Trenching, French drains, sump pumps and crawlspace work across Indiana. No skid steer tracks across your lawn. The sod goes back where we found it.
See it for yourself
About a minute in a customer's yard. Anthony follows the stone line from the side of the house out to the low spot it drains to, and shows what the lawn looks like after the work is done.
This is the same walk Anthony gives when he is standing in your yard writing an estimate.
Start here
Pick the one that sounds most like your house. We will tell you what usually causes it and where to read more.
Almost every wet basement we see in Indiana starts outside, not inside. Roof water lands within a few feet of the wall, the ground around the house has settled flat or back toward it, and the block wall takes the hydrostatic pressure. We follow the water from the roofline down before we ever talk about the inside of the wall.
Central Indiana sits on heavy clay. Water that lands on it has nowhere to go down, so it sits until it evaporates. The fix is giving it somewhere to go sideways: a trench drain covered in river rock, a buried line, or both.
One inch of rain on a 1,500 square foot roof is about 930 gallons. If your downspouts release it at the corner of the house, that is about 930 gallons soaking the soil right against your foundation. Burying the discharge and carrying it out to daylight is usually the cheapest fix on the whole property.
A damp crawlspace smell is soil moisture evaporating into the space and then rising into the house. Sealing the ground with a heavy vapor barrier, correcting outside grade and drying the space stops the cycle. We crawl the whole space first so you know what is actually down there.
A pump running nonstop is usually a pump doing a job the yard should be doing, or a pump that is undersized, or one discharging so close to the house that it recycles the same water. We look at all three before selling you a bigger pump.
When water sits against the house, it ends up in the basement. A foundation swale is a hand-dug trench along the house, not against it, that leads that water away and finishes as a river rock bed.
Do the math on your roof
Every inch of rain that lands on your roof comes off it at the downspouts, about 0.623 gallons for every square foot. A 1,500 square foot roof in a one inch rain sheds about 930 gallons. Split four ways, that is about 230 gallons at each corner of the house if the downspouts stop there. Slide in your roof size, the rain and how many downspouts you have to see your own number. Getting that water away from your house and its foundation is the whole job.
The math: one inch of rain over one square foot is 144 cubic inches of water, and a gallon is 231 cubic inches. 144 ÷ 231 = 0.623 gallons.
If your downspouts empty at the corners, that water soaks the soil right against the foundation. Burying the discharge and carrying it out to daylight is usually the fix. See buried downspout drainage
What we do
Grouped by where the water is giving you trouble. Every one of them is dug by hand.
Pipe from the downspouts, or a rock and fabric trench that follows the yard. Dug by hand, like everything we do.
See what is inside →For the lawn that never dries out. We diagnose before we quote.
See what is inside →The finish work, while we are already setting grade and stone.
See what is inside →Roof water buried and carried out past the foundation.
See what is inside →The cheapest fix on the property, and often the one that works.
See what is inside →A hand-dug trench along the house, covered in river rock, that leads water away from the foundation.
See what is inside →A hand-dug trench that carries water out of a soggy yard, covered in river rock or hidden under a path.
See what is inside →A drain inside the basement, cut in along the wall where the water comes in.
See what is inside →We chase the water from the roofline down, not from the wall in.
See what is inside →Heavy vapor barrier, drainage and drying, done properly.
See what is inside →Pit, pump, backup and a discharge line that gets water away.
See what is inside →What sets us apart
Most drainage contractors show up with a mini excavator or a trencher. It is quicker for them, and it leaves you with rutted turf, compacted soil, torn irrigation and a landscaping bill on top of the drainage bill.
We use what we call the zipper method. Three sides of the sod get cut and the fourth is left attached, so the turf hinges open, waits beside the trench, and folds back into the exact spot it came from. Then we dig the line, set the pipe and stone, and close it up. On most jobs you can see where we were for a few weeks, and then you cannot.
From your neighbors
These update themselves. Nothing on this page is typed in by us.
Where we work
We cover all of Indiana from two bases, one in Kokomo and one in Bloomington. You do not have to live in one of the towns below. They are just the ones we are in most often.
Also serving: Westfield, Noblesville, Avon, Brownsburg, Greenwood, Bargersville, Geist, McCordsville, Fortville, Greentown, Russiaville, Marion, Nineveh and Ellettsville.
How a job goes
Tell us what you are seeing and when it started. We answer leads within about 30 minutes during business hours.
We watch where water actually goes, check the fall with a level, and mark the line. No charge, and no pressure to sign anything that day.
A fixed price for a defined scope. Half down holds your spot on the schedule, and the balance is due when the work is finished.
Sod, mulch and stone get reset over the line. The soil we dug out gets raked and spread around the property where it is useful, so you are not paying for a dump trailer.
"We do not run heavy equipment through your yard. Wherever we dig, the grass goes back where it was."
Anthony Piatt, owner. It is the first thing he says on almost every estimate.
Sent by a past customer?
Past customers and their referrals get 10% off. Mention who sent you when you call.
Who shows up
We started in February 2016. Anthony Piatt runs our company, his daughter Mareana runs the office, and the same small crew has been putting pipe in the ground across Indiana ever since.
We are not a franchise and we do not subcontract the work out. Everybody who shows up at your house works for us and wears our shirt.
Recent work
Questions we get every week
Yes, for the trenching and the drainage lines. That is the whole point of our company. We use shovels, mattocks and wheelbarrows instead of a mini excavator or a walk-behind trencher, because those machines tear up turf, compact the soil either side of the trench and often break irrigation and low-voltage lines nobody knew were there.
Where a machine is genuinely required, for example a very long run through open ground with no lawn to protect, we will tell you that on the estimate rather than pretend otherwise.
The range is wide. A single buried downspout run is one of our smaller jobs. A full perimeter system with a new sump, a long discharge line and rock beds on a large lot is one of the biggest.
Price is driven by trench length, depth, how much stone the job needs, how hard the ground is and how much finish work goes back on top. You get a fixed written number after the on-site visit, not a range over the phone.
Yes. The on-site visit and the written quote cost you nothing, and there is no obligation. We would rather walk the yard with you and turn down a job we cannot do well than sell you a system that will not solve the problem.
Half the quoted price is due to schedule the work and cover materials, and the balance is due when the job is finished and you have walked it with us. We do not offer financing.
Past customers, and anyone a past customer sends our way, get 10% off. Just tell us who sent you.
Days, not months. The zipper method leaves the turf hinged along one uncut edge, so it folds back into the same cut it came out of and knits in over a few weeks of normal watering and mowing. Compare that with a machine-dug job, where the tracks and the dumped soil usually mean reseeding or new sod across a much wider area.
It stays on your property. We rake and spread it wherever it is useful, filling a low spot, evening out a soft area, or building up a bed. Nothing gets loaded into a trailer and hauled away, which is part of why hand digging comes in at a sensible price.
If you would rather it went somewhere specific, tell us on the estimate visit and we will put it there.
No. We are a scheduled-work company, not an emergency service. If you have active water coming into a finished basement right now, call a water-mitigation company first to get it dried out, then call us to fix the reason it got in.
We answer new messages within about 30 minutes during business hours, Monday through Friday 9am to 7pm and Saturday 9am to 5pm.
Usually not for a residential drainage line that stays on your own property. It changes when the discharge crosses into a public right-of-way, ties into a municipal storm system, or runs inside a regulated drain easement. Hamilton County, for example, requires a permit from the County Surveyor before you work within a regulated drain easement.
We flag anything like that during the estimate so it is handled before we dig, not after.
We work across all of Indiana from two bases, one in Kokomo and one in Bloomington. The towns we are in most often are listed on our service area page. If yours is not there, call anyway.
Free estimate
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