Walk the perimeter — grading and drainage check
Annual · typically April · weather can move it up
Why it matters
Your foundation has one enemy with a thousand disguises, and it's water sitting where it shouldn't. The single best diagnostic tool ever invented is free: a hard rain and your own two eyes.
We'll nudge you when a heavy-rain day is forecast — that's your diagnostic window.
What skipping it costs
$1,200–$25,000
Water pooling against a foundation is the patient kind of destructive. First it's damp, then it's cracked, then it's a bowed wall — and foundation repair runs $5,000 to $25,000+. The fix at the start was two hours with a shovel and $40 of dirt. No other task on this list has a worse neglect-to-prevention price ratio.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Rain jacket, Phone for photos, Downspout extensions if needed (~$10–15 each), A few bags of clean fill dirt if regrading low spots (~$5/bag).
- Wait for a good steady rain, put on a jacket, and walk the entire perimeter slowly. This is the whole diagnostic: watch where water goes.
- Look for pooling within 3 feet of the foundation, waterfalls off the roofline (clogged gutter), and downspouts dumping right at the wall.
- Check every downspout: water should discharge at least 4 feet from the house, onto ground that slopes away. Extensions are $12 and take one minute to install. This is the highest-value fix in home ownership.
- After it dries, sight along the soil against the house: you want it visibly sloping away — the standard is about 6 inches of drop in the first 10 feet. Settled trenches along the wall (very common on newer homes) get filled with clean fill dirt, tamped, topped with soil. Keep the finished grade 6 inches below siding.
- Photograph problem spots during rain — if you do end up hiring drainage work, those photos put you in charge of the conversation instead of the salesman.
Hire it out
$300–$1,500National fair range — local labor moves this number.
A landscaper regrading problem areas and extending downspouts runs $300–$1500 depending on how much dirt has to move. That's the honest version of this work, and most houses never need more than that.
The escalation ladder — buried downspout drains, French drains, sump systems — has its place, but each rung costs 5–10× the one below it, and the industry's habit is to start you at the top. Make them justify every rung: what water, going where, that dirt and slope can't handle? If the answer is a shrug and a brochure, you have your answer.
Ask the tech
- Are you fixing the grade with clean fill and topsoil, or just mulch? (Mulch washes away; it's not grading.)
- Where exactly will each downspout discharge after the work?
- Do I need drainage pipe here, or just dirt and slope? Walk me through why.
Red flags you're being upsold
- A French-drain or waterproofing quote before anyone has watched what the water actually does in rain.
- Interior basement waterproofing systems pitched for what is visibly an exterior grading problem — that's a $12,000 answer to a $500 question.
- 'Foundation repair' urgency from a company that showed up to look at a soggy flowerbed.
Second opinion time: Anything over $2,000, and always before signing for a French drain, sump system, or any foundation work. Watch one hard rain with the estimator's claims in hand first.
The call
DIY the diagnosis — it's literally walking in the rain. DIY the dirt if you're able; hire it if not. Either way, don't let anyone sell you drainage systems before you've both watched it rain.