Go to the FDM Canada SiteOutdoor Sump Pump in Patio – Walkout Basement – Washington Twp, MI
Welcome to the French drain man channel. We did a project in Washington Township, Michigan, and I wasn’t here to shoot video, but it was a job that the crew took care of in a day. I want to show you what they did and why we had to do what we did.
These are pictures that were taken during the construction so that you can see that we pulled up all the brick pavers behind this house. This is a walkout basement. Water was going in the walkout basement. So we pulled up all the pavers. We put in a basin that’s five foot deep, two feet in diameter. There’s a couple of reasons why I go that deep. One, we get the heat from the ground so they don’t freeze up. And two, say during a storm there’s a power outage, to have something that’s five feet deep, 24 inches in diameter for your sump pit. That buys you a little time to go rent a generator or borrow one from the neighbor.
So just like geothermal at five feet deep, we’re year-round approximately 53 degrees. And this was just an approximate and it varies pending conditions, soil types, but this is good in general.
Okay, so let’s begin. So here’s this beautiful outdoor living space and everything was graded towards the house. So the original grade threw off the brick installers. Now I want to emphasize we were not the original installers. We came and fixed this for the homeowner. We pulled up all the pavers and then we were able to slightly grade all the pavers towards our sump pit, like a funnel. So now the water, instead of going into the walkout basement, it just goes right through the grate. Where we have a sump pump and you can see that we have raceway under the pavers, schedule 40 raceway. That way if the pump needs replacing, it’s so easy to service. And then we have the injection line and it goes to a storm drain catch basin where we core through the side of it
I’ll show you what went wrong. The grade is pretty high back here. And the brick installers, the original brick installers that did this job, instead of cutting the grade down and then creating a swale to that storm drain catch base over here, that’s all it would have took. They didn’t have the knowledge, they didn’t have the experience. Yet they put in this massive outdoor living space. So the companies that have five crews, they have an A crew, B crew, C crew. This obviously wasn’t the A crew because this is a company I have a lot of respect for them. I know the owner.
We have to pull up a lot of people’s brick. We have to take a lot of people’s work apart. I guess it is job security for us, but I just want to show you what you can do in the event something like this happens. You don’t want to have to take this entire outdoor living space completely apart. The expense of disassembly and reassembly and getting the grade right at this point in comparison to just having us come out, pull this up, grade it, put in a pit, put a pump, lift station, sump pump pit, whatever you want to refer to it as. This is the right way to handle a situation like this and it’s a more affordable way. Since then they’ve refinished their basement, they put in hardwood floors and they can sleep at night because this was a real issue.
So if you’re looking for yard drainage of any kind, outdoor drainage of any kind, and if you’re looking for outdoor living spaces, there is a huge advantage to having your outdoor living space built by a licensed builder who not only owns a landscape company but owns a yard drainage company.
For yard drainage and outdoor living spaces in southeastern Michigan, give us a call at 248-505-3065.
