French Drain or Drain Tile - Old Technology

A French drain or drain tile is a basement waterproofing technique that has been around since the 1920s and is so named as the drainage pipes used to be made of clay tile, today they are typically plastic pipe. This older waterproofing system has a few short comings - the worst of these being that it is prone to clogging as shown in two of the pictures on this page. Actually, many houses that have a flooded basement, have an exterior drain system that failed and that's why the basement is now wet.

Basement Systems' two waterproofing systems, WaterGuard and DryTrak, are both highly clog resistant due to the fact that they do not sit down in the mud as a French drain or drain tile system does, but rather above the mud where the water is clear.

Drain tile typically consists of perforated PVC pipe laid around the interior (for retro work) or exterior (for new construction) perimeter of a basement, beneath the basement floor level, that directs water to a sump pump (very common) or gravity drain (uncommon).

Installation of drain tile begins with the jackhammering of the basement floor about 18-24 inches from the interior perimeter wall - a WaterGuard basement waterproofing system typically requires that only 8-12 inches of the concrete be broken for the system to be installed as WaterGuard sits against the basement wall and on top of the footer when present.

The dirt is then excavated out about 8-18 inches deep. Some contractors believe that deeper is better, but deeper really only means that there is a potential for more ground water to have to be pumped out, thus running your sump pump system more often. Deeper has nothing to do with keeping a basement dry, and in some states deep systems are now in violation of housing code.

Once the trench is dug, a plastic PVC pipe with holes in it is laid at the bottom of the trench. The PVC pipe may or may not have a fabric filter sleeve over it to prevent silt, mud, or debris from entering and clogging the pipe. Like all filters, this filter will eventually clog, but being under the concrete floor means jackhammering and trenching again to change the filter.

The drain tile or French drain is laid with a slight pitch to it and drains into a sump pit where a sump pump pumps the water out of the basement and discharges it somewhere away from the house, preferably on a slope that runs away from the house's foundation. The patented sump pump systems from Basement Systems are the world's finest and only available from a local Basement Systems dealer.

Once the drain tile (PVC pipe) and sump pump are in place, the remainder of the trench is filled with gravel or stone and concreted over. Typically a two-by-four laid on its side is placed against the basement wall and the concrete is poured up to that. This creates a 1.5-inch gap at the perimeter of the basement floor to drain water down under the floor to the drain tile in the event of basement wall leakage. This unsightly gap can also fill with debris from the basement floor.

The WaterGuard basement waterproofing system has a flange that creates a clean finish to a basement floor, and it drains incidental basement wall leaks. The WaterGuard system also has a port for flood testing and maintenance purposes, which better drain tile contractors will install on their systems. In some cases, particularly in states or townships where old housing code prevents a system from sitting on the footing, drain tile must be used. But other than odd instances, WaterGuard is the superior subfloor drainage system.