to do the work.
I did like Shamrock the best and they do come highly recommended, but in my case I didn't feel their proposed solution went far enough to be effective....and their quote was around $4K.
The first step in finding a solution is to understand what the problem is and where the water is coming from. This means spending some quality time in your crawlspace especially during periods of heavy rain to determine how and where the water is entering the crawlspace which may be from one or more areas. Once you determine the water entry points then you can decide the best way to mitigate the situation.
In my case I discovered the entire back foundation wall of my home was allowing water entry because of the shoddy swiss cheese way the bricklayers constructed the foundation wall using red brick in some places with no mortar between the joints. There was no way to effectively mitigate this from the outside of the home, so I installed a foundation parameter drain pipe system with gravel inside the crawlspace with a sump pump and supplemental gravity drain for backup support in case the sump pump ever fails or becomes overloaded with water. Yes....the water still comes in but now it is being properly managed and drained back outside 25 feet away from the home so the crawlspace remains dry and no longer floods and I can rest easy now when the heavy rains come. I even have a sump pump camera so I can watch it in action from my recliner chair.
In contrast....contractors will spend maybe 10 minutes evaluating your crawlspace if your lucky and will then propose a best guess high-dollar repair solution that may or may not fix your drainage problem. I've been told that I did a better job than most contractors would ever spend the time to do.
I have had multiple experiences with Shamrock and Keith, in particular.
He will tell it like it is, minimize upselling of unnecessary stuff to build the ticket.
They show up when they say they will, do what they say they will do, and the bill is what they say it will be.
So, my first call for crawlspace or exterior drainage issues. https://www.shamrockwaterproofing.com
If you aren't confident in their word, and don't have the diagnostic skills to figure it out yourself, you might just hire a licensed engineer to diagnose the source of wetness and propose a fix. That will be someone who isn't going to sell and install the solution, so no inducement to build a ticket.
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