Base­ment Drain Tile Buyer’s Guide — 12 Ques­tions You Need to Ask

May 17, 2016 • By Matthew Stock with Mike Likvan.

If you are hav­ing base­ment seep­age and are think­ing of installing Inte­ri­or Drain Tile to keep your base­ment dry, here are 12 ques­tions you need to ask any con­trac­tor who’s offer­ing you a solu­tion. These ques­tions will help you dis­cov­er crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the con­trac­tor, their solu­tions and ser­vices so you will be well pre­pared to make a smart buy­ing decision.

12 Ques­tions To Ask Before You Buy Drain Tile

1. What oth­er solu­tions do you offer besides Drain Tile and why won’t they work as well for me?
This ques­tion is impor­tant because some com­pa­nies plan to rec­om­mend Inte­ri­or Drain Tile before they even meet you. Their rec­om­men­da­tion isn’t based on your needs, it’s based on theirs. So ask them what oth­er options they have for you. Full ser­vice water­proof­ing com­pa­nies have a vari­ety of effec­tive and com­ple­men­tary ways to cor­rect seep­age prob­lems that don’t require drain tile. 

2. Is your inte­ri­or drain tile sys­tem main­te­nance free?
A prop­er­ly designed and installed Inte­ri­or Drain Tile sys­tem doesn’t require reg­u­lar main­te­nance. You put it in and it works. Some com­pa­nies install infe­ri­or prod­ucts prone to clog­ging; then they install cleanouts and offer ser­vices to flush out the sys­tem. Their return vis­its are designed as a way to get back into your home to sell you even more ser­vices. Be leery of sys­tems requir­ing main­te­nance as part of their design. 

3. Do you offer a pre-instal­la­tion walk-through to pre­pare me for the project?
The instal­la­tion of Inte­ri­or Drain Tile is major surgery for your base­ment. Dur­ing the ini­tial vis­it most cus­tomers are con­cerned more with the solu­tion, how soon it can be installed and of course, cost. They aren’t typ­i­cal­ly pre­pared to dis­cuss the logis­tics and nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tion for the job. That’s why we include this walk-through. We’ve learned a sec­ond vis­it helps you sat­is­fy ques­tions and con­cerns you may not have thought about dur­ing our first visit.

4. Can you pro­vide me with a list of refer­rals you’ve done in my neigh­bor­hood in the last few years?
Ask­ing for these refer­rals will let you talk to a company’s pre­vi­ous cus­tomers to hear first­hand how their project was han­dled. When you get the refer­rals, take advan­tage of them. Talk­ing to refer­rals is your best source of unbi­ased infor­ma­tion about a com­pa­ny and how they oper­ate. Make sure the com­pa­ny has done sev­er­al jobs in your neighborhood. 

5. Do you have online reviews I can read?
Anoth­er great way to learn about a com­pa­ny is to read their cus­tomers’ reviews on the Inter­net. There are sites like Yelp, BBB, Angie’s List, and even Google has reviews. And while you’re at Google, anoth­er way to dig up dirt on a com­pa­ny is to search the com­pa­ny name, then include a word after it like ​“prob­lem”, ​“com­plaints”, ​“scam” or ​“ripoff”. 

When you’re read­ing reviews keep two things in mind; the num­ber of stars and the num­ber of reviews. The aver­age num­ber of stars gives you a pre­view of how sat­is­fied you can expect to be when work­ing with a com­pa­ny. But also con­sid­er the num­ber of reviews. A small num­ber of reviews can indi­cate that the com­pa­ny is new to the indus­try or has only a few cus­tomers. Any of these should be a yel­low flag that you should prac­tice cau­tion when rely­ing on them for expert advice or years of sup­port after the sale.

6. What is the war­ran­ty on the solu­tion you are installing for me?
War­ranties can be mis­lead­ing – by design. They are used by some hon­est busi­ness­es to reas­sure you the prod­uct you pur­chase will per­form as promised, or it will be fixed if it doesn’t. They are also used by shady busi­ness­es and man­u­fac­tur­ers to give you a false sense of com­fort. These are the war­ranties that seem too good to be true. For exam­ple: mechan­i­cal pumps with life­time war­ranties that will give you unlim­it­ed replace­ments for free after the buy the first one. And then there are the drainage sys­tems that will be ser­viced for cen­turies to come, as long as a struc­ture is still stand­ing. These are smoke screens used to dis­tract you so you don’t look clos­er at what you’re actu­al­ly buy­ing. The truth is this. Buy a solu­tion as if it didn’t come with a war­ran­ty. That way you won’t be dis­tract­ed by the war­ran­ty terms and you will spend more time look­ing at the qual­i­ty of what you’re get­ting and who’s pro­vid­ing it.

NOTE: Water­proof­ing com­pa­nies offer a war­ran­ty, not a guar­an­tee. What that means is they ​“promise” to come back to fix it, but won’t pay you if their sys­tem fails and caus­es damage.

7. What kind of sump pumps are you installing?
Base­ment drainage sys­tems inter­cept water that wants to get into your base­ment. It then feeds that water into a basin where a sump pump removes it and the process starts again. The heart of the sys­tem is your sump pump. Some com­pa­nies make the price of their sys­tems low­er for unsus­pect­ing home­own­ers by using infe­ri­or plas­tic pumps that can’t prop­er­ly pump larg­er vol­umes of water. Don’t be fooled. When the dry­ness of your base­ment relies on a pump, don’t set­tle for plas­tic. Insist on a cast iron pri­ma­ry pump. And ask for a bat­tery back­up pump also. Hav­ing two pumps with one able to use bat­tery pow­er is cheap ​“dry­ness insur­ance” for your base­ment. Remem­ber, pumps are mechan­i­cal so you know at some point they will fail. So will the pow­er com­ing into your home dur­ing heavy storms. Don’t be caught with­out a work­ing pump when you need it most!

8. How are dis­putes resolved if there is an issue with your work?
As much as rep­utable com­pa­nies try to do their best, there are times when dis­putes may arise. When that hap­pens, it’s impor­tant to know your choic­es for find­ing a rem­e­dy. Can you hire your lawyer and take them to court? It’s good to find this out ahead of time because there is at least one water­proof­ing com­pa­ny that forces you into bind­ing arbi­tra­tion in order to decide the out­come of their dis­putes. Going this route can cost thou­sands of dol­lars and if their arbi­tra­tor rules in their favor, you can also get stuck pay­ing their expens­es for the arbitration.

9. Do you offer handy­man ser­vices to help pre­pare my base­ment for the project and put it back together?
Know­ing this is help­ful because you may have car­pet­ing, dry­wall, or a wash­er / dry­er that is in the path of where the drain tile will be installed. And while it’s pos­si­ble to hire a local handy­man to do this prep work, coor­di­nat­ing his sched­ule with the water­proofers could prove to be dif­fi­cult. Plus your handy­man (if you are lucky enough to find one who will call you back and show up when they promise!) may not know all that is need­ed to com­plete­ly pre­pare your base­ment, caus­ing poten­tial delays in get­ting your project started. 

10. If I think I have a prob­lem after the instal­la­tion, will I be charged for the return ser­vice call?
While it’s not com­mon, there’s always a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the prob­lem you tried to fix hap­pens again. Some­times this is a fault in the new sys­tem, espe­cial­ly if the work was done incor­rect­ly or you we’re sold an infe­ri­or or imi­ta­tion drain tile sys­tem. At times the con­tin­u­ing prob­lem isn’t relat­ed to the new sys­tem at all, but rather a sec­ondary prob­lem that still exists such as a leak­ing water heater or fur­nace. So how do you know? Your first option is to have your water­proofer return to help you deter­mine the source of the prob­lem. Just make sure you pick a water­proof­ing com­pa­ny who will come back with­out charg­ing you more if the prob­lem doesn’t turn out to be your new system.

11. What type of design is your drainage system?
Expe­ri­enced water­proofers know that the most effi­cient way to trans­port foun­da­tion water is through a round drainage pip­ing sys­tem posi­tioned next to the foot­ing at the base of the foun­da­tion wall. Some com­pa­nies have designed less effec­tive, but eas­i­er to install sys­tems that sit on top of the foot­ing. Oth­ers repur­pose lawn drainage sys­tems or use a series of mini-tubes in an effort to win busi­ness from their system’s ​“unique­ness”. The prob­lem with all of these uncon­ven­tion­al sys­tems is they do a bet­ter job at mak­ing a prof­it for the con­trac­tor than keep­ing your base­ment dry. So make sure you know what com­pa­nies mean when they use the gener­ic term ​“drain tile” to describe their drainage system.

NOTE: Round drainage pip­ing comes in two basic types (PVC and Cor­ru­gat­ed) that both do the job well. So don’t believe the tired argu­ment that has long since been dis­proven, that one is stronger and one is prone to collapse.

12. Is your drainage pipe wrapped in a fine mesh, fil­tra­tion fabric?
One of the sim­plest, but most impor­tant com­po­nents of a prop­er­ly designed and installed base­ment drain tile sys­tem is the fil­tra­tion fab­ric that is the last line of defense for keep­ing dirt out of your drain tile and ulti­mate­ly your sump pumps. When it is not used, it sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es the dirt and grit that enters your sys­tem which sig­nif­i­cant­ly decreas­es the life of the sys­tem. We know because we’ve replaced many drain tile sys­tems installed by oth­er com­pa­nies that were only a few years old but were installed with­out this fil­ter fabric.

There is one more ques­tion, and this is one you need to ask yourself…

13. How much are you pre­pared to invest to keep your base­ment dry? 
Too often we see home­own­ers who use price to guide their solu­tion and ulti­mate­ly they fall short of all what they tru­ly need.

Remem­ber what John Ruskin said:

“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too lit­tle. When you pay too much, you lose a lit­tle mon­ey — that’s all. When you pay too lit­tle, you some­times lose every­thing, because the thing you bought was inca­pable of doing the thing it was bought to do.”

At U.S. Water­proof­ing we are here to help you make an edu­cat­ed deci­sion and wel­come you ask­ing us the 12 ques­tions above as well as any oth­ers you might have about our com­pa­ny or our solutions.

Tags: drain tile, interior drain tile

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