Driveway, Patio and Window Well Drainage
Every square foot of paving is a square foot that cannot absorb a drop. Whatever lands on it has to go somewhere, and on a lot of Chicago lots the somewhere is the wall of your house.
- Free written diagnosis within 48 hours
- Published pricing, no commissioned salespeople
- 5-year warranty on drainage work
Drainage work: 5-year warranty
The short answer
Paving absorbs nothing, so a driveway or patio hands its whole surface volume to whatever sits downhill, which on many Chicago lots is the house. Window wells then catch that water in a box held against the wall. The fixes are slope, a trench drain cut at the pavement edge, and a window well drain that actually connects to something.
Soil takes rain in slowly and unevenly. Concrete, asphalt and paver joints take almost none, so hardscape works as a collector: it gathers the full volume that lands on it and delivers that volume to its low edge in minutes. If the low edge faces the garage slab, the side door or a below-grade window, the pavement has been quietly aiming a storm at the building since the day it was poured. A window well is the same idea in reverse, a walled box sunk against the foundation that catches water and holds it beside the wall.
This region loads that mechanism harder than most. Our clay stops absorbing after the first heavy hour, so late in a storm even the lawn behaves like pavement and everything runs. Frost heave tips flatwork over the winters until a drive that once fell to the street now falls back at the house, and the older city lots put a drive, a gangway and two window wells inside a strip barely wider than a car. Grading and hardscape are half of what we look at on a wet basement call. The yard drainage hub covers the rest of the lot.
Why does my driveway send water at the house?
A driveway is a funnel with a direction. It either points at the street or it points at your foundation, and thirty winters of frost can change which.
This is the sequence we trace on site, from the sky to the garage slab.
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The surface collects everything
A 20 by 40 foot drive is 800 square feet of ground that absorbs nothing. An inch of rain across it is roughly 500 gallons, and all of it arrives at the low edge inside the storm rather than soaking away over the following day.
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Frost quietly retilts it
Clay under a slab swells and lifts through freeze and thaw cycles, and it never settles back evenly. Slabs at the street end often stay put while the house end rises or drops, so the fall reverses a fraction of an inch at a time over decades.
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The joint at the house opens
Where the drive or patio meets the foundation, the seam works loose with the same movement. That gap is a slot pointed straight down the outside of the wall, and it is the fastest route below grade anywhere on the lot.
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The apron becomes a dam
A settled sidewalk, a raised city apron or a curb replacement can leave the far end of the drive higher than the middle. Water then ponds behind that ridge and finds the only exit left, which is usually toward the garage.
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The garage takes it first
A wet garage slab, a rust line along the overhead door track or a damp block wall on the shared side is normally the first symptom. By the time it is showing on the basement side of that wall, the driveway has been feeding it for years.
Where it shows up
- A stain or silt fan across the garage floor after every storm
- Standing water at the seam between the slab and the house
- Ice sheets in the same spot every January on the low side
- Efflorescence on the block above a drive or patio edge
- Mulch and grit washed into the gangway after a hard rain
What makes it worse
- Downspouts discharging onto the pavement instead of past it
- Raised beds and edging built along the high side of a drive
- A patio poured level rather than pitched away from the house
- Sealing the joint without changing where the water goes
Why do window wells fill up with water?
A window well is a bucket set against your foundation. It only stays dry because water leaves the bottom faster than it arrives at the top.
When a well floods, one of these five things is the reason, and they are worth checking in this order.
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The well has no drain at all
Plenty of wells were built as a liner and stone with nothing under them. On clay that stone fills, holds water against the window and stays wet for days. Digging one out and finding no pipe below is a common afternoon for us.
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The drain is there but plugged
Where a drain exists it is usually a vertical pipe in stone running down to the footing drain. Leaves, silt and pea gravel fines pack it over the years, and once the top few inches are choked the rest of the pipe is irrelevant.
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The grade sends water into the well
A well sitting in a low spot, at the foot of a slope, or right below an unextended downspout is being fed on purpose. No drain sized for incidental rain is going to keep up with a roof pouring into it.
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The liner is loose at the wall
The steel or plastic liner should be fastened tight to the foundation. Where the fasteners have rusted out, water runs behind the liner instead of into the well, straight down the outside of the wall where nothing catches it.
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Water backs in through the window
Once the well fills to sill height, the frame is holding back several inches of standing water, which no basement window is built to do. That is when it comes through the sash and across the floor in the middle of the storm.
What a working well has
- A drain in the base connected to the footing drain or the interior system
- Washed stone in the bottom rather than packed soil or fines
- A liner fastened tight against the foundation wall
- A clear cover that keeps rain, leaves and snow out
- Ground around it graded to shed water away, not into it
What to look for
- A well that is still holding water a day after the storm
- Rust staining or rot at the bottom of the window frame
- Soil level inside the well creeping above the window sill
- A cover that traps warm damp air and drips on the glass
Cut a drain in, or move the water on the surface?
Both approaches are legitimate and we install both. The choice comes down to whether the pavement can still be made to fall the right way.
| Trench drain in the hardscape | Regrade and route on the surface | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Intercepts water in a channel across the pavement | Reshapes the ground so water never gets there |
| Best when | The slab falls the wrong way and is staying put | The soil around the pavement can be reworked |
| Work involved | Saw cutting, a channel set in concrete, a piped outlet | Soil, sod and downspout work, no cutting |
| Disruption | A day or more of noise and a cured concrete strip | Wheelbarrows and a reseeded strip of lawn |
| Still needs an outlet | Yes, and it must fall the whole way there | Yes, but it can be a swale rather than a pipe |
| Maintenance | Clear the grate seasonally so it does not overflow | Keep beds and edging from rebuilding the dam |
| In a hard winter | The channel can ice over if the outlet freezes | Nothing to freeze, though frozen ground still sheds |
| Published cost | Priced with drainage work, $600 to $2,500 | Downspout extensions and regrading, $600 to $2,500 |
Whichever way it goes, the water still needs a destination that is yours to use. Somewhere downhill, off the property line, and permitted by your village: basins, dry wells and emitters covers what the far end can be.
Garage or window well flooding every storm? We shoot the grades around the whole lot and put the findings in writing, free within 48 hours.
How does your era of house get into trouble?
Hardscape problems follow how the lot was laid out and how much of it got paved. Four patterns cover most of the seven counties we work in.
Pre-war bungalows and two-flats
A narrow drive down one side, a walk down the other, and two window wells crowded between them. Nearly the whole side yard is paved, so a storm has no soil left to land on before it reaches the wall.
Trench drain and a route out
Post-war block ranches
A wide flat apron in front of an attached garage, with the slab often sitting below the crown of the street. Decades of frost movement have taken away what little fall the original pour had.
Cut a channel at the door
1980s and 90s poured wall homes
Big rear patios poured close to level for furniture, with a wide-open drive at the front. Water ponds mid-slab, works into the joint at the wall and shows up at a rod hole inside.
Pitch it or drain it
Newer subdivision homes
Deep egress wells, buried downspout lines and a driveway that drains to a basin the way it was designed to. The failures are plugged well drains and emitters lost under sod.
Clear what already existsWhat does hardscape drainage cost?
Most of this work is priced with the surface package: downspout extensions and regrading run $600 to $2,500 on a typical Chicago lot, and a trench drain with a piped outlet is quoted in that same band depending on how much saw cutting is involved.
| Work | Range | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Downspout extensions and regradingtypical job | $600–$2,500 | Feet of grade to rebuild, soil hauling |
| Exterior French drainper linear foot | $45–$90 | Trench depth, where the water can legally go |
| Interior drain tileper linear foot | $95–$160 | Length of the run, slab thickness, what has to be moved off the walls |
A window well drain that has to be tied into an interior system is quoted with that system rather than on its own, because the two share a pit and a pump. The published ranges we work from are all listed on the pricing page, and nothing on your invoice will be a number you have not already seen there.
The cheap fixes worth trying first
Hardscape water responds to small moves more than almost anything else we deal with. Three of these four cost less than a tank of gas.
The well just needs a cover
A clear domed cover keeps rain, leaves and drifted snow out of the well entirely, and it costs less than a single service call. Fit one, watch the next two storms, and you may find you have solved the whole thing for the price of a plastic lid.
Under a hundred dollarsThe well is packed with soil
Dig the well out to a few inches below the window sill and refill with washed stone. If water still stands after that, you have learned there is no working drain underneath, which is worth knowing before anyone quotes you anything larger.
A shovel and an hourThe slab itself is broken and pitched wrong
Where a driveway or stoop has cracked into pieces that no longer sit true, the honest fix is flatwork: a concrete contractor removing and repouring it to the right fall. That is not our trade and we will tell you so on the visit rather than draining around a slab that needs replacing.
Not our workIt is running off the neighbor's pavement
Where the drive next door pitches onto your side, the fix is a conversation first. Illinois takes a reasonable use view of surface water between neighbors, and outcomes turn on the specifics of the two lots, so start with your village and speak to an attorney if it does not resolve.
Talk before you digQuestions homeowners ask about driveways, patios and window wells
How do I stop water running down my driveway into the garage?
Work out first whether the slab still falls toward the street. If it does, the trouble is usually a downspout landing on the pavement or a raised bed damming the high side, and both are cheap to change. If the slab has tipped back at the house, no amount of routing upstream fixes it, and the answer is a trench drain cut across the low end with a piped outlet that keeps falling all the way to its destination.
Do window wells need a drain?
Any well deep enough to hold water needs somewhere for that water to go. In this region that usually means a vertical drain in the base of the well, bedded in washed stone, tied down into the footing drain or into an interior system with a pump. Shallow wells on a well drained slope sometimes get by on a cover and good grading alone, but on clay a well without a drain will eventually fill during a long storm.
Should I fill my window well with gravel?
Washed stone in the base is right, and it is the fill we use, but stone alone is not a drain. It only creates a void for water to sit in while it waits for somewhere to go. Fill a well with stone over undisturbed clay and you have built a small reservoir against your foundation. The stone is there to keep the drain clear and let water reach it, which means the drain has to exist first.
Will a window well cover keep water out?
A well fitted cover keeps out the rain that falls straight in, plus leaves and drifting snow, and on a well that only floods during heavy rain it is often the whole solution. What it cannot do is stop water arriving through the soil or running along the ground into the well from above. Fit one that seals to the foundation and sheds outward, and check for condensation dripping on the glass in humid weather.
Can I just seal the joint where the patio meets the house?
Sealing the joint is worth doing and it is not a drainage plan. Caulk closes the fastest route down the wall, but the water that used to take that route is still arriving and still has to go somewhere, which is usually a few feet away at the next weak point. Fix the fall first, seal the joint second, and treat any sealant as maintenance that gets checked each spring.
Does a patio have to slope away from the house?
It should fall away from the building, and a small consistent pitch across the slab is what keeps the surface dry without you noticing it. Furniture sits fine on that much slope. The patios that give us trouble are the ones poured almost level for looks, or ones where the far edge has settled and turned the slab into a shallow basin that drains toward the only wall in reach.
Is it actually the window well?
Window wells are their own diagnosis. A well that floods in every storm, a well that only leaks when snow melts on top of the cover, and a window frame that has simply rotted through all look identical from inside the basement and need completely different work. Getting that call right is the difference between an afternoon of stone and a system.
Window well leaks and drainage
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