Water Pools Against My Foundation Every Time It Rains (Indianola, WA)

What usually causes water at the foundation in Indianola

Grading: the ground slopes toward the house in the first few feet. In Indianola that usually means galvanized under much-remodeled cabins near Miller Bay Road, and the ground, till on the Indianola Road parcels, decides how far the water travels before you see it.

The second thing we rule in or out is a dead footing drain. Silted corrugated pipe or a buried outlet. It's common enough on bluff lots facing Port Madison that we never skip it.

And runoff and groundwater from uphill: on sloped lots, a curtain drain uphill of the house intercepts it before it reaches the backfill. Less common on shared lines with no drawings, but we've found it near Kitsap Memorial.

First steps on a Indianola property

The bluff above Port Madison sends groundwater toward the village's older foundations all winter.

What you can check yourself on shared lines with no drawings: find the footing drain outlet and see if it flows. Note which wall gets wet and what's uphill of it. If you get that far, we'll pick it up from there with downspout adapters and cleanouts and solid PVC and HDPE.

How we fix it

In Indianola the work that follows the diagnosis is downspout drain line repair, and it runs in order: excavate, replace, backfill and restore. Poly on the outlying wooded lots in bluff clay above Port Madison sets the pace on narrow village lanes near the dock; the sequence doesn't change.

Our Indianola coverage for water at the foundation runs Kitsap Memorial, Port Madison, the beach, the Indianola Dock and everything between. We're based in Central Kitsap, about half an hour off Miller Bay Road, with downspout adapters and cleanouts and pumps on the truck.