Creating drainage around the house

It is important to keep water out of the crawl space under the house and away from the foundation, so a contractor laid two types of drains all around the house: downspout drains (for gutter downspouts) and footer drains (to collect underground water). Both drainage systems are important to move storm water and underground water away from the house.

The downspout drains sit on top of the foundation footer against the stem walls. The footer drains are below these against the foundation footers.

The footer drainage is unique in that these drain pipes have holes at the bottom to allow water trickling through drain rocks covering them to enter them and flow away.

Both drainage systems converge at the southwest corner of the house and are later connected to a dispersion trench where water will be allowed to follow its predictable logic and drain down and further to the west away from the house. In practice water flows finally into the drainage ditch that runs along the north property line.