Olalla: Why Is My Crawlspace Wet Every Winter?
Standing water or saturated soil under the house, usually from November to May. Five causes, checked in the right order.
Around Al's Grocery and Burley the wet crawlspace call is familiar: a soft green stripe across a pasture, no obvious cause, housing from 1970s-to-2000s farms and acreage homes. The usual suspect is galvanized on Colvos Passage cabins in bluff clay on Colvos Passage, and the usual fix starts with a locate, not a shovel.
Why this happens in Olalla
Downspouts dumping at the foundation: a 2,000-square-foot roof sheds over a thousand gallons in an inch of rain. In Olalla that usually means galvanized on Colvos Passage cabins near the Olalla Bridge, and the ground, peat in the Olalla Creek valley, decides how far the water travels before you see it.
The second thing we rule in or out is a silted or outlet-less footing drain. Corrugated pipe laid in native soil without fabric silts shut in a few decades, and the daylight outlet is usually buried or crushed. It's common enough on small farms near Burley that we never skip it.
Don't overlook grading that slopes toward the house. Decades of landscaping and settled backfill often reverse the slope in the first few feet around the foundation. On Olalla properties from 1970s-to-2000s farms and acreage homes it comes up more than you'd think.
Before you call
French drains and swales with gravity outlets, and footing drain replacements on the 1970s to 2000s homes, are the common work.
What you can check yourself on wooded acreage on Banner Road: check the slope of the ground against the foundation on all sides. Note which side of the crawlspace the water enters from. If you get that far, we'll pick it up from there with filter fabric and clean and perforated PVC or HDPE.
What happens next
In Olalla the work that follows the diagnosis is footing drain repair, and it runs in order: outlet, backfill with rock, excavate the foundation. 1970s and 80s polyethylene gone brittle in outwash that drains and hides leaks sets the pace on waterfront on Colvos Passage; the sequence doesn't change.
Our Olalla coverage for wet crawlspace runs Olalla Bay, Banner Road, Fragaria, Colvos Passage and everything between. We're based in Central Kitsap, about forty minutes down Highway 16, with filter fabric and clean and pumps on the truck.
Ready when you are
Don't wait for bluff clay on Colvos Passage to make it worse. (206) 354-9906, any hour, for wet crawlspace anywhere in Olalla.
What we usually find
Wet crawlspace in Olalla: questions
Why does wet crawlspace seem worse in Olalla than elsewhere?
Can you come after hours for wet crawlspace near Colvos Passage?
Could wet crawlspace be my well pump rather than a line?
Do I need to dig before you arrive?
Could wet crawlspace be something inside the house?
Wet crawlspace in Olalla?
We answer 24 hours a day. We locate before we dig, and we handle the whole job with our own crew and equipment.