Water Management
Rochester's clay soils, flat lots, and freeze-thaw cycles put water where you don't want it. Drainage is the least glamorous work we do and the most likely to protect everything else on your property.
Water Management
Standing water every spring, a soggy strip along the foundation, mulch washing across the walk, or a corner of lawn that never recovers all point to grade or drainage problems. New plants and fresh mulch will not fix them.
Rochester makes this worse than most places: heavy clay subsoil that drains slowly, plenty of flat lots, and a freeze-thaw cycle that keeps rearranging the surface. Water that has nowhere to go finds your foundation.
Drainage is the least glamorous work we do and the most likely to protect everything else on the property. It belongs ahead of the patio, wall, or planting bed, not underneath it as an afterthought.
Get a Free EstimateWhat We Install
Matched to the actual problem, not sold as a package.
A perforated pipe in a stone-filled trench wrapped in filter fabric, intercepting subsurface water and carrying it somewhere useful. The most common fix for a chronically wet lawn area or a wet foundation wall.
Where surface water collects in a low spot faster than it can soak in, a catch basin and solid pipe run gets it off the lawn. Often paired with grading that intentionally directs water toward the inlet.
Downspouts dumping at the foundation are a common cause of wet basements and soggy beds. Piping them and a sump discharge underground to a proper outlet is often the least expensive drainage improvement that makes a real difference.
When water has to cross a property, a shaped swale or a stone-lined dry creek bed carries it on a designed path instead of an accidental one. Done well, it reads as a landscape feature rather than as a drainage fix.
Positive slope away from the house for the first several feet is the baseline every property should have and many older Rochester lots have lost to settling. Regrading restores it, and often solves problems that looked like they needed a drain.
Patios, walls, and driveways all change how water moves. Pitch, permeable base options, wall drainage, and where the runoff is directed are designed into every hardscape project we build.
How It Works
Installing the wrong drain in the wrong place is expensive and changes nothing.
We walk the site, ideally after rain, and look at where water comes from, where it collects, and where it could legally and practically go.
Surface runoff, subsurface flow, roof water, and a failed grade all look similar in a photo and need different fixes. We tell you which one you have.
You get the specific fix, its outlet path, and an itemized price in writing, including honest limits where the site cannot fully drain.
Trenching, pipe, stone, and fabric go in, then the lawn and beds are restored so the yard does not look excavated when we leave.
Straight Answers on Cost
Drainage pricing depends almost entirely on run length and whether the site has a usable outlet, so treat these as planning figures only.
$1,800+
French drains, catch basins, downspout tie-ins, dry creek beds, swales, and regrading to move water away from the foundation.
$5,000+
Removing tired, overgrown plantings and rebuilding the beds with a new design, soil work, edging, plant material, mulch, and repair of the surrounding lawn.
These are ranges, not quotes. Ranges are planning figures based on published Greater Rochester market pricing, not quotes or a promise that every project will fall within them. Westside’s written estimate controls. Site conditions, access, excavation and disposal, base depth, material selection, wall engineering, lighting, and design complexity all move the final number.
Financing offered through Wells Fargo. Approval and terms are set by Wells Fargo.
Real Projects
Retaining Wall
What we built
A raised stone wall creates a level planting terrace beneath the mature trees and gives the garden a defined lower edge.
Current planning range for comparable work: $12,000–$65,000
Patio & Outdoor Living
The design challenge
The grade changed continuously behind the house, so the design needed usable flat areas without one visually dominant wall.
What we built
Two paver terraces follow the slope at separate elevations, connected by broad steps and framed by a stone seat wall on the upper level.
Current planning range for comparable work: $18,000–$45,000
Financing available: spread your project cost over time with convenient payment options. Learn more
Common Questions
Drainage projects commonly begin around $1,800 for a focused correction and can exceed $12,000 for a full-property solution with multiple basins, long pipe runs, and regrading. Run length, depth, obstructions, and especially a usable outlet drive the number. This is a broad market-based planning range, not a quote.
Usually a low point with clay beneath it: the surface collects water faster than the subsoil can take it. Sometimes it is a grade that has settled over years and now pitches back toward the house. Which one you have changes the fix entirely, which is why we want to look at the site rather than diagnose from a photo.
It can help when water is arriving from the yard. In many Rochester homes, the culprit is a downspout discharging at the foundation, which is a much cheaper fix. Outdoor drainage cannot repair a failed foundation wall, bad interior drain tile, or high water table. We will say when the problem is outside our scope rather than sell you a trench that will not solve it.
To daylight at a lower point, a dry well sized for the volume, or a legal storm connection where one exists and the municipality permits it. Every design needs a real outlet. A drain that ends nowhere simply moves the puddle. If the site lacks a good outlet, we say so up front.
It should be. Excavation is already happening, the equipment is already on site, and the patio pitch and base can be designed to work with the drainage rather than against it. Retrofitting drainage under a finished patio means taking the patio up.
Explore More
We'll walk the property and identify the likely cause, including when the right answer is not a drain. Free estimate.
