Drainage & French Drains in Voorhees, NJ

Grading plans that were never quite finished

Planned developments were laid out with swales and grades meant to move water between lots to an outlet. In practice, many were never completed exactly as drawn, and cut-and-fill construction left low points that collect from several lots at once. In the older communities, swales that did work have silted in over decades and stopped carrying water.

Often the most effective fix is restoring the swale: re-cutting it to a continuous fall, clearing the outlet, and stabilizing it so it keeps working.

Downspouts tied to nothing

We regularly find downspouts that were connected to buried pipe at construction and later broke loose, were crushed, or were never connected to anything at the far end. All that roof water empties into the soil beside the foundation. Camera-checking or replacing those lines and carrying roof water to an outlet is one of the cheapest, most effective improvements a Voorhees home can make.

French drains for slow soil

Where water perches in the dense subsoil, a French drain gives it a faster path out: a fabric-lined trench of clean stone with perforated pipe at a continuous fall. In slow-draining ground, the pipe and stone carry the water, not the soil, so the run has to reach an outlet lower than every point along it. We set grade with a laser and adjust depth to hold pitch on flat lots.

Catch basins at low points pair well with a drain when surface ponding is the main complaint.

Sandier ground toward Kresson and Gibbsboro

Toward the Kresson and Gibbsboro edges of the township, the soil gets sandier and drains better. There, a properly sized dry well can sometimes absorb roof water where daylighting isn't possible. Over the denser soil common elsewhere in Voorhees, dry wells fill and stay full, so we check before recommending one.

Townhome and condominium communities

Voorhees has many townhome and condo communities, where drainage crosses unit lines and is often governed by an association. We can assess the problem, explain what's causing it and work with the association on a fix that serves more than one unit. Utilities are marked and located before any trench goes in.

Wet finished basements

Seepage in a finished basement is expensive because of what it damages. Before recommending interior work, we make sure the outside is right: roof water carried away, grade falling from the house, low spots corrected. That order of work often solves the problem without opening the basement. If what's backing up is sewage, it's a sewer problem and needs a different response.

Aging driveways in the path

Driveways in the earlier developments are now thirty to forty-five years old. When a drainage run must cross one, we cut cleanly and self-perform the concrete restoration — or, if the driveway is near the end of its life, rebuild it with a proper base and pitch that moves water toward the drain rather than the garage.

What a finished job looks like

A finished job should be close to invisible. Swales are re-cut and stabilized so they don't wash out, trenches are backfilled and compacted, topsoil is graded to the new fall, and the lawn is ready to seed or sod. Downspout lines end at a clean outlet and catch basins sit flush with the grass. The test is the next heavy rain: water should leave the lot within hours. If it doesn't perform as described, we come back.

Working in wet weather

Depth to water is generally manageable in Voorhees, but trenches dug in wet weather often need a pump to stay workable. We plan for that so the pipe is bedded in a firm, dry trench and backfilled in compacted lifts. New Jersey American Water supplies the township's water, and the Voorhees Township Sewer Department serves sewer; we locate both before digging.