Drainage Contractor in Rhodesdale, MD — Get The Water Off Your Ground

Water sits on the Shore. It stands in the yard three days after a rain. It runs at the foundation instead of away from it. It backs up in the field ditch until the end rows drown. You mow a rut through the wet spot every summer and hope for a dry August.

People assume that is just how it is here. It usually is not. Almost every wet yard on this side of the bay can be fixed, or at least fixed enough that you get your ground back. It starts with figuring out where the water is coming from, where it is trying to go, and what is stopping it. Then you give it a path and a place to end up.

Steve Hackett has been reading this ground for fifteen years. He digs the pipe in and he sets the grade over it, with a 10-ton excavator and a skid steer, so the fix is not half a fix.

What Drainage Problems Do You Have?

Three things work against you here. The ground is dead flat, so water has almost no fall to follow. The water table is high, so the ground is already full before the rain starts. And near the Nanticoke, the Choptank and the Marshyhope you are in tidal and floodplain ground, where the river decides when your outfall will take water and when it will not. Add soils that run sandy in one spot and clay in the next, and water that soaked away on one side of the lot stands on the other.

The problems come in a short list. A yard that holds water in the same low place every spring. Downspouts dumping at the corner of the house and running back at the block. A wet crawlspace or a damp basement wall. A long private lane that washes out and holds ruts full of water. A driveway culvert that is crushed, silted shut, or was too small the day it went in. A farm ditch that has silted in until the field will not drain. A pond bank washing away, or a shoreline losing ground a little more every storm.

Each one has a real answer. French drains, buried downspouts, catch basins and solid pipe to daylight, swales, regrading, a bigger culvert, a cleaned and re-cut ditch, riprap where water keeps taking the bank. What the site needs decides which. Steve will tell you which one, and also which ones you do not need.

Our Drainage Services

Most homeowners start with Yard Drainage — finding the low spot, burying downspouts, setting catch basins and grading the yard so water leaves instead of standing. Where the water is in the ground rather than on top of it, French Drains go in the way they are supposed to: perforated pipe, clean stone and fabric, on grade, with a real outlet. At the road and along lanes, Culverts & Storm Drain covers driveway pipe sized for the water it has to take, headwalls, storm pipe, inlets and precast structures set to grade. For farm ground, Ditching & Farm Drainage means cleaning out silted ditches, cutting new ones on grade, and getting the tail ditch and field entrances working again. And where water meets a bank, Ponds, Riprap & Shoreline covers pond digging and cleanout, bank repair, riprap and stone armor along shoreline that keeps giving up ground.

Since he pours concrete too, the drain that has to run under a new slab, apron or sidewalk gets put in before the pour, not cut in after.

A lot of wet ground starts at the roof. Downspout Drains & Underdrain Systems buries downspout lines in solid pipe so roof water leaves the foundation instead of dumping beside it, sets pop-up emitters at a real outlet, and puts perforated underdrains under driveways, lawns and soft spots where the water is in the ground instead of on it.

Drainage Work Across The Region

A drainage call starts with a walk. Steve looks at the low spots, the downspouts, the ditch and the outfall, and works out where the water is really coming from before anybody digs. Then you get a plan in plain words and a price. Sometimes it is one afternoon with a machine and a hundred feet of pipe. Sometimes it is a bigger culvert and a regrade. Either way you hear what it will take. A third down on residential work, net 30 on commercial contracts.

Wet ground is everywhere out here, and so is he. Around home that is Rhodesdale, Hurlock, East New Market, Vienna, Secretary, Church Creek and Cambridge. In Caroline County he works Federalsburg, Denton, Preston, Greensboro and Ridgely. Talbot County jobs run Easton, Trappe, Oxford and St. Michaels. South it is Salisbury, Fruitland, Hebron, Mardela Springs and Delmar. North it is Centreville, Queenstown, Grasonville, Church Hill and Stevensville. In Delaware he works Seaford, Laurel, Georgetown, Millsboro and Milford, and out to Lewes, Rehoboth Beach, Bethany Beach and Ocean View.

Farmers, homeowners and builders all call about the same thing in the end: the water is in the wrong place. Show him the ground and he will tell you where it can go.