Where Your Yard's Water Actually Goes

Water leaves your property in exactly one way: downhill. If the grade sends it toward the house instead of away from it, no amount of gutter cleaning will fix what happens next.

The usual chain runs like this. Downspouts dump water at the foundation instead of carrying it out. The ground right against the house has settled over the years and now slopes back toward it. Water pools, sits, soaks in — and shows up as a wet crawlspace, a cracked slab edge, or a patch of lawn that has been mud since spring.

The fixes are unglamorous and they work: extend the downspouts into buried lines that discharge well away from the house, cut a French drain across the slope above the wet area, and re-level the first few feet around the foundation so they fall away from it. All of it comes down to fall — a drain with no fall is just a buried pipe full of water.

Have a spot in the yard that never dries out? Call Lobos Landscape & Hardscaper at (423) 284-5919 — we will walk it with you and price the fix for free.