How Basement Walkout Drains Work to Manage Water from the Weather Precipitation in Herriman, Utah
Hello, everyone. I’m Caleb, with Dansie Design Build. And today we’re talking about basement walkout entrance drains. How do the drains work to manage the water that’s coming down in a rainstorm or snow during the winter?
How to Ensure You Avoid Basement Flooding
I’m here in Utah at our basement finish that we are just wrapping up with this basement walkout entry in Herriman. What we’re doing here is we have a slab at the bottom of the stairs, four-inch concrete that’s sloping down at least a quarter of an inch per foot toward the drain. That’s the first step in making sure that you don’t get a flood.
Then underneath the drain, there’s the grill and it funnels down into plumbing piping. We pipe that down into a container which can be a five or 10-gallon container. Sometimes we use a 20-gallon container, depending on our needs. But typically, it’s five gallons.
What is the Process for Proper Basement Walkout Drainage?
In that five gallon container, we drill holes on the sides and bottom, so that when that water gets in there from the drain, it fills up and drains out the sides. Now on the outside of that container, we put a lot of gravel, one to two inches of gravel, and that’s going to allow a lot of space in between the rocks for water to flow. The water begins to flow through as it’s coming down the drain into the container, out of the container, into the rocks, from the rocks into the soils. That process allows the earth enough time to absorb that water and allow it to percolate into the soils. That is the process that we use with basement walkout entrances and the drains at the bottom of the stairs, to make sure that we have the proper drainage.
How to Avoid Clogged Drains in a Basement to Ensure Proper Drainage
Now one thing to make sure of is that when we do these drains, we need to make sure that they stay clean. I mean, they can handle some debris and dirt, things such as that. But what we need to avoid, like any drain, is we want to make sure that they do not have excessive leaves or debris clogging the drain, because that would obstruct the water from entering the system underneath the concrete. That’s one thing to be mindful of as the maintenance side after the construction’s done.
Helpful Resources for Basement Finishing and Home Remodeling in Salt Lake County, Utah
So that’s how we do our drains. If you need help with finishing your basement or remodeling your home, you can reach us on our website. We have a lot of resources there as far as pricing guides for basement finishes, basement finishing cost calculators that you can download and a lot of other good articles that we’ve written to help with these kind of things on our blog. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. You can comment in the comment section and let us know what you are wondering and we can address those questions in another video. Have a wonderful rest of your day and thank you for your time. See you later.
