Execute Exterior Subgrade Correction

we're back at the site and something that I want to show you we've graded everything we've achieved a positive pitch so the water will flow down in a way but there's a typical issue that most homeowners have that they're unaware of and that's the grade right up at their house what you see in the bar side of the steps is rock we see on this side is what we call the subgrade we've actually altered this subgrade we've changed the subgrade so that the water now will flow down and over the sidewalk instead of getting stopped at the sidewalk we've raised the subgrade enough that at the house we still have between 6 and 8 inches of clearance which is the minimum that we need to protect the sill plate from water damage what you'll normally see when you remove the rock as is on the far side of the steps you'll see that typically they'll have a deeper trench with the subgrade this is what we discovered when we remove the rocks we discovered that they had the subgrade at least four to five inches below the asphalt what happens is the water comes down and it has nowhere to go it stops here and it migrates down it finds the path of least resistance which is typically the basement and goes back right into the homeowners basement so we're bringing all these grades up so that the water will come down and run over it and then we can put our decorative Rock to cover the subgrade up but only after we've corrected the subgrade to make sure that the water flows down the right Avenue