Yard drainage and grading for Jersey City homes and rowhouses

Soil next to a foundation should slope away from the house, so rain landing near the walls runs outward instead of soaking down along them. Over decades that slope disappears. Soil settles, mulch and garden beds build up against the siding, and new patios get poured flat or tilted the wrong way. Once the ground leans toward the house, every storm pushes water against the basement wall, where it finds every crack and loose mortar joint.

Regrading means rebuilding that slope. We pull back the soil along the foundation, bring in clean fill, compact it in layers and shape it so it falls steadily away from the wall for several feet. We keep fill below the siding and below basement window sills, so we don't trade one leak for another. Where window wells sit in that zone, we check their drains too, because a window well that holds water can undo a good grade.

• Old soil and mulch pulled back from the foundation
• Clean fill compacted in layers
• A steady fall away from the wall for several feet
• Soil kept below siding and window sills
• Seed, sod or stone on top to hold the grade

Hard surfaces are the bigger problem in most Jersey City yards. A concrete patio poured tight against the rear wall of a rowhouse, or a driveway running downhill to an attached garage, gathers rain from a wide area and sends all of it to one spot. Breaking out and repouring the slab is one answer, but a drain often does the same job for far less money and far less mess.

A channel drain, sometimes called a trench drain, is a narrow grated channel set into the concrete across the low edge of a patio or at the foot of a driveway. Water running across the surface drops through the grate and travels along the channel to a pipe. A catch basin is a square box with a grate at a single low point, with a sump in the bottom that traps leaves and grit before the water moves on. We pick between them based on whether water sheets across or gathers in one spot.

Grates and basins need a little care. Leaves, mulch and grit settle in a channel drain and in the sump at the bottom of a catch basin, and a basin that's full sends water right back across the patio. We set grates where you can lift them by hand and show you how to scoop out the sump each fall. A few minutes with a trowel and a bucket after the leaves drop keeps everything flowing through the winter storms.

Behind downtown brownstones and in neighborhoods like Hamilton Park, yards are narrow, walled in on three sides and often sit lower than the street. There's no obvious place for water to go and no room for machines. We dig by hand, move soil in buckets through the basement or a side gate where there is one, and protect floors and stairs along the way. A small catch basin tied to a dry well is often the whole fix.

These yards also tend to be paved edge to edge, so rain from your roof, your patio and sometimes the yard next door all ends up at your rear wall. That's where the rear areaway and its drain take a beating, and where many rear basement leaks begin. Getting the surface water out of that corner is usually the first step before any wall repair is worth paying for.

Plenty of Jersey City drainage problems start on a neighbor's lot. A higher yard, a leader aimed at the property line or a new patio next door can send water across to you. We don't touch anyone else's property, but we can intercept water at your line with a shallow swale, a channel drain or a French drain along the fence, and carry it to an outlet on your side.

Where a neighbor's leader is clearly the source, a friendly conversation often solves more than any drain. We point out what we see in plain terms so you can share it. And we never send collected water onto someone else's lot; it goes to a dry well, a sump, a curb outlet where the town allows one, or a buried leader line that carries it away. Grading and drains together are usually what finally keep the basement dry.