Landscape Drainage Contractors for Lake, Cook & McHenry Counties

If water sits on your lawn for a day after every storm, pools against the
foundation, or washes mulch across the driveway, the problem is almost never the
planting. It is where the water goes. A.M. Woodland Outdoor Design is a landscape
drainage contractor working across Lake, Cook and McHenry counties in Illinois and
Racine, Kenosha and Walworth counties in Wisconsin.

Why drainage has to be solved first

Drainage is the one part of a landscape that everything else sits on top of. A
paver patio laid over ground that holds water will heave and settle. A retaining
wall with no drainage behind it takes the full hydrostatic load of saturated soil
and eventually leans. Planting beds that stay wet lose the plants that were
specified for them.

None of those failures show up on completion day. They show up in year three or
year five, long after the cheap fix was possible — which is why we look at the
grade before quoting any hardscape or planting work at all.

How we find where the water actually goes

The wet spot is a symptom, and it is rarely where the problem starts. We read
the grade across the whole property rather than the puddle:

• Where the roof water lands. A single downspout can put
  thousands of gallons a year within a foot of the foundation.
• The fall away from the house. Grade should drop away over the
  first several feet. Settled backfill around a foundation often does the opposite.
• Soil condition. Northern Illinois clay drains slowly at the
  best of times, and construction traffic compacts it further.
• Where the water has to end up. A drain that moves water twenty
  feet and releases it onto ground that is also flat has not solved anything.

What the fix usually involves

The solution follows the diagnosis rather than a standard package:

• Regrading and swales — moving water with the shape of the
  ground, which needs no maintenance and cannot clog. Always the first option
  considered.
• French drains — a perforated pipe in washed stone, sleeved in
  fabric, for areas where the grade cannot be changed enough.
• Catch basins and area drains — for low points that collect
  faster than the surface can shed.
• Buried downspout extensions — taking roof water well clear of
  the house instead of releasing it at the corner.
• Dry wells and infiltration — where there is nowhere to
  daylight a pipe and the water has to be given somewhere to go.

Pipe and stone are sized to the volume your roof and lot actually shed, not to
whatever is on the truck.

Wet basements and standing water are different problems

Surface drainage work reduces how much water reaches your foundation, and for
many houses that is the whole fix. It is not waterproofing. If water is entering a
finished basement, that needs assessing properly rather than assuming a downspout
extension will handle it — we will tell you which one you have.

Where we work

From Mundelein across Lake County — Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Long Grove,
Hawthorn Woods — into Cook and McHenry counties, and north into Walworth, Racine
and Kenosha counties in Wisconsin.

What happens when you call

We walk the property with you, in the rain if that is what it takes to see it
properly, and tell you what is causing the water before anyone quotes a landscape.
If the answer is a regrade rather than a drainage system, that is what we will say
— it is usually the cheaper one.