Who to call for yard drainage?

For water standing in a yard, call a drainage or excavation contractor. A landscaper can regrade and is the right call when the problem is shape rather than volume. A plumber is the wrong call unless the water is clean, constant and unrelated to rain. Start with whoever will look at the ground before quoting.

What a contractor here should be asking about

Milwaukee’s largest mapped soil is hydrologic group C/D, and the survey puts the shallowest seasonal high water table at 5.9. On ground like that the question that separates firms is not what they would install but where they think the water goes afterwards. A yard that is wet because water arrives faster than it soaks away needs somewhere to send it; a yard that is wet because the water table comes up to meet it cannot be drained into itself at all, and no amount of pipe changes that. Ask which of the two they think you have, and what they looked at to decide. A firm that answers from the survey rather than from your lot has guessed.

The reasoning behind that

A drainage or excavation contractor handles water that is arriving and has nowhere to go: trenching, piping, catch basins, dry wells and outfalls. This is the right first call for standing water after rain.

A landscaper handles the shape of the ground. Where the problem is a low spot or a slope running the wrong way, regrading is cheaper and less invasive than piping, and a good landscaper will say so.

A plumber is for water that came out of a pipe. Constant flow in dry weather, clean water, no relationship to rainfall — that is a supply leak and it is a plumber’s job.

The local authority is the fourth call and it is not a trade. Anything that changes ground levels, adds a structure or connects to a public drain is usually permitted work, and that is a conversation before a quote rather than after one.

More on this: Yard and Lawn Drainage in Milwaukee, WI.

Every question, in one place: Milwaukee Drainage drainage questions.

Check the Milwaukee Drainage service area to see whether your street is covered.

Back to Milwaukee Drainage.