French drains, curtain drains, drywells, catch basins, culverts and the regrading that makes any of it work. If your yard holds water or your crawl space is wet, this is usually fixable.
Who Calls Us
- Homeowners with standing water in the yard days after a rain
- Anyone with a wet crawl space, damp basement or water against the foundation
- Property owners whose ground pitches the wrong way after decades of settlement
- Builders who need footing drains and a lot that sheds water before handover
- Neighbors dealing with runoff coming from uphill or from a new development next door
Problems We Fix
- Water sits in the yard. Flat ground with no fall and nowhere to go. Usually a grading problem before it is a pipe problem.
- The crawl space stays damp. Moisture, mold and eventually framing and duct problems.
- Negative slope against the house. Code wants roughly six inches of fall in the first ten feet. Plenty of older homes here do not have it.
- Gutters dumping at the foundation. Downspouts ending in a splash block six inches from the wall.
- Driveways and walks washing out. Runoff with no ditch or pipe to carry it.
- The last drain did not work. Often installed in the wrong place, at the wrong depth, or with no legal discharge point.
What the Job Includes
- Walking the property and working out where the water comes from and where it wants to go
- Confirming a legal, practical discharge point before any pipe goes in
- French drains and curtain drains
- Footing and foundation perimeter drains
- Drywells and infiltration pits
- Catch basins, yard inlets and solid pipe runs to daylight
- Culverts, ditching and outfalls
- Downspout extensions and sump discharge lines
- Surface swales and regrading so the ground actually feeds the system
- Sod, seed or stone restoration over the work
Why Drainage Is Harder Here
Hampton Roads is flat, low and wet, and it gets its rain in volume rather than in drizzle. Across a whole backyard you might have eight inches of total fall to work with, which means grading is a matter of inches and cannot be eyeballed. Add a shallow water table, sand that saturates quickly, heavy clay in the southern reaches that will not drain at all, and tidal influence near the rivers, and you get a region where water problems are the single most common thing we get called out for.
The other piece is age. A lot of the housing stock in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Hampton was built with minimal grade to begin with, and decades of settlement around the foundation quietly reversed what fall there was. Restoring that slope fixes more wet crawl spaces than any product you can buy at a big box store.
We Diagnose Before We Dig
Putting a French drain in the wrong spot is an expensive way to still have a wet yard. We would rather spend the time working out where the water is actually coming from, whether the fix is grading or pipe or both, and where the discharge can legally go. Then we quote it.
Drainage Questions
How much does a French drain cost?
It is priced by the linear foot and it varies with depth, what the trench has to get through, whether there is a good discharge point nearby, and how much surface restoration you want afterward. A short run in an open backyard is a very different number from a long run around a foundation with hardscape in the way.
Will a French drain fix my wet crawl space?
Sometimes on its own, often only as part of the fix. If the ground outside pitches toward the house, the drain is fighting the grade. We usually pair perimeter drainage with regrading so the surface sheds water away before it ever reaches the system.
Where does the water go?
Somewhere legal and practical. That might be daylight at a low point, a ditch, a culvert, a storm inlet or a drywell if the soil will take it. Working out the discharge is the first thing we do, not the last.
Can you fix water coming from my neighbor or from new construction next door?
Often yes, by intercepting it with a curtain drain or a swale along the property line and carrying it around. The legal side of who is responsible is between you and them, but the ground can usually be made to behave.
How long does it take?
Most residential drainage jobs run one to three days depending on the length of the runs and how much restoration is involved.
Drainage Near You
- Drainage contractor in Norfolk, VA
- Drainage and excavation in Hampton, VA
- Drainage and excavation in Portsmouth, VA
- Grading contractor in Virginia Beach, VA
Related Services
- Grading, the other half of nearly every drainage fix
- Excavation, trenching and foundation work
- Gravel Driveway Installation, ditching and culverts at the road
- Site Preparation, drainage designed in from the start
If your yard holds water, we will come look at it and tell you what is actually going on. Free estimates. Call (757) 239-0707.