French drain

These are now known as freedom drains and can easily be converted to hide weapons of mass construction.

-- Troweller^nospam^@canada.com

The French drain could be going to daylight, a drywell, or storm system- if it is old enough, it could even be going to sanitary. It could be made of concrete tiles, vitreous tile, PVC, orangeburg, or gravel only.

I cannot think of any way to diagnose an old system.

(top posted for your convenience) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Keep the whole world singing . . . . DanG (remove the sevens) snipped-for-privacy@7cox.net

The Fench Drain is made of Black Plastic Perforated Pipe.... I can have looked all around and no luck finding out where it terminates... Is there any simple way to test? I have heard of Color Dyes to find the location of the termination... Does this really work?

If you know where it is at any point, you can (tediously) track it by sticking a screwdriver or other pointy item into the ground every so often. The end will likely be at the point where you can no longer find the pipe with your implement. (-;

Joe

-------------------------------------

We hired a local construction company to install a french drain and to finish off our entire basement. Along one of the walls sits the hot water heater. They plan on moving it but not until the start the actual 'finishing' of the basement. Anyway, they cut the concrete floor and installed the drain around the hot water heater, coming out about three feet. Should they have moved it then proceeded with the french drain. Our basement does get wet so I'm a bit concerned. The contractor says its no big deal.

Thanks.

##-----------------------------------------------## Delivered via

yes it should of been moved. perhaps they will drill weep holes in the block when the tank is moved?

if the tank is older its a good time to replace it

He's right. They went around my furnace. Absolute worst thing that can happen is that you have a trickle of water flow from the wall to the drain. It's not going to hurt anything since you won't have a finished floor under the water heater.

No problem. The French drain is there to catch subgrade water before it is on top of the floor. The assumption is that it is coming in close to the walls - ain't necessarily so. Having the gravel and pipe at the proper depth and headed to a sump is what matters.

interior french drains locally all have block drain holes, with plastic trim.

so any water that gets in a block has a way out not on the floor..... not making wall wet.

They should have moved the water heater first.

I'd also point out that if you have a basement that has had water problems, I would not go directly from installing the french drain to finishing it. I'd wait at least a year, go through a few good rainy periods, etc to make sure the basement stays dry.

well they can pull heater then do that little section tying it into the much larger job....

it sounded like the OP had plans to move heater to different location, so this approach is reasonable.

oddly were in the middle of this now, were getting a new furnace with air moving furnace a little.

have water issues, bottom of existing furnace rusted away.

so getting 12 feet where new furnace and other stuff will go, like new hot water tank. later i will get the balance done.

with all my business stuff here theres really no other way, project must be done in stages