Seven services that cover every way water goes wrong on Blackland clay — from the yard to the foundation the house sits on.
Sub-surface drains built for Blackland clay — moving trapped water off your lot and away from the slab.
Learn more →Keep water and moisture swings off your slab on Waco's high-shrink-swell expansive clay.
Learn more →Catch basins, channel drains and grading for the standing water clay soil won't absorb.
Learn more →Reshape the ground so water sheets away from the house instead of pooling on the clay.
Learn more →Bury and route downspouts so roof water is carried well away from the foundation.
Learn more →For low, flat lots where clay and grade leave water nowhere to drain by gravity.
Learn more →On the Blackland Prairie, the water standing in your yard is often the same water threatening your slab, so we don’t treat drainage and foundation protection as separate services — they’re two ends of one problem. Our French Drain Installation flagship and Foundation Drainage pages go deep on the expansive-clay reason why. Surface water that pools calls for catch basins and grading; water trapped in the soil or collecting against the foundation calls for a French drain; a flat, low lot calls for a sump. Most Waco yards need a combination.
Every job starts the same way, and it’s free: we come to the property and read it in person. We walk the wet areas, look at where the downspouts land, check how the ground falls around the foundation, and where it matters we shoot grades with a level. Then we tell you what’s happening — in the yard and around the slab — and lay out the right-sized fix with a written scope before any work starts. We don’t quote drainage over the phone and we don’t run high-pressure sales; an honest number depends on your actual lot.
If a Waco drainage assessment came down to a single question, it’s this: where can the water actually go? On clay that won’t absorb it, and lots that are often flat, the answer isn’t obvious — and it drives the whole design, whether a gravity drain will work, whether you need a sump, and how the grading has to be shaped. We answer that first, on site, and build everything else around it. It’s also the question the failed drains we replace never had a good answer to.
So while we list seven services, the honest truth is that most Waco yards get a combination of them, sized to that one question. A little grading to build fall, a French drain to collect what the clay holds, buried downspouts to keep the roof water off the slab, and an outlet or sump to send it all somewhere real. The skill isn’t in any single service — it’s in reading the lot and choosing the right mix, which is exactly what the free assessment is for.
Free on-site drainage assessments across Waco and McLennan County. We’ll tell you what’s actually happening in your Blackland clay and what it takes to fix it.