Manalto wrote:Urban runoff is a serious source of water pollution so savvy municipalities are finding ways to mitigate; I wouldn't be surprised if they do have some guidelines in Gardner. (I wouldn't be surprised if they don't, either.) Don't forget Tower Hill in Shrewsbury as a source.
My house has no gutters, so the foundation will be a rain garden of sorts, and at 70" of precipitation per year, that's no small thing. There are some great choices in that zone (8b) so I'm looking forward to lush vegetation all around. I'm going to try Cyperus papyrus 'Little Tut', a dwarf form of the papyrus that grows along the Nile, Colocasia (elephant ears) and Alocasia (caladium).
I hadn't even thought to look at average precipitation rates yet. I was still fiddling with the sq ft of roof ratio for garden size. I look forward to seeing what you plan overall for that when you get to that stage.
I'm hoping Gardner has some guidelines, but time will tell. We only have a gutter along the front porch line of the house. I have not yet been under the porch, although one side is currently completely open. The front and west sides of the porch still have shingles down to the ground except at the open wood stairwell. I've not noticed puddles under there yet from what I can see, but I do suspect, given some water gathering in the cellar on the north that it also is not sloped properly.
The rear (south) has concrete pads on the east side that apparently originally were angled away, but settled, so some of them now go towards the house. When we had our inspection, he told us if we gutter all around, we wouldn't have to worry so much about which way they go. We're still not sure we want to do that, though.
On the east side is either beds or leftover asphalt from the driveway that they led right up to the foundation towards the back half of the house. They also made a concrete pad at the base of the stairs, and then there are cut stones in a further sort of extension of that as well.
They did not angle any of that away at all, so that's another place we've noticed seepage inside. We're actually wanting to change that porch so that the stairs face the garage. That side porch needs work, as whomever built it (it seems a recent rebuild) did not know what they were doing in many regards. The way the landing boards were lain actually encourages water to gather, and caused issues with the
sill and water intrusion into the dining room on the other side.
The west side is buried if there is anything under there at all. The soil has built up almost equal to the top of the wood sill of the cellar windows. (I mentioned this in my general garden thread.) That wall and the one sw corner in particular seems to be the worst of the water intrusion. I blame the sloped roof on the cellar door jut out, as seen here:
I recently noticed when it was built, they didn't do the greatest job marrying it to the main exterior, but that could also be problems getting the AC siding fitted there. The jut does have the original wood siding under it, although I can't tell if it was built later but before the AC. (I'm guessing, based on our garage, that's when they did the AC.) There's an AC tile (or two) missing there at the meeting point, and no sign of flashing at all along that roofline. It's on my list of things to check when the weather clears, actually. I noticed recently on a patch job of the plaster in the office (the room behind that exterior seam) there is what looks to be a plaster washer repair that wasn't mudded over properly. So I bet that there has been some water intrusion in the past, and worry it could happen again.
I'm hoping that when we change that slope with the walapini there it will help mitigate, and of course when (if) that's added, we'd properly grade away from that add on. I guess they thought it best to slope that way because there was a bed next to there, and if they sloped it south, it might encourage water down the stairs.
Because of the front yard slope, I'm having some trouble finding a good size area. Because we have the gutter system there, that already collects all the north water, so that would be easy to divert.
We're actually thinking of having two smaller rain gardens as a result of how our roof is sloped, where the back rain garden might feed into a natural water feature. I've been doing a lot of research on how to have a created water feature without a pump system that won't stagnate.
I've been watching for puddles with all the rains since the snow melted, and so far, we really don't get any. The cellar does get water, but it's very little, and travels right to the sump. There's only a few spots on the west side of the dirt floor that have had even the slightest of puddling at the worst of times so far. The dirt hasn't been raked in who knows how long down there, so the water has shaped it over time. There are portions on the east side that have concrete pads, below the boiler, oil tank and laundry area. The walls themselves don't show weeping signs, but there is an area near the first cellar door before the stairs out where you can see they replaced just outside the frame, and the bulk of the cellar water comes through there. This is the same spot where the jut directs to.
I have some sites with suggested natives for the rain gardens, but haven't made decisions since we're still observing and waiting to hear back from the city about a few things.
City Hall will be open on the morrow, and I have some offices to visit for various reasons. So I might have some answers by then.