Drainage & French Drains in Cherry Hill, NJ

Mid-century lots, mid-century grading

Most Cherry Hill homes went up between the mid-1950s and early 1970s. Grading was rough by today's standards, and decades of settling, new patios, added sheds and raised garden beds have flattened or reversed whatever slope the builder left. Finished basements and additions placed on poorly compacted fill settle, and the low spot that forms beside them steers water straight at the foundation.

The result is familiar: a soggy strip along one side of the house, water tracking in at the basement wall, a sump pump that runs through every storm, and downspouts that dump right beside the footing.

Start with the source

Before recommending anything, we walk the property in its actual condition and work out where the water is coming from. It's usually one or more of these:

• Roof water from downspouts discharging at the foundation
• Surface runoff from a neighbor's yard or a higher part of your own lot
• Ground water perched on a clay layer just below the topsoil
• Low spots created by settlement next to patios, walks or additions
• Old swales that have silted in and no longer carry water away

French drains, built for clay

A French drain is a trench lined with filter fabric, bedded with clean stone and carrying perforated pipe set to a continuous fall. In Cherry Hill's sand-over-clay ground, depth matters: the drain has to reach the layer where water is actually moving, and the fabric keeps fine sand from silting up the stone.

Because the ground is so flat, we set the pipe to grade with a laser rather than by eye. A French drain that holds water in its own low spot just relocates the problem.

Every drain needs somewhere legal to go

Collecting water is the easy half. The harder half on a flat lot is the outlet. We design around a legitimate destination — daylight at a lower part of your own property, a dry well sized to the soil, or a connection the township allows — rather than assuming the ground will soak up what we send it. Pushing water onto a neighbor's lot isn't a solution and creates a new dispute.

Where there's no good daylight point, a properly built dry well in the sandier pockets can work. Over dense clay it usually can't, and we'll tell you so before you pay for it.

Downspouts and regrading

Often the most effective fix is the simplest. Tying downspouts into buried solid pipe that carries roof water well away from the house removes a large share of the water at the foundation. Regrading a strip along the house so it falls away for the first several feet does the rest.

We cut, fill and compact in lifts so the new grade holds rather than settling back into a bowl, then topsoil and leave it ready for seed or sod.

When the water is already inside

A wet basement after heavy rain is often a drainage problem outside the wall rather than a failure of the wall itself. Fixing the grading and roof water first is usually the right order. If water is still coming in once the outside is under control, interior or footing drainage may be the next step — and if the issue is sewage rather than groundwater, that's a different call entirely.

Working around driveways and patios

Many Cherry Hill drainage runs have to cross a driveway or walk to reach an outlet. Driveways from the same era as the houses were often poured thin on native soil and are already cracked at the apron. We cut cleanly, run the pipe, and self-perform the concrete restoration. If the slab is near the end of its life anyway, we'll talk through replacing it with a proper stone base and pitch built in.

Utilities before we dig

Cherry Hill homes get water from New Jersey American Water or the Merchantville-Pennsauken Water Commission depending on address, and sewer laterals here commonly run thirty to eighty feet to the street. We have utilities marked and locate private lines before trenching, so a drainage job doesn't become a water or sewer repair. If your clay lateral is failing anyway, we can address it while the yard is open.