Typical cost in Bellevue
Bellevue Foundation Repair looks at water around Bellevue foundations: gutters and downspouts, the grade around the house and the footing drains inside and out. The aim is to keep water that moves soil and loads walls away from the foundation.
Our work covers Bellevue and reaches Mercer Island and Newcastle. Bellevue’s lots include steep and wet ground, and 34.3 percent of the city’s homes were built from 1960 to 1979, an age at which footing drains may be undersized or blocked, as HUD notes about existing footing drains. Drainage around a house on a slope also meets the critical areas code, covered below.
Water that falls on a Bellevue roof ends up somewhere, and HUD says it must be led away from buildings by grading. Trouble starts where a downspout empties beside the wall, a gutter spills over, or the soil slopes toward the foundation.
An outside footing drain is a perforated pipe bedded in washed gravel at footing depth around the foundation and run to somewhere the water can leave. Because it means digging along the wall, access and what lies against the house set the difficulty.
An inside drain is a perforated pipe in a gravel channel along the base of the wall inside a crawlspace or basement, leading to a sump basin. It manages water that has reached the footing without digging outside, and it still depends on where the water can go afterward.
Wet basements and crawlspaces, a University of Minnesota extension page says, come down to a short list: ground that falls toward the house, gutters and downspouts that do not do their job, and subsurface drains that are missing or have stopped working. The same list applies to Bellevue houses.
Water also acts on the soil. HUD describes it washing fine particles out from under footings, loosening the soil so the building settles, and pressing on walls hard enough to crack or displace them. Water control therefore sits close to the settlement and crack pages.
Footing drains already in the ground may be too small or may not work, HUD warns. Looking at the house and testing the drain show whether the job is to clear it, replace it or add one.
Before anyone digs a trench, there are simpler moves: clean the gutters, extend downspouts beyond the wall with solid pipe, and fill and regrade where soil dips toward the house. On a slope, check where the water ends up as carefully as how it gets there.
Water that is carried away must have somewhere safe to go. Sending it onto a slope can create the problem it was meant to solve.
Drainage is priced by length of drain and difficulty of access. The factors:
On a lot with a mapped landslide or steep slope, the city’s code carries a buffer measured from the top of the slope. A trench, a regrade or a new discharge point near a slope should be raised with the city first. An exemption from one code does not exempt work from the others.
Because the buffer and study rules are set out in the critical areas section on the home page, we do not repeat them here; the city checks a particular parcel.
That depends on where the water meets the foundation and what can be dug. Outside drains intercept it at the wall; inside drains take water that has already reached the footing. We would look at both.
Bulk water is the dominant source of moisture in vented crawlspaces, according to the Building America guide, so controlling it helps. A sealed ground cover is a further step.
A yard French drain is landscape work. A footing drain sits at the foundation and is a different job, and landscape drainage is not what we do.
Foundation drainage matters to the other pages too: wet soil is behind some settlement, which foundation settlement and piering covers, and behind some cracking, which foundation crack repair covers. Browse everything from the Bellevue Foundation Repair home page.
Where does the water appear, in which weather, and does the yard fall toward the house? If you know about footing drains, say so. We'll get back to you soon with an estimate or any questions we have. Estimates are free and there's no obligation.
Call (425) 696-3370