Reply to Should we mention that our house has a French drain?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It doesn’t mean a house had “problems.” The building code requires that you have perimeter drains and unless the lot is sloped such that they can drain with gravity, you need a sump pump. A sump pump can also be there to handle an exterior drain below grade like at the bottom of basement entrance stairs.

A house in our area *without* a sump pump would be more unusual and you would need to look at why, probably a slope that lets the perimeter drains exit with gravity. But you’d want to look. [/quote]

Agreed that sump pumps are common here, but many homes built before codes were stricter on drainage/pumps (eg many colonials) will not have them. They have the waterproofing technology of their day, which likely included parging and exterior drainage of some sort but not pumps (interior or exterior). If gutters / grading have been handled correctly and the home site is decent, many older homes here, including those with finished basements, don’t have/need pumps. So the presence of a pump does reveal something about water issues, at least if the house is old enough that pumps were not required by code when built.[/quote]

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