An exterior foundation drain is excavated to the footing, the wall is cleaned and membraned, perforated pipe is bedded in washed stone with fabric around it, and the whole run falls to a daylight outfall or a sump. The step that decides the outcome is the one before all of it: confirming the water is arriving from outside at all.

What the ground here does to the trench

Ogden sits in the survey’s slowest drainage class, with surface clay reaching 23% and most of the city mapped as Urban land. On this ground the excavation is the job. The spoil is not acceptable backfill, so stone comes in and clay goes out; the trench walls hold water rather than shedding it; and built-up ground means what is under the lawn is a question rather than an assumption. Every one of those is a line on an honest quote.

The reasoning behind that

Excavation goes to footing level around the affected wall, or the full perimeter where the problem is not confined to one side. This is the expensive part and it is why interior perimeter drains exist as an alternative.

With the wall exposed, it is cleaned and given a drainage membrane or board. This is the step most often skipped and it is the one that keeps water off the wall rather than merely moving it once it arrives.

The pipe is bedded in washed stone, not in the spoil that came out, and wrapped or separated from the soil by fabric so silt does not fill the voids. A drain that clogs is almost always a drain that was laid against dirt.

The run has to fall the whole way to somewhere the water may legally go. Then the trench is backfilled in lifts and the surface is graded away from the house.

More on this: Exterior French Drain and Waterproofing in Ogden, UT.

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