#1-Neighbor Runoff

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Neighbor Runoff
Water flowing from neighboring properties can damage your yard and foundation. We can help!
Solutions For: Runoff from neighboring properties

Dealing with Rainwater Runoff from Neighboring Properties

Dealing with runoff from neighboring properties has a unique set of challenges. While there are laws that are meant to prevent upper properties from directing water onto lower properties, they’re often vague and not enforced. Our clients have not had much luck getting help from the city or upper neighbors to solve their drainage problems. Unfortunately, it’s generally up to the homeowner to improve the drainage on his or her property. 

Fortunately, we have solutions and improvements to deal with water seeping down from the woods, flowing in from streets and cul-de-sacs, overwhelming culverts, flowing from upper neighbor’s properties and the like. 

We specialize in significantly improving drainage on your own property regardless of what’s coming down from neighboring properties. Here are some strategies for dealing with runoff from neighbors: 

• Collecting water in drains and sending it through pipe out to a desired location. Oftentimes, neighbors have downspouts or drain pipes that flow downhill right towards your property and home. In many cases, it’s better if they actually concentrate the flow of their roof water through a pipe into one area so you can easily catch it with the surface drain and carry it away. Alternatively, if they’re downspouts just dump around their house, much of that water flows through the ground and this can cause issues that are much more costly and difficult to fix.
• Diverting water with berms, retaining walls or swales. 
• Re grading to get water to flow away from the foundation and the usable property and out to a safer place.
• Drainage improvements such as French or American drains Designed to collect and carry away water to desired location 
• Downspout drainage systems 
• Grass and plantings. Once erosion and saturation is significantly improved, healthy grass and other strategic plantings can improve the properties drainage.

Neighbors Working Together on Drainage (-: 

We have worked on several jobs where the ideal solution was to run pipe through several of neighbors backyards and out to a storm drain or pond. Before the work was done, water flowed from yard to yard, ruining the swale, causing standing water, killing grass and causing erosion. Neighbors realized the benefit of working together so we could help them create systems that would benefit all of them but that would still be individualized. 

Close together homes: In some cases where homes were very close together, we were able to create systems that would allow for both homes’ downspouts to drain out of one pipe thereby significantly decreasing the cost. We have developed techniques to share drainage components but to still keep the individual systems separate from each other or to make them easy to separate if needed.

A linear drain between these two homes will prevent ponding and help protect the foundations.