This dude is the Bob Ross of drainage systems

I dont know what is more impressive, how much this guy knows his stuff or the fact that he is able to make a video about a sump pump interesting and enjoyable to watch...call me impressed (and grateful) :-)

I like your attitude! Optimistic and nothing fazes you. A positive and well-adjusted person especially when the going gets tough! I have learned more from your attitude than what you show in your videos.

Your positivity is contagious bro thank you for a great video and great work

your such a great teacher and I'm so grateful for you doing this so I can learn that I watch the whole advertisement so they will pay you the most for your services...... :.)

Thank you, Sir, so much for sharing your great works. It helps me a lot a lot with my flooded crawl space. I really appreciate your sharing. Keep your good works up!!!!

You make an seemingly drudgerous task look enjoyable. I'll be thinking about your attitude during my next project. Love your videos and thank you!

I hope you are very well paid because you definitely deserve it. This is hard work.

Good job, you gave me the confidence to do it my self.

Since I started my own landscaping and more business, I have used his videos along the way. His attitude is amazing and he is absolutely right about keeping a smile makes the day go by so much more smoothly. It's very difficult doing this skill trade on a daily especially being a female in my late 30's .

Another great educational demonstration from Chuck. This is gold.

Thanks for the video! Tackling this same project for my crawl space today.

You are the Bob Ross of drainage solutions.

I love your videos! Very specific and explained in a way that solicits confidence. I have used your videos for our exterior french drain and will be finishing up our interior drain this weekend. Checked in to verify what type of pipe to use. We are in NJ with thick clay mud and big rocks to dig through and thats in our basement! in our crawl space. What a task digging for the pump pit. yikes. Thanks for the confidence .

Trenching is easy in sand. Come to my house and dig this clay! Love your videos😊

Outstanding workmanship and love your videos. Attention to detail and l have learned so much and gives me ideas on my nexts project. Boy you sure are a Jack of all trades when you video and work at the same time. Cuts the cost of hiring a production crew and filming all what you do. Kudos to you sir. Totally awesome. Thank you,

Love your positive attitude smile ☺ good of you to share your skills all the best from the UK 🇬🇧

Love your videos chuck. I don’t have any plans for drains at anything of the sorts. But I like a person who isn’t afraid of getting dirty and takes pride in his work. Cheers for California mate. (Btw out here we have clay, no sand or soft soil digging sucks)

Chuck....always a great video. I have learned so much from you. Thank you so much. I love your attitude.

Awesome video, our crawl space is about the same size. Going to start the project in April. Thank you for explaining the footer and technique for placing the pipe/gravel.

my partner and i have to do this , thanks your VDO very useful for us and we wont forget to smile and laugh at it to make a job easier.

Another great video Chuck. Thanks for posting it.

I'm doing a project with my outside sump pump discharge. I needed some pointers on it...You Sir, have me ready to get busy... Thank You, Excellent Videos. Chuck in Michigan

you’re the man Chuck! thanks for the lesson!

You've got a great attitude and great info. A question: why would you put a french trench and pump inside the crawlspace instead outside on the other side of the footer ? Is one or the other OK, and it comes down to where you can put it with the least disturbance ? It sure is a lot harder to do in a crawlspace.

This is great I’m so happy you post these videos. This is my wife’s account but I just had to comment and say thank you! We are in FL and would hire you in a heartbeat if I could afford to but for now I’ll have to diy and keep a smile on my face like you said! Lol and I feel a lot more confident now

Such a nice guy, always with big smile on his face!

Definitely impressed with his knowledge and his amazing positive attitude toward the job at hand. Wish he worked in Arizona.

I've learned so much from these videos. Thanks!

Keep your smile!!! Love it! Going to Show my construction crew that phrase This week!!

Great video and I appreciate the content and attitude. I'm looking at doing my crawl space as well adding drainage to my back yard. Keep up the good work!

Wish I knew someone in my town with your knowledge and attitude.

Muy práctico y bien explicado. Muchas gracias por compartir sus conocimientos. Excelente 👌

Dear friend.....U are the best & perfect person for the job.

It is refreshing to see someone have a positive outlook on the task at hand. Work does indeed go quicker and more efficiently with a smile and a laugh than a scowl and swear. Might even just do a better job.

I'm laughing and crying at how easy that soil digs. Mine it's clay and rock. 80' dig with the same shovel took 6 hours of hard hard digging.

Really good video! Thank you for sharing this

Great work with a great sense of humor!

very good video. Very informative. Thank you

Great video. And your right, do it with a smile. It goes a lot easier for sure!

Thanks! Your videos helped me solve a drainage problem next to my house on my own after a driveway project crushed my drainage underneath. Installed a French drain and sump pump.

ALWAYS fun & uplifting!

Chuck, this is a very detailed video and exactly what I was looking for. Good job. Great content! Thanks for the lesson. Now I will knock mine out.

Great video! About to start the same exact job for a friend of mines dad.

Thanks for sharing this.

Very good video and explanation

If this guy was in Australia, I'd hire him for sure. So many hack trades here who are happy to take the money but not do a proper job.

I really like him alway smile yes that is the key to a happy work day cussing not gonna do the work for you good jobs guys well done honest works

Come on up to indiana and see how quick this clay digs😄 im still digging mine.

you are awesome. i really enjoyed this video.

Get er done

Thank you!

My question is the pipe you lay around the footer does it have holes in it so water can enter the pipe and exit through the pump system? I just need to know so I can buy some through Lowes. I am doing this project all by myself. Thank you I really like your videos. Very well explained and detailed.

Hi chuck..I am 52 and I am a woman with a husband that can no longer help around the house due to medical reasons..I have no family to help bc they all live outta state..we bought this house over two years ago and we noticed every time it rains we have standing water...we are surrounded by hills where we are below everyone else’s houses and we are below the road...January the 17 th of 2019 we got a lot of rain and it was standing all over my yard..I decided to look under my house thinking it has to be getting under there..to my dismay there was about a foot and a half of standing water..I have been watching your videos bc you are who I found when I typed in how to get water out of your crawl space..I got two estimates to fix the problem for around 9,000 dollars which I think is too much...I live on a fixed income so I can not afford that..I am going to go under my house and attempt to fix this myself and will be watching your videos to help me...sure wish you could help me tho bc it’s going to be difficult for me to do alone...thx for the videos

Love your positivity! It’s all about the positive attitude! Would round rock be better or is crushed really just fine? You’ve inspired me to consider doing this job myself. It might save me 5K.

Good job bro

Would really love to see it operate...

Would thanks

You sir are very inspiring and how do you not worry about the spiders?! I just came from mine and they were big ones down there and they made my skin crawl lol

Wish my soil was that soft had to use an sds max tool with a clay spade attachment to break it up before digging it out.

Great video. Wish I had that Florida sandy soil to dig into. My back hurts watching the video though.

Excellent video and explanation! Just one question: what is the benefit of placing the French drain on the inside of the crawl space, rather than doing the same work on the exterior?

this dude is awesome

thanks

You have inspired me.... i have had a crawlspace problem for 30 years... i am now going to address this ... THANK YOU for your inspiration. They did a 2" rough pure of concreate in my crawlspace...do you have any recommendations on how to remove dirt from a crawlspace most efficiently ? I will be cutting into the cement around the circumfrance and after i get that cement i will need to remove that and then all the dirt also that the gravel will replace.... right ?

Great video! Question: Did you grade the ditch so that the water will be directed towards the basin, or will there be pockets where water will sit?

What a fabulous show and tell video! Thanks a LOT! It is people like you who have made KZfaq an university. Questions: Why didn't you choose the EZ flow pipe and avoid handling so much rocks? Does rock perform better? Does using EZ flow have any disadvantage? Also what did you do with all the excess dirt from the trench? hauled away from the crawlspace? or just built the island?

Great video! I needed that! How do you ensure that the water flow down the trenches until the sump up and doesn’t keep stagnant at any given point?

Do you or is there a materials supply list for this DIY project? Like what are the specs on the ground water collection piping, sump specs detail... Thank you in advance, very helpful video.

What size gravel is best? Is that C ballast? Thanks! And thanks for your optimism!

@appledrains Do you remove the spoils from the digging or spread and smooth them out in the middle of the crawlspace using a screed of some sort?

Amazing video. Where can I buy the sump basin and pump? Do you use 4 inch French drain pipe

Hot weather and insulation??? Mis respetos amigo, thank you

Great advice - do it with a smile and it'll go by faster! I have a question - can the trench be dug a foot or two away from the foundation? I'd rather not disturb the dirt right next to the foundation. Also, why does the trench have to be so deep? Can a 4" deep trench filled with gravel be sufficient?

Man I wish my dirt was that easy to dig.

That’s really soft soil! I’m dealing with the sticky adobe and rocky soil 😩.

I will definitely do this to my crawl space this summer. I’m tiny enough to fit in my crawl space. Not enough space for a guy to fit.

When laying the pipe to channel the water, how do you know it’s leveled correctly for steady water flow?

That's what makes U special.....U have that nice smile......that I would hire U......even without a Reference...... bet U dont drink beer @ the job....I bet U are not a big mouth type of a Guy. And U did these jobs all by yourself.... I felt that from start. Best wishes...& God Bless..!

Hi Chuck, I enjoy your videos. I’m waterproofing my lake house but here in Alabama we have really hard clay so trenching has been a bear! I have found a rotary hammer with a spade bit to be indispensable when I hit hard sections of clay.

If you do the inside do you need to do the outside? Or if crawlspace is too tight can you get same benefit from doing outside perimeter ?

Thank you so much for sharing this 🙏🙏 I have a question, you said that pipe need to be installed on same level with a footer right ? So I wouldn’t need to do a slope for pipe so water would go by the slope ? Thank you

First of all, thnak you for sharing your video. Why would you install a pipe going up to cross the wall and then go down?

The footings under my home's foundation were poured directly into earth with no forms. Hard to know how deep they go. I'm hoping they are at least 6" and am not going any deeper than that below the top of the footing. I'm digging clay also, and ended up buying a pick to chop it up in the driest areas. Not an easy or pleasant job. I decided to get all the spoils out of there since the crawlspace was already backfilled well above the footings in spots. There is a power tool called a vacuum excavator that can help with this---it's basically a giant, trailer-mounted vacuum cleaner with a water jet on the tip---but no one rents them around here.

At 5:43, is there any benefit to making the bottom of the trench smooth and flat or is leaving the bottom with shovel marks and clumps of dirt make no difference?

Dont know if I missed it, but what gravel do you use? is that 1-1/2" drainage rock? Thank you for the video.

How do you when to do this outside the foundation or inside the crawlspace?

just to be clear, was the pipe sleeve only used by the smp-pump, not the whole crawlspace?

does it matter how big the perforations are on the footing pipe? I have seen some large and some smaller holes.

My crawl space is lower in the middle of the area, would it be ok putting footer pipe around the perimeter sloping down towards the middle and then placing the sump pump in the middle of the place?

Hi, a contractor wants to install a sump pump by itself without the french drains. Should he make holes around the pit/basin and have below and around the pit gravel? - Thank you in advance.

try going that far in clay in a minute. It took me a long time.

Our crawl space is under a room addition so one wall is the exterior wall of house. House already has pump. Can I tap the three crawl space walls drain pipe into existing and skip install of another pump system?

What size slotted drain pipe do you use inside the crawlspace?

Hi chuck how much do you charge to put in sum pump

Can you lay your pipe on top of the footer? The reason I ask is cuz on my footer is flat from block wall then about 6 inches from block wall the concrete goes up and kinda form a u shape or like a concrete trench all around foundation of house

Did they already have drainage on the outside of the foundation before you did this? The reason I ask is because I don't have drainage inside or out. I'm going to add some, but I'm not sure where to start. Instinct tells me to start with outside of the brick foundation wall and then do the inside if necessary. Is this right?

Is there any concern of weakening that side of the foundation?

I’m doing this project now, but I’m confused - why don’t you have to run the pipes at least 1% slope? How is water going to magically flow to the pump of it’s level?!?😮

i wish north georgia had sandy soil...hehe