Perimeter Drainage: Is it worth it?

Welcome back to our special series, Is It Worth It?, where we ask the question no one else (except the people on Canada’s Worst Handyman, of course) dares to ask: are all those things you do during a basement renovation really worth doing yourself? Or should you just bite the bullet and hire a professional before you really screw things up?

Last time, we covered demolition, and it was pretty much an unqualified “give ‘er!” This time, something trickier: digging out your perimeter drains and replacing the weeping tile.

Our experience
Oh man, do I really have to relive this?

Well, digging was one of the very first things we started, and if you must know, we still haven’t completely finished filling in all of the holes. There’s still a dandy little impression in the driveway that requires some concrete/asphalt work.

But to recap the overall process, here’s what we did done dug as diggers:

• We dug a trench about four feet deep and two feet wide across three-quarters of the back of the house - all told, about thirty feet long (including the bit that went around the corner).


• We dug a two-foot-by-four-foot hole, about six feet deep, on the west side of the house, and another, roughly the same size, through the asphalt driveway on the east side of the house.


• We dug a trench 12 inches wide and 24 inches deep across the front lawn for the new water service.


• And, of course, the hole to end all holes, the giant monster in the front flower bed which, by the time all was said and done, measured six feet by eight feet, and was a little more than ten feet deep. And yes, it really is that big, and no, it really doesn’t look that impressive in pictures. You have to stand in it to get the full effect. (I really took a lot of pictures of that hole, didn’t I?)

Pros:
There really isn’t much in the way of “pro” for this. I guess you could make a case that doing it ourselves let us progress at our own pace, which meant that making holes for the plumber bigger, or digging an extra clean-out for the Roto-Rooter man, didn’t entail having to stay home from work while we waited around for some chain-smoking deadbeat to come by and hand-bomb a few shovelfuls of dirt over the fence until he passed out from the heat and the six beers he drank at lunch.

Um… where was I? Oh, right. We could go at our own pace, work on the holes that needed work when we had to, and didn’t have to pay someone to do it for us. Those are your “pros”.

Cons:
You do know that they make people do this sort of manual labour as punishment, right? I mean, it’s HARD. It’s even harder if all you do is sit around on your secretarial spread all day, staring at a computer screen, and then try to put in a few hours of shoveling after dinner. I dunno if it gets any easier if you do it for a living, but it sure couldn’t be any worse.

Oh, and let me assure you, it’s not without hidden costs: I went through an entire bottle of Vitamin I last summer. So, yeah. There’s that.

Is It Worth It?
Yeesh... you know, I’m really not sure about this one. I mean, on one hand, it’s just digging. It doesn’t exactly require a high degree of technical acuity, if you know what I mean. It’s something just about anybody can do, and requires nothing more than a shovel and a wheelbarrow. And, of course, a pick if you happen to be unlucky enough to live on a lot comprised entirely of clay. But really, that and a little time in the salt mines are enough to tackle the job.

That being said, I have to admit that if we were to do this all over again, I think we would have bit the bullet and at least tried to hire somebody. Manual labour is generally pretty cheap, and for a few hundred dollars, we probably could have had it all done in a day or two, as opposed to dragging it out for months (or - cough - years). While it’s certainly true that finding contractors to do that sort of work has been nearly impossible in this town for the past few years, even if it took a couple of weeks to line them up, it still would have been done faster in the end.

At the very least, I can assure you that I’d rather not do that much digging again – unless I get to rent a Bobcat!

Next time: framing!