Water problems rarely fix themselves. A puddle by the garage turns into an ice sheet every winter, a soggy corner of the yard spreads, and a crawlspace that stays damp starts to smell. Around Jensen, most of that water shows up during spring melt and summer storms, then disappears just long enough for everyone to forget about it.
We provide drainage solutions in Jensen that deal with the cause, not just the symptom. That starts with watching how water moves across your property and where it collects. From there, we build the right fix: regrading, swales, French drains, culverts under lanes, downspout extensions, or dry wells. Each one is sized for the water you actually have, and we leave the ground clean and finished when the work is done.
We have seen how Jensen snowmelt runs over frozen ground and how irrigation ditches overflow, so we plan drains for both situations.
Mini excavators, trenchers, and compaction gear let us dig French drains in tight yards and reshape ditches on open land.
If a downspout extension or a little regrading will fix it, we will say so instead of selling you a bigger drain system.
Extra dirt is hauled or spread, sod and gravel go back where they were, and your yard looks finished when we go.
The first question on any drainage job is where the water is coming from. It might be roof runoff dumping next to the foundation, a neighbor’s high ground draining onto your lot, irrigation water spilling from a ditch, or snow piled by the plow that melts in one spot every spring. Sometimes it is all of them. We walk the property, look at stains, ruts, and low spots, and often come back after a storm to watch it happen. Building a drain before you know the source is how people spend money twice.
We also check what is already in the ground. Old drain tile, buried downspout lines, septic fields, and sprinkler mains all change where a new drain can run. Blue Stakes marks the utility lines, and you fill us in on the private ones, so the new route does not cut through something that is already working.
Jensen averages about 19 inches of snow a year, and in the colder stretches of winter it tends to pile up and stay until a warm spell melts it all at once. Frozen ground underneath means that water cannot soak in, so it runs to the lowest spot it can find, which is often a garage door or crawlspace vent. Summer brings the opposite problem: short, heavy storms on dry, hard soil. Good drainage handles both, with routes that still work when the ground is frozen or baked.
No single fix works everywhere. Here are the options we use most, and where each one fits:
Many properties need two or three working together. When the slope itself is the issue, grading is usually the first step.
Jensen is a farming community, and irrigation ditches run along plenty of property lines. Those ditches are useful until a head gate leaks, a culvert plugs, or tailwater ends up in the wrong field. Russian olive and tamarisk also like to crowd ditch banks, and their roots can choke a channel or push into a pipe. We clean out and reshape drainage ditches, replace undersized culverts, and grade farm lanes so they stop washing out every season. If the banks are overgrown, brush clearing opens them back up before we start.
Water near a foundation is the problem we hear about most. Damp crawlspaces, efflorescence on basement walls, and cracked slabs often trace back to soil that slopes the wrong way or downspouts that dump right at the corner. We pipe roof water away, correct the slope, and add a French drain when water is moving underground. Driveways need help too, especially gravel lanes that rut or paved drives where ice forms in the same spot all winter. If the driveway base has already failed, driveway prep rebuilds it with drainage in mind.
Any drain works the first year. The question is whether it still works in ten. We wrap French drains in fabric so silt does not clog the gravel, give pipe enough fall to keep moving, and leave cleanouts where they make sense. Outlets get rock so they do not erode, and culverts get sized for a big storm, not an average one. Where a drain crosses a lawn, we bring the topsoil back up to grade so a mower does not catch the edge and the route disappears into the yard.
A little upkeep helps too. Clear leaves and debris from inlets, keep downspouts connected, and check culverts after spring melt. If water starts showing up where it should not, call (801) 669-0512 and we will take a look.
We walk the property, find where water comes from and where it collects, and look at outlets, ditches, and slope.
Your quote explains which drainage approach fits, where it will run, and how we will restore the ground afterward.
We dig, set pipe and gravel, shape swales or set culverts, and test flow with water before we backfill.
We walk the finished drainage with you, show you inlets and outlets, and explain the simple upkeep that keeps it flowing.
