Grading and Regrading in Lancaster, PA

If water keeps reaching your basement walls, the shape of your yard may be the reason. Around Lancaster, the usual causes are settled backfill, raised flower beds and soil that drains slowly. We check the slope, find out where the water is going, and correct it.

Why the slope around your house matters

Most basement water problems start outside, a few feet from the wall. Rain that lands on a lawn or a flower bed goes wherever the ground sends it. If the soil next to your foundation slopes toward the house, every storm carries water to the base of the wall. There it soaks down and finds a crack, a mortar joint or the gap where the floor meets the wall.

Grading is the shape of the ground. Regrading means reshaping it so water moves away from the house and toward a place that can take it, such as a lawn, a swale or a drain. It is one of our plainest jobs and often one of the most useful. A correct slope works every time it rains, and it needs no pump and has no moving parts.

Signs the grading around your home needs attention

You can check most of this yourself after a heavy rain. Walk around the outside of the house and watch where the water goes, not only where it ends up.

• Puddles that sit against the foundation for more than a day after rain
• Soil or mulch beds that are higher next to the wall than a few feet out
• Patios, walkways or driveways that tip toward the house
• Damp patches or white mineral stains low on the inside of basement walls
• Gaps between the soil and the foundation, or a sunken ring of soil around the house
• Washed-out mulch, bare channels in the lawn, or silt left on a walkway

What usually causes grading problems in Lancaster

The most common cause is settling. When a house is built, the soil dug out for the foundation is pushed back against the walls. That backfill is loose, and over the years it compacts and sinks. Ground that sloped away from the house when it was finished can end up sloping toward it. We see this in newer neighborhoods around Lancaster as often as in older ones, because most of the settling happens in the first several years.

The second cause is landscaping. Every new layer of mulch, topsoil or edging stone raises the beds next to the wall. Over time the soil line can creep up past the bottom of the siding or above the sill plate, and that brings water and insects to wood that should stay dry. A patio laid without enough pitch, or a raised bed built against the foundation, causes the same problem.

Local conditions play a part too. A lot of the soil in Lancaster County has plenty of silt and clay in it, and it drains slowly once it is saturated. Water that cannot sink in quickly runs across the surface, so the direction of that surface matters more. Our winters freeze and thaw again and again. That movement heaves soil, shifts pavers and opens small gaps along the foundation. Many older stone and brick homes in the city, and in towns like Lititz and Columbia, now sit lower than the streets and yards that were built up around them, so water runs in from neighboring lots as well.

When regrading is enough, and when you need more

Regrading is the right fix when the water comes off the surface. If the basement only gets damp during or just after a hard rain, and the damp spots are along walls where the ground slopes the wrong way, reshaping the soil is often all you need.

On its own, it won't fix water that comes up from below. Maybe the basement takes on water days after a storm, or the yard stays soggy in dry weeks, or the low ground has nowhere to send the water. In those cases a better slope can only do so much. We usually pair grading with a French drain, a downspout line run out to daylight, or a sump pump inside. We will tell you which of these we think you need and why. If grading alone will do the job, we will say so.

You also have to ask how far the fix needs to reach. Sometimes it is a few feet of soil along one wall. Other times the whole side yard needs a shallow swale to carry water around the house to the street or the back of the lot. The size of the job depends on where the water has to go, not only on where it shows up.

What a grading visit involves

We start by walking the property with you and asking where you have seen water and when. Then we look at the slope around the house, the downspouts, the hard surfaces and the low spots in the yard. We check the soil line against the foundation and the siding. If you have had damp spots in the basement, we look inside too.

If the work goes ahead, it usually follows this order:

• Have underground utilities marked and plan where the water should end up
• Lift mulch, stone or sod along the work area and set aside what can be reused
• Pull back soil that sits too high against the wall
• Add clean fill in layers and compact it to build the slope away from the house
• Shape swales or fill low spots so the water has a clear path
• Finish with topsoil and seed, or put the mulch and stone back

Keeping the slope working

You won't have to think about grading often, but a few habits keep it doing its job. When you refresh the mulch, rake out the old layer first instead of piling new mulch on top. Keep downspouts connected and pointed away from the house, and check that a mower hasn't knocked the extensions loose. After the first winter, walk around the house after a heavy rain and look for any spot where the soil has settled.

If you live in Lancaster or a nearby town such as Manheim, Ephrata or Willow Street and you're not sure your yard slopes the right way, we can come and take a look and tell you what we find.