 Hi, I'm Tom Cher, an agricultural engineer with North Dakota State University Extension Service. And we're going to talk about water on the outside of the house. You know, most people think that some pump is the first line of defense to keep water out of the basement. But have you ever thought about walking around the outside of your house and just looking at the areas that might contribute to the excess water getting into the basement? There are outside factors that can influence how much water gets to the basement and what the sump pump has to handle. We're going to cover the six most important items to limit water problems in your basement. Some pump discharge, soil slope around the house, window wells, how to prevent soil from pulling away from the house, gutters, and then their downspouts. The discharge from the sump pump is really important. You want to make sure that whatever is pumped out of the basement is getting away from the house. And as you can see here, sometimes the motor lawn or whatever, people pull the hose away. But if the pump were to turn on, a lot of this water might end up here. And what you want to make sure is that the water is pumped far enough away from the house so that it slopes and goes into a drainage area. As you can see here, between these two houses, it flows down towards the street there and flows into the storm sewer. Because the discharge hose from the sump pump when it comes out of the house can sometimes get in the way, a lot of homeowners will bury their line. As you can see from here, the sump pump, and this runs out to the street and discharges into the street. That way it's covered up. You don't hit it with the lawn mower and it's not in the way, but it's always discharging where you want the water to go. I'm Ken Hellevang, agricultural engineer with the NDSU Extension Service. And I want to visit with you a little bit about the slope of the soil next to the house. So many times, maybe we start out with the soil slope the right direction. And then as the soil settles, all of a sudden water is flowing toward the house rather than away from the house. In many homes, we'll have landscape rock around the house and that can be deceiving or foolish sometimes. The rock may look okay, indicating that we have a proper slope from the house, sloping away for several feet. But I encourage you to pull the rock back in some locations and actually look to see if the soil itself is sloping in the right direction. And here what I have done is to actually put a level on here so that we can see the slope higher near the house, sloping away from the house so that that water runs down and will get away from the house. Another thing that you would want to look for is, is there soil all the way up to the house or is there a separation there that is going to allow water to flow down along the basement wall and down to the basement of your home? We're at a home where they're just in the process of doing some remodeling on their landscaping and what they're doing is adding soil to build it up that had sunk near the house, adding soil to get that slope and they're going to even add more soil underneath this plastic. But I wanted to show the plastic because this is what we would recommend that either we go with plastic or some kind of landscape fabric, something that helps move the water away from the house before it starts soaking into the soil. The other idea is to use clay or something else where the water doesn't permeate through very rapidly to help move that water away. Earlier I mentioned about one of the concerns that we have is that the soil will settle near the house and when it settles rather than the water running away from the house, it runs toward the house or it may pond close to the house. And so we want to look for places where that soil has settled. Here we have a patio where it's very obvious that next to the wall the soil has settled and the patio pavers have gone down as well. I've put a level on there to reference what would be level off of the patio and onto the house and of course we really wanted the slope from the house out and away. So we would need to raise the patio and if this happened to be concrete slab, there would be all the water from out on that concrete flowing toward the house. So particularly look at sidewalks, concrete slabs or patios or just any place where that soil is sunk near the house and we need to move the water the other direction. With a patio like this we need to pick up the pavers and bring in soil fill so that it will flow away from the house. With a concrete slab sometimes we can mudjack or lift the concrete to establish that right slope. Also you will notice here we have a downspout but that downspout has been extended away from the house to make sure that the water isn't being deposited right close to the house. It's important that we extend downspouts preferably several feet, maybe even 10 feet away from the house so that the water does not flow next to the house. With just a 1 inch rain coming off of a 1200 square foot house that amounts to about 750 gallons of water. So there's a huge amount of water coming off of the roof down through the various downspouts and we need to assure that that water is not deposited next to the house but is draining away from the house. Another problem that can kind of sneak up on us is when we have dry weather the soil will dry out and it will actually shrink and pull away from the house and actually establish a crack right along the basement wall and that then allows water to flow in once it does rain. We frequently get questions about people wanting to fill that crack with soil. We discourage that because if we were to go packing soil in there when the soil gets wet and expands it's going to push on the wall of the basement and so even though it seems tempting to fill that crack with soil, do not fill that crack with soil. What we recommend is that you try to maintain a uniform moisture in the soil either running sprinklers or what I like to do is use a sprinkler hose where I tip it upside down and just run it a foot or two away from the house and run a little bit of water to keep that soil at a constant moisture to keep it moist so that we're not having that soil pulling away from the house. Another way that water can enter into a basement is through the window well and here we have an escape window so it's larger than some window wells but regardless of the size the way that we handle a window well is going to be the same. We'll start out looking here at the soil around the window well. We want to make sure that the window well is a couple three maybe even four inches above the soil around that window well so that the water doesn't run into the window well. Ideally we would like to see the ground slope away from that window well so that we are assured that that water doesn't pond next to the window well. I encourage people to use a window well cover actually for several reasons. One is to make sure that the water drains away rather than flowing into the window well and so that's one of the things you want to look for is does that window well cover slope to allow that water to come out and away from the window. Also it's going to help keep leaves and other debris from getting into the window well and that's a frequent problem. If we get an accumulation of leaves or debris it'll prevent that water from soaking in the way that we want it to. There's several things that we need to consider actually in the window well. We want to make sure that the ground level is several inches below the bottom of that window and then I also recommend putting rock or other very permeable material on top of that soil so that the water can easily soak through and get down to that soil. Ideally we would also run a vertical column of rock down to the drainage system around the foot inner foundation of the house. Frequently what they will do is use some drainage pipe, fill it full of the rock so that if water comes flowing in it can easily drain through the rock and into the drainage system for the house. One other thing that we should consider or look for when we're inspecting our window well is to see if it's bonded to the concrete. Sometimes what we will find is that the soil settles and as it settles it's going to pull the window well away from the wall and that then allows any water that's flowing outside to just flow down along that crack and down into the window well. So in that case we would need to either pull the soil away and redo the window well or if it's a smaller crack we can probably do some kind of a sealer to assure that that water entry path is closed. The last thing we want to talk about that contributes water to the outside of the house is the downspouts and the gutters that feed them. We want to make sure that you remove the leaves and sediment in the fall and spring since they can plug the downspout and then water would overflow and dump all that water right next to the foundation. Make sure that downspouts if they're plugged install leaf guards on the gutters. There are many home supply stores that carry a wide variety of covers that you can put on that will keep most of the leaves and larger debris out and then the last but not least is safety. If you are having your gutters cleaned if you do it yourself be extremely careful. They are up on the house and you have to climb a ladder to get up to them to clean them or else hire somebody down to do the job for you.