DIY Crawl Space Guide: Flood Water Management Week 4

Crawl space water issues often seem like an unsolvable mystery, but the solution starts with understanding a crucial distinction: water management versus waterproofing. These approaches tackle the same problem from fundamentally different angles, each with their own strengths and limitations that every homeowner should understand.

Throughout this episode of our Crawl Space Repair Challenge, Michael Church breaks down the essential tools and techniques professional "ninjas" use to address flooded crawl spaces. From specialized equipment like the battery-powered GeoRipper to the superior HydraWay drainage system (with its distinctive salt-and-pepper appearance that separates it from inferior knockoffs), you'll discover the professional-grade solutions that deliver lasting results.

The heart of this discussion explores why most contractors opt for interior water management rather than exterior waterproofing. While exterior approaches aim to prevent water entry completely, they come with significant drawbacks: higher costs, weather delays, landscape disruption, and the lingering question of whether they'll actually solve the problem completely. By contrast, interior systems manage water that's already entered your crawl space, offering more affordable, weather-resistant solutions that can be easily tested and repaired if necessary.

Michael doesn't just explain concepts—he provides specific, actionable guidance on installation best practices. Learn why proper drainage installation requires nine-inch-deep trenches positioned 12-24 inches from foundation walls, why sealing system endpoints prevents failure, and how your vapor barrier actually functions as part of your water management solution. Whether you're tackling this project yourself or hiring professionals, this knowledge ensures you'll make informed decisions about protecting your home's foundation and creating a healthier living environment.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Water Management
• 0:19 Overview
• 0:46 Recommended tool - The Trencher
• 1:42 What is Hydraway
• 2:38 Interior vs Exterior Waterproofing
• 4:00 Exterior Waterproofing Pros and Cons
• 5:58 Interior Waterproofing Pros and Cons
• 7:24 Will Exterior Waterproofing Alone Stop Water
• 8:29 Best Practices for Hydraway Interior Waterproofing
• 10:48 Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hey, this is Michael Church, crawl Space Ninja. We are on week four of the Crawl Space Repair Challenge. Today, we are going to discuss crawl space water management, and it's a little different than crawl space waterproofing. I'm gonna share with you my thoughts on water management versus waterproofing, so let's go ahead and get started. What we will be discussing today are the tools and the products that we use to address a flooded crawl space. We're also going to touch on interior water management versus exterior waterproofing, best practices that we use to install drain tiles and French drains in crawl spaces, why the vapor barrier is so crucial to the project, do you need weep holes, and is a gravity fed drainage system a good idea versus running it into a sump pump? I also want to share with you a video that we released. What is hydrostatic pressure? I think this video relates very well to this topic. Corey from hydroway talks about hydrostatic pressure, why your crawl space in your basement is flooding and what you can do to minimize hydrostatic pressure. Make sure you check out that video as well.

Speaker 0: 1:06

There are some really cool tools that the Ninjas get to use whenever they are installing a water management system inside of a crawl space. This is just one of them, the geo Ripper, gives you the ability to install that drain tile inside the crawl space or the basement. You can also use it if you got a small project that you're doing outside. The geo ripper does come in both a battery powered or a gasoline powered. We use the battery powered when we're dealing with the crawl space because of it being underneath the living space, but the gasoline powered is also available. If you get a chance, check out this product. It's really good. If you do a lot of digging you can even do downspout extensions.

Speaker 0: 1:43

Some other products that I'm going to share with you are the Hydro system. We have exclusively gone with the Hydro system here at Crawl Space Ninja. We also make it available on our DIY store If any of you decide you want to install this product yourself. It is great for many different projects. It is used in basement waterproofing, french drains, retention walls, sports fields fields and footer drains. But I just want you all to know that there is a new look to the hydro way. They have been copied by some cheaper products out there. So if you're installing anything that is a solid black system, as pictured in the middle, then that would be the older version of the Hydroway or perhaps a knockoff. So anything that you're going to want to install today to make sure that it stands up to the test of time and the Hydroway warranty is going to look like it does here in this picture. With the salt and pepper look. It's kind of a light gray and a dark gray or black stripe down it.

Speaker 0: 2:40

So interior versus exterior water management. We have kind of coined the phrase water management Anytime you're dealing with addressing flooding on the inside of the house Now, whether that's the basement or the crawl space, because waterproofing a basement from the inside is not really a term that we feel comfortable using, because the term waterproofing means that you're actually keeping the water from entering, entering the basement or the crawl space. So we like to call it water management. As you can see here we've got this HydraWaste system installed inside the crawl space or the basement. Tie that French drain or that HydraWaste system into a sump pump and then allow that sump pump to push that water outside of that crawl space or basement. Versus the picture on the left that is showing a redo of an outside waterproofing system and I'm going to go over some pros and cons of water management versus waterproofing, but for the purpose of this video, we're going to talk more about water management versus waterproofing. But if you decide that you want to do waterproofing, just keep in mind that it is an exterior feature, that you're trying to keep that water from going into the basement or the crawl space, versus a water management system where all you're really doing is capturing and redirecting that water out of the space. So let's get into some pros and cons of exterior waterproofing and please comment down below if I've missed some of these pros and cons that I'm going to share with you today. First of all, it's preventative. If you're going to address the water on the outside of the crawl space, you're actually preventing the water from entering the space, which a lot of people will argue is the best way to go about it. Some of the cons are waterproofing on the outside.

Speaker 0: 4:21

According to what we see here in East Tennessee, it's going to cost you more up front in order to do the exterior versus the interior. Weather will affect that exterior work that's going on. So if they start digging at the yard and right next to the footer and then a big, huge rainstorm comes, they're not gonna be able to continue. You have to redo all of the exterior. For example, if this house was taking on water, well, guess what? All of that landscaping would have to be redone. You've got large equipment that you're gonna have to use, which means that you might have to move that HVAC system. You might have to crack that driveway, crack it up and get it out of the way. You might have walkways that you've gotta remove and replace. All of this has to be considered to do a full perimeter exterior waterproofing project. If you've got a really tall foundation wall versus a really short foundation wall versus a really short foundation wall, that's going to play into it, because you can't dig 12 feet down without digging more of the yard, because that yard will want to fall into that trench that you created. So for safety reasons, you're going to have to remove more earth in order to get that project completed. And then sometimes you got to ask yourself will it actually fix it and I'm going to go over that here a little later on the slide but will exterior actually fix it once the water has found the path of least resistance? And what if the contractor messed up? What guarantees do you have once you re-sawed everything and you got your landscaping back together? What if they miss something Then they're going to have to tear everything up again and have to do it all over again. So you want to make sure that it's done right before you put all of that work and effort into putting your yard back together.

Speaker 0: 5:56

Versus an interior pros and cons of the interior I would say probably 80 to 90% of waterproofing what they call waterproofing contractors probably do it from the interior and prefer to do it from the interior. But let's talk about pros and cons of that as well. As I mentioned before, it's not really waterproofing, it's more water management. We're just redirecting it, we're not stopping it from coming in, but it doesn't disrupt the outside as an exterior would. So that's a pro. It's less upfront cost. Typically that's a pro.

Speaker 0: 6:25

Weather does not affect an interior job most of the time versus exterior. It is easier, in my opinion, to make sure that the system is working properly. You can test it. You can pour it full of water to check to see if the system is working properly. If there is a mess up that maybe didn't get caught during the test, then a lot of times you can just tear out that one little section and correct it. So sometimes that could be an easier fix versus having to redo all the landscaping outside. And, of course, an interior water management system on the contractor side is easier to install, which is partly why it's less upfront cost to do it.

Speaker 0: 7:00

I want this to be a forum for us to communicate. I'm not picking which you should go with, whether it's interior or exterior. I want this to be information that you as a homeowner can research to figure out which is best for you, because, to be quite honest with you, my opinion doesn't really matter. So please let us know down below If you waterproofed on the outside or the inside. Let us know why you chose that method. Will the exterior fix it? This is one of the things I mentioned a couple of slides ago.

Speaker 0: 7:26

The reason why you have to be careful is if you've got someone only waterproofing from where the grass is down to the top of the footer or even beside the footer. Let's say that they excavated all that dirt from the top of the grass to beside the footer. There's still the bottom of the footer that didn't get addressed. There is the interior part of the footer that didn't get waterproofed. So water can still make its way into this space, either through hydrostatic pressure, or perhaps there's a well underground. So just because you do that exterior foundation wall doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to stop all the water from going into the crawl space or the basement. So I just want to let you all know that, because if you spend all that money to do the exterior and then you find out it did not work or did not take care of 100% of the problem, you're going to be real upset. So just make sure you consider there are other parts of the foundation wall and the footer that water can get inside the basement and the crawl space.

Speaker 0: 8:25

Let's talk about some best practices for an interior water management system. As I mentioned before, we've pretty much gone exclusively with the Hydrowaste system. We feel like it is the best system out there because it moves more water. It gets rid of the water more rapidly, so that way it starts to dry that soil more rapidly. In the crawl space Some best practices are you want to dig down at least nine inches and then put some of the earth back on the Hydraway, so that way it's getting deeper into the soil and can move more water. To get the soil dry as quickly as possible, you want to double up that Hydraway. I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but that's actually two vertical pieces of Hydraway put together. You want to seal up those ends, but that's actually two vertical pieces of hydro way put together. You want to seal up those ends. You don't want to leave it open like it's showing here at the end, because once earth gets into that system it's going to damage it. So you want to make sure you cap it off at the ends in order to keep it clean, so that it'll move more water and doesn't get clogged. Once it's sealed at both ends, you're going to see virtually a zero clog rate with the hydro way system of the amount of open area that it uses.

Speaker 0: 9:24

Always install a basin. I'm not a big fan and I mentioned this down below where it says not recommended. I'm not a big fan of gravity-fed discharge systems. I would rather you install your French drain, whether it's Hydraway or NDS EasyFlow. Stub it right into the basin so that way the basin can take on more water more rapidly.

Speaker 0: 9:43

You want to come out about 12 to 24 inches from the foundation wall. This is not a good example of where to install it. This is actually a basement install. You want to kind of get away from the foundation wall. You don't necessarily have to go down to the footer in a crawl space, but in a basement we want to put the Hydrowave beside the footer, just like it's shown here. In a crawl space you want to be 12 to 24 inches away from the wall, nine inches deep. You don't have to go all the way to the foot.

Speaker 0: 10:08

If you could use a trencher, that'll make your life a lot quicker and happier to get that trenching done. But those trenchers do move a lot of earth. So make sure you use proper PPE if you're going to use something like the GeoRipper. And of course you always want to cover up the water management system with a vapor barrier. Attach that vapor barrier to the walls using mechanical fasteners so that that plastic will not move. Consider the vapor barrier part of the water management system. Make sure you overlap and tape those seams as well. In a crawl space you don't necessarily have to install weep holes like you would in a basement if you're doing an interior water management system. Not to say that you can't install weep holes in a crawl space, but we don't really feel like that's necessary. So, as I mentioned, this is week four of our crawl space repair challenge. We hope you'll check out the rest of the series. I'm Michael Church with Crawl Space Ninja. We hope you make it a happy and blessed day and we'll see you later.