House Boat
Dear Suzy,
When we bought our nice older house last year, we noticed the crawl space
was a bit damp. A contractor slithered around in the mud and suggested that the
problem was not severe and to install a few vents to air things out. The grade
of the yard appears adequate to move water away from the house, but the ground
under the house is actually quite a bit lower than the surrounding yard. After
installing vents, all appeared well until the rains began in earnest this
spring. I peeked under the house after yesterday’s rains and found that
although there were no large puddles around the house, water was standing under
it, some over a foot deep in places. This can’t be good! Is there some way we
can drain our house and keep things dry down there? Someone suggested laying a
vapor barrier, but that would be difficult with all the old pipes left lying
around and I don’t see how to keep water from filling up over the vapor
barrier. Please help before our home sinks into the muck. – Thanks, Keith F.
Dear Keith,
I don’t want to alarm you, but….arrggghhh! The fact that your
contractor “slithered” should have been a sign not to trust him. And a vapor
barrier would be like painting your ceiling to fix a leaking roof. My standard
advice in complicated situations like this is run. But I ran your
problem by my hubby Richard, whose defense mechanisms run more towards fight
than flight. He fired off the following questionable solutions: 1. Fill in
under your house with dirt until the level is higher than the ground outside,
an incredible amount of work you would never survive. 2. Take all the dirt away
from the side of the house until it’s below the grade under the house. Fun and
beautiful, huh? 3. Get a surveyor’s level and carefully chart the elevations
around your house to determine where most of the water is running down from.
(Did you know the cross hairs in a surveyor’s level are made of black widow
spider web?) Throw the chart away and try to sell the house with a straight
face. No, actually, if you find the source of the flow into your underworld,
you can install a French drain on that side of the house. A French drain is a
ditch, filled with gravel or a PVC pipe with holes punched in it, that directs
water away from your house. Of course, to be French, it must be irrepressibly
surly, but have great taste in wine and shoes. 4. Another ditch-like solution
is trenching underneath the house to direct the water outside as quickly as
possible. Can you say “backache”? Can you say “grunt work”?
My final solution is much easier and you might even meet some interesting
people: shut the house up tight, turn up the heat, and open a giant Swedish
sauna.
I’m starting to sweat. Where are all my readers? Did my snake story scare
you off? Write me at the Chronicle, P.O. Box 49066, Austin, 78765 or
Suzebe@aol.com.
This article appears in June 9 • 1995 and June 9 • 1995 (Cover).