I've got some money earmarked for home improvement. First priority: Standing water in the crawlspace. Second priority: reducing the lawn and putting in native plants and butterfly host plants. (My day care has "Butterflies" in its name, so I'd better attract more of them!)

So we had a guy come around today for a quote on the crawlspace, but instead of saying "Sump pump, perimeter drain, new vapor barrier," he said "Flashing and grill wells, run all the downspouts to the back yard, dig a rain garden, put in native plants and pollinator host plants." He said there wouldn't be standing water in the rain garden except for immediately after a major rain event, and it would all drain within 24 hours (right now we get standing water in our yard and all the neighbors' yards; we're adjacent to a flood plain).

Two birds, one stone, huh? Any experience with this? What other cool stuff have you done with your child-friendly landscaping? Have you had drainage issues or other water issues around your little ones?

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He knows what he's talking about. I'm not much for gardening, but can tell you some common causes for basement or crawl space flooding.

- Concrete (block or poured) walls do crack and then leak. (i.e. vapor barrier) Can be sealed from the outside or inside.

- Downspouts are a big problem. People don't want to add extensions away from the house because it looks ugly. An average house has 1000 sq ft or roof water gushing down 1 or 2 downspouts. If it's not sent away from the house, it will get in. There are different ways to do this without the ugly extensions.

- Wet areas, like my mother's house, need extra help getting rid of water during wet times, like now. Plants that like water can make a difference.

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We live on a flood plain. My backyard has standing water from March-June unless it's frozen. The market isn't capable of a higher asking price, so I'm not willing to dump money into it.

BUT- we have a dry basement doing the following-
painted the brick walls and floor with waterproofing material
floating basement, that raised plastic/plywood underlayment
water barrier wall around the perimeter of the basement
sump pump (with back up battery operated pump)
downspouts (every corner of our home) and we buried them and placed the drain away from our house.

it took a good couple of years to get it completely dry. we finished it, and I STILL added additional flood insurance to our policy.

Our neighbors did allllll of that, and then added a retaining wall and an irrigation system. They STILL had standing water, so now they are adding plants. This weekend an 8-10 ft willow tree.

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Wow, Diva; that sounds miserable. >_< I've got a 30-year mortgage with a penalty if we sell in the next 8 years (gov't grant covered the down payment) so I'm looking for improvements I want to live with until my kid is grown.

I'm worried we're going to blow our budget on the water issue no matter which direction we take. Several of my neighbors have rain gardens, though, and they all say they love them--we're talking about it on nextdoor.com

How about rain barrels? Are they a licensing violation, or is there a way to make them safe?

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Good Question... I've got 2 rain barrels hooked together but I'm Licensed exempt; they are back in a corner of the house we don't use for childcare and it's blocked by a tree so kids couldn't get to them from the deck anyway. I have rain chains also instead of downspouts and they are situated in a way to water plants that are near the house except for the one that fills my barrels (they are full due to storms lol). I am in a manufactured home that is 2 feet off the ground also

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