Found a trick to keep my Edmonton basement dry after that spring melt

After three years of fighting seepage every April, I tried sloping the dirt away from the foundation and adding a simple downspout extension. It cost me about $60 in parts from Home Depot and took one afternoon. The last heavy rain last week left the crawl space completely dry for the first time. Anyone else in the north side deal with clay soil issues like this?

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martin.jamie1mo ago

Grading the dirt might be the cheap fix, but nobody's talking about what happens two summers from now when the clay shifts again. That soil moves like it's alive, especially after a dry July cracks it all up. A friend of mine on the west end did the same slope trick and it worked for one season, then the rain found a new path along the side where the ground settled. Maybe put a couple of landscape staples through that downspout extension so it doesn't pop off in a freeze-thaw cycle, that's the part that usually fails silently. Also, check your eaves troughs for leaves clogging the corner where the extension hooks up, that's where the water backs up and finds the hairline crack in your footing.

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