Window well drainage

[freeride]

Well one project lead to another... and I wound up trying to redo my window wells today as they have been pulling off the house. When I went to clean up the gravel there was no drainage pipe at all. Just a thin layer of gravel then right back to soil and then clay.

Should I add in a drainage pipe or is this over kill, I have had zero issues with moisture in the basement. I have lived here 5 years but did a reno last year on the basement and there were no sign of moisture at all.

[Desert Eagle]

If it were me I would have to weigh out how much stress it would cause me every time it rains compared to it’s been 5 years and been fine... only you can answer that. For me it would likely be in the back of my mind non stop, so I would likely dig it and install drainage pipe.

[icecold]

100% would dig it out. Might not go all the way down with a pipe but would remove a bunch of earth and replace with rock.

[Twisted Canuck]

That's the benefit of building your house yourself and doing things like that correctly in the first place. I tied my window well drainage right into my weeping tile, vertical capped pipe that was 6" below the gravel in the window well. And there was 12" of gravel in my window wells. All my tile was sloped to sump pit on a sand bed and covered with twice as much gravel as code called for. Never had an issue other then a pump failing.

Doing that after the fact is a chore. I guess it depends on if you want to roll the dice, that you won't have a sustained downpour that will flood your wells.

[freeride]

well I have been working on it this afternoon. I have 2 basement windows side by side with 24" between them with 2 different window wells.

I knew that I would always be kicking myself for not doing it right when I have the chance so I started to dig them out more, then I discovered that one of them does have a drain after all. It was under 6" of solid clay... but it is there. The other one just has solid clay.

Why they did this and then had 6" solid packed clay, then roughly 12" of dirt, with 2" of gravel on top.

I am going to clean it up some more then run a gravel filled pipe from the one with no drainage over to the drainage on the other one. Then pack clay all on top! Just kidding actually fill them with proper gravel and rock.

[Dom4]

I would for sure dig it out and do it properly. It might feel like lots of work but once you are done it will be worth having the piece of mind.