Drainage & French Drains in Camden, NJ

Is it drainage or a backup?

Clear water seeping through a basement wall or pooling in the yard after rain is a drainage problem we can fix on your property. Sewage coming up through a floor drain during a storm may be the combined system surcharging. If neighbors are seeing the same thing at the same time, call the city's sewer operator. If it's only your house, the problem is more likely your own line.

Start with the roof

On most homes the largest single source of water at the foundation is the roof. Downspouts that empty against the wall, or into buried leaders that have broken, deliver all of it into the soil beside the basement. Re-routing roof water in solid pipe to a legal outlet is usually the first fix we recommend.

What we look for

We walk the property, ideally after rain, and trace water from where it starts to where it stops:

• Downspouts discharging at the foundation or into broken leaders
• Walks, patios or yards pitched toward the house
• Water arriving from a neighboring lot or the street
• Low spots where soil has settled beside the foundation
• Areas where pavement leaves rain no place to soak in

French drains where water moves underground

When water travels below the surface toward a foundation, a French drain intercepts it: a trench lined with filter fabric, filled with clean stone, carrying perforated pipe at a continuous fall to an outlet. The fabric keeps soil out of the stone; the continuous fall keeps the pipe from holding water. We set grade with a laser on every run.

Catch basins for paved yards

Many city properties have yards that are mostly paved. Rain can't soak in, so it runs to the lowest point — often a back door or basement stairwell. A catch basin at that low point, piped to an outlet, collects the water before it reaches the house.

Regrading against the foundation

Soil settles beside foundations over time until the ground pitches toward the house. Regrading so it falls away for the first few feet keeps surface water off the wall. Fill is compacted in lifts so the new grade holds.

Concrete that sheds water

Settled walks and patios that tip toward the house turn every storm into foundation water. We can cut out and replace the failed section with the pitch corrected, and we self-perform the concrete so restoration is matched and properly finished.

A legal outlet for every system

Every drainage system needs somewhere legitimate to discharge. On city lots that may be the street, a dry well where soil and space allow, or another outlet the city permits. We confirm before building, and we never direct water onto a neighboring property.

Utilities and permits

Water in Camden comes from the city system run by American Water, New Jersey American Water or the Merchantville-Pennsauken Water Commission depending on the neighborhood. We have all utilities marked and locate private lines before digging. Work that opens city pavement requires permits and inspection, which we handle.

Older city properties

Many Camden homes are older rowhouses and twins on small lots, where every foot of yard counts. Drainage on these properties has to be compact and precise: shallow lines, short runs to the outlet, and hand-digging along foundations and party walls where equipment can't fit. We plan the route before we dig so the finished work takes as little space as possible, and we restore paving and concrete so the yard is usable again the day we leave. Cleanouts are added where lines turn, so the pipe can be flushed if leaves or grit ever build up.

What a finished job looks like

When we're done, trenches are backfilled and compacted, grades fall away from the house, downspout lines end at a proper outlet, and any concrete we cut is restored. The test is the next heavy storm: water should leave the foundation area instead of collecting against it.