daylight drain

[Unregistered]

I'm currently buidling a house. Two walls will be traditional basement walls, and the other two will be wood walkout walls. Below the walkout walls, there will be 4' frost walls. Do I need to drain these walls to a sump pit or at all? If I have to, I end up with a sump pit potentially 5' deep.

[Wgoodrich]

Per the IRC 2000, if you have a walk out basement then you may use a french drain style basement perimeter drain. If you have land lower than the top of the footer for the basement where you have your walk out part of your basement and you should. You may install a 12"x12" box of #4 washed rock or crushed stone or larger placing a filtering clothe same as used on a septic finger system on top of that 12"x12" drain box of stone. This keeps the fines of dirt from pluggin this french drain system. Then where the masonry walls surface to your wood walls the 12"x12" french drain leaches out on top of the ground at the corners of the masonry walls where the wood walls start. Then install white rip rap rock at those corners.

If you have wing retainer walls sticking out where the walk out part of the basement is then extend the french drain 12"x12" stone drainage box out to the ends of those winged retainer walls and install your white rip rap rock on the end of each winged wall.

What you then have is a leaching system draining the subsurface water out the ends rather than inside the basement.

Many as in my county install a 4" drain pipe located not higher than the top of the footer all the way around the buried part of your basement as normally done in fully buried basements then trenched to an approved surface outlet with animal guard remote from the house with gravity drain design.

A sump pump is not required for a masonry basement, however many install one to pump gray water such as condensation of A coil of a/c unit or water softner drain etc. The sump pump is sometimes installed to cover any broken pipes etc. when a basement is totally under ground. This sump pump drain may be ****ed out the wall of the house taken away by the 6" fall in 10' away from the house finished grade required to direct surface water from the house.

You may want to check local rules, In my jurisdiction any drain whether pumped or not must be outleted to an approved drain outlet with an animal guard approved by the County drainage board. You may have a local rule like this one that will apply.

Hope this helps

Wg