Drainage and Waterproofing Redington Beach
Foundation Masters provides homeowners and property managers in Redington Beach with engineer designed solutions to stop flooding, water intrusion, hydrostatic pressure and soil erosion.
The Town says it out loud on its own website, and it deserves credit for the candor. Redington Beach is built on dredged material at sea level, and its drainage does not percolate as fast as it otherwise would.
We are a licensed Florida engineering firm and a repair contractor in the same company, and we were the first engineering firm to pioneer the waterproofing industry in Florida. Qualifying work carries a lifetime transferable warranty.
Contractor Execution With Engineering Behind It
Foundation Masters is a licensed Florida engineering firm, CA# 30969, and a structural repair contractor. We work Redington Beach and the neighboring Pinellas beach towns, and here that means an unusually consistent kind of client: single family houses, many of them mid century, on Gulf front, bay front and interior lots across a town that is a little over a third of a square mile of land.
The work is usually standing water that will not clear, moisture coming up through a slab, hydrostatic pressure against below grade concrete, a swale in front of the house that holds water instead of taking it away, sand washing out from under a slab or a driveway, salt driven spalling on concrete near grade, or a seawall with ground dropping behind it.
Because this is a town of houses rather than towers, most of what we do here is for an owner rather than a board, and that changes what a good answer looks like. It has to be explained clearly, priced honestly, and correct the first time, because there is nobody else in the chain to catch it. We pair contractor work with in house civil engineering, geotechnical engineering and soil borings, so the design and the installation answer to the same firm.
A licensed Florida professional engineer signs and seals the drawings. Inspections are free.
Signs You Need Drainage and Waterproofing in Redington Beach
- Standing water or soggy yards after storms
- A swale that stays wet for days after the rain has stopped
- Buckled wood floors or tile popping from slab moisture
- Water stains or efflorescence along baseboards and walls
- Mildew odor or visible mold near slab edges
- Driveway flooding that drains slowly
- Sand washing out from under a slab, a driveway or a pool deck
- Rust staining, cracking or spalling on concrete near grade
- Ground dropping behind a seawall cap on the bay side
The second one is the most useful thing on this list and the most misread. A swale that holds water is not broken. It is doing precisely what the Town has said it does, which is percolate, slowly, into ground that does not want to take it.
The Town Says It Out Loud: Dredged Material, at Sea Level
Most municipalities describe their drainage in language designed not to alarm anybody. Redington Beach does something better than that, and it is worth reading carefully, because it is the most honest description of a drainage problem we have found published by any city or town in the markets we cover.
The Town explains that its swales were developed to allow rainwater to percolate back into the water table, removing pollutants such as oils and fertilizers on the way, and that it installed them in order to meet water quality standards set by federal and state regulators including the Southwest Florida Water Management District. So far this is a conventional and well designed municipal stormwater approach.
Then comes the sentence. The Town states that the percolation of water in the swales does perform what it was intended to do, but unfortunately not as fast as it would if the Town was not built on dredged material at sea level. It goes on to say that it is pursuing a feasibility study to find whether there are any solutions to the drainage problems it has, and that it has recently implemented a swale relief system.
Read that as an engineer reads it. The public drainage system in this town is an infiltration system. Infiltration systems work by putting water into the ground. The ground here is dredged material, and the water table it is infiltrating into is at sea level. The Town is not making excuses, it is stating the physics, and it is right.
Which leads to the conclusion this whole page rests on. If the public half of the system in front of your house is slow by geology rather than by neglect, then the private half, the part on your lot and against your foundation, is the only part anybody can actually change. That is not a criticism of the Town. It is the reason the work we do matters more here than in places where the street can simply take the water away.
Surface Water
Grade, collection and conveyance. The Florida Building Code requires the ground to fall six inches within the first ten feet from the foundation, and two percent on impervious surfaces. On a lot this flat that fall has to be built rather than found.
Water Already Under the Slab
Hydrostatic pressure and capillary movement through porous concrete. Surface drainage never reaches it. On a barrier island at sea level the water arriving at the slab is brackish, which brings chlorides as well as moisture.
A System That Depends on Soaking In
The condition the Town has named. A swale removes water by percolation, and percolation into dredged material over a sea level water table is slow. Anything you add that also relies on soaking in inherits the same limit.
Nothing Here Triggers an Inspection
Florida has spent the last few years building a serious regulatory machine for coastal buildings. Milestone inspections under section 553.899 apply to buildings of three habitable stories or more under condominium or cooperative ownership. Structural integrity reserve studies under section 718.112 apply to residential condominium associations with buildings three habitable stories or higher, and they require the study to cover waterproofing among other components.
Now look at Redington Beach. It is a town of about 1,376 people on roughly a third of a square mile of land, it describes itself as primarily a waterfront residential community, and it recently set its building height limit at 35 feet above base flood elevation. It is, by design and by choice, a town of houses.
The consequence is straightforward and almost nobody says it. Essentially nothing in this town qualifies for any of it. No milestone inspection. No reserve study. No engineer required to look at your building on a schedule, no board obliged to fund waterproofing as a line item, no statutory moment at thirty years when somebody has to go and check.
Two miles up the road a condominium board is being compelled to have a professional examine its structure and fund the repairs. In Redington Beach, the only person who will ever notice that a slab has been quietly wet for fifteen years is the owner, and the only way it gets looked at is if that owner decides to have it looked at.
That is not an argument for regulation and it is not a scare. It is a practical point about where the responsibility actually sits in this particular town. On a barrier island built on dredged material at sea level, with no external trigger and no scheduled review, a free inspection is the only mechanism there is. Borings where the answer needs to be certain rather than probable.
Three Towns in About Three Miles
This strip of barrier island carries three separate municipalities in a very short distance. Redington Beach incorporated in the mid 1940s with about 0.36 square miles of land. North Redington Beach incorporated in 1953 with about 0.26 square miles of land and roughly 1,495 residents. Redington Shores sits beyond it. Madeira Beach lies to the south and Indian Shores to the north.
Each of these is its own government with its own ordinances, and Redington Beach runs its own Building Department for permits and code compliance. That matters practically: advice from a neighbor half a mile up Gulf Boulevard may be describing a different town, a different permit process and a different set of local rules, and both of you can be describing your own situation accurately.
Water, of course, does not stop at any of those lines. It moves through a continuous strip of sand and fill between the Gulf and Boca Ciega Bay, and the groundwater under your lot is connected to the groundwater under the next town. That is why the only reliable way to design here is to measure what is happening on the specific property rather than to reason from what is true of the island.
On the flood side, in a mapped flood hazard area the lowest floor has to be at or above base flood elevation plus one foot, with certification at lowest floor placement and again at final inspection. Whether an existing house is pulled into that turns on a substantial improvement or substantial damage determination, and the threshold is 50 percent of the market value of the structure alone, not the land. Our Madeira Beach page goes through that rule in detail.
Check your zone through the FEMA Flood Map Service Center, and take anything that turns on a determination to the Town of Redington Beach and to counsel.
What Actually Falls Here
The Tampa normal for 1991 to 2020, the nearest long record to the Pinellas beaches, is 49.48 inches a year with the wettest month, August, at 9.03 inches. That is a real figure and it is below the 50 to 60 inches quoted on a great many pages about this coast.
You will also see three inches of rain in an hour described as an ordinary summer storm. It is not. That is close to the peak rate in events the National Weather Service treats as extremely rare, and presenting it as routine produces design numbers that sound authoritative and are not.
In Redington Beach the rainfall total is not usually the binding number anyway. The binding number is how fast the ground can accept water, and the Town has already told you that answer is slower than it should be. Two inches falling over six hours behaves very differently here from two inches falling over one.
Which is why we design for a rate the site can actually handle and route the surplus somewhere real, rather than sizing a system to a headline figure and hoping the ground cooperates.
What the Work Actually Is
Foundation Masters developed the first true engineered waterproofing system in Florida to solve these issues. The process is four steps and it does not vary much.
- Excavating a trench to roughly 12 inches below the slab edge to expose the footer and wall
- Applying the Seal Tight Waterproofing System to protect below grade concrete and footings
- Designing engineered drainage piping or sump discharge to safely redirect water away from the structure and the underlying soils
- Installing gutters and grading corrections to control surface runoff
Step two is the one that matters most here, because it is the only part of the system that does not depend on the ground accepting water. Waterproofing works by keeping water out of the concrete regardless of how much of it is standing outside, which on percolation limited ground is exactly the right property to have. Alongside it we handle grading and gutter work, subgrade stabilization and void filling, vapor retarder work under new slabs, and seawall repair and permitting on the bay side.
What we do not do here is add a second infiltration system to a town whose infiltration is already the constraint. A dry well, a soakaway or a gravel trench with no outlet puts water back into the same ground the swale is already struggling to drain into, and if it sits near the house it holds that water against your foundation.
A Drainage Structure You Are Probably Mowing
The grassy dip between the road and your property line is not landscaping. It is a working component of the town stormwater system, and the Town asks residents to look after it in two specific ways: keep it vegetated, because vegetation prevents erosion, traps sediment and filters the water, and keep leaves, clippings and debris out of swales, gutters, drains and the street.
Both of those requests have engineering behind them. Bare soil in a swale erodes and then the sediment migrates and blocks what is downstream of it. Organic debris does the same thing more quickly and, as it breaks down, seals the surface so that percolation gets worse rather than better. A swale that has been filled with clippings for years is a swale performing well below its design rate.
The other thing worth knowing is what changes when it is altered. Filling a swale, regrading it flat, paving across it or parking on it compacts the soil, and compaction is the direct enemy of infiltration. On ground the Town has already identified as slow, taking away some of the remaining capacity is more consequential than it would be almost anywhere else.
So when we look at a Redington Beach property, the swale is part of the assessment rather than something outside our scope. If yours is degraded, restoring it is frequently the cheapest improvement available, and it is the one that has to happen before any private system on the lot can behave predictably. Anything that changes it is a conversation with the Town first.
Redington Beach and the Pinellas Beaches
On a town this small the useful question is not which street. It is which way your lot falls, what the swale in front of it is doing, and whether your slab has ever had anything between it and the ground.
Gulf Boulevard and the Beach Front
The Gulf side houses and the properties fronting the beach. Open exposure, salt spray reaching structural concrete, and ground that loses material from underneath during surge rather than from on top.
The Interior Streets
The residential blocks between the Gulf and the bay, where the swale system does most of its work and where standing water after rain is the most common call we take in this town.
The Bay Side and the Causeway
Waterfront lots facing Boca Ciega Bay, with seawalls, docks and a fully tidal receiving water. This is where gravity discharge becomes conditional and where seawall condition and drainage stop being separate subjects.
The Neighboring Towns
We work the same island chain north and south. See Madeira Beach, Indian Rocks Beach, St. Pete Beach, Clearwater and mainland St. Petersburg.
Redington Beach Drainage and Waterproofing
Why does my yard flood even with drains installed?
Because the town system removes water by letting it soak in, and the Town has stated plainly that percolation here is slower than it would be if Redington Beach were not built on dredged material at sea level. Once the ground is saturated, adding collection does not help. What has to change is where the water goes after you have collected it.
Why is my slab letting moisture through?
Many houses here were built with slabs at or near grade with vapor barriers to the standards of their day. On a barrier island at sea level the water table is close, and after rain or a high tide it makes contact with the slab. Concrete is porous, so capillary movement carries moisture upward with no crack involved at all.
Can you waterproof an existing home in Redington Beach?
Yes. Our Seal Tight System is engineered for coastal hydrostatic pressure and is applied to the positive side, the face the groundwater actually touches, which is why it works on a house that is already built rather than only on new construction.
Do tides and storm surge affect my property in Redington Beach?
Yes. High tides and coastal surges raise nearby groundwater and reduce infiltration, which on a town that drains by infiltration is a compounding problem. With the Gulf on one side and Boca Ciega Bay on the other across a very narrow strip, no lot here is out of tidal reach.
What is the swale in front of my house and am I allowed to change it?
It is part of the town stormwater system, installed so rainwater percolates back into the water table and pollutants are filtered out on the way. The Town asks residents to keep swales vegetated and to keep leaves, clippings and debris out of them. Anything that fills, paves, flattens or compacts a swale reduces the capacity the town is relying on, so it is a conversation with the Town before it is a conversation with a contractor.
My swale holds water for days. Is it broken?
Usually not. It is doing what it was designed to do at the rate the ground allows, which the Town itself describes as slower than it would be on better material. Degraded swales do exist, typically bare, compacted or filled with organic debris, and those are worth restoring. But a swale holding water in a wet week in August is normal here, and it is a signal about your ground rather than a defect.
Would a dry well or soakaway help?
Almost never in this town. A dry well removes water by putting it into the ground, which is the same mechanism the swale already uses and the same mechanism that is the constraint here. Once the water table is up it fills and stays full, and if it sits close to the house it holds a column of water against your foundation for the length of the wet season.
Does my house need a milestone inspection or a reserve study?
Almost certainly not, and that is the point worth understanding. Milestone inspections apply to buildings of three habitable stories or more under condominium or cooperative ownership, and structural integrity reserve studies apply to residential condominium associations with buildings three habitable stories or higher. Redington Beach is primarily a single family town with a height limit of 35 feet above base flood elevation, so essentially nothing here qualifies. There is no scheduled moment when a professional is required to look at your building. If you want it looked at, you have to ask.
Where can I check my property flood risk?
Use the FEMA Flood Map Service Center. For anything that turns on a determination for your specific structure, go to the Town of Redington Beach, which runs its own Building Department, and get the answer in writing.
Is it true that Florida requires slabs to be 12 inches above grade?
No. The Florida Building Code requires grading that falls six inches within the first ten feet of the foundation and two percent on impervious surfaces. It does not impose a general twelve inch finished floor rule. Minimum elevations come from the flood map and the local flood ordinance, and those apply only in mapped flood hazard areas.
Why is the concrete near grade rusting and flaking?
Chlorides reaching the reinforcing steel. Corroding steel takes up more volume than the steel it replaced, so it cracks concrete from the inside and pushes the surface off. On a narrow barrier island the chlorides arrive from salt spray, from surge and from brackish groundwater at the base of the structure. More on our steel corrosion page.
Does drainage and waterproofing work carry the lifetime warranty?
Qualifying drainage and waterproofing work carries a lifetime transferable warranty, which means it passes to the next owner of the property. The scopes and the exclusions are set out on our warranties page.
Drainage and Waterproofing Services
- Seal Tight Waterproofing System on the positive side of below grade concrete
- Engineered perimeter drainage that does not rely on percolation to work
- Designed sump and pumped discharge where gravity is not available
- Grading corrections, gutter and leader discharge, and swale restoration
- Subgrade stabilization and void filling under slabs, driveways and pool decks
- Catch basin, trench drain and storm pipe repair and replacement
- Parking lot drainage systems for commercial and association property
- Vapor retarder detailing under new slabs
- Seawall repair, elevation and replacement, and seawall permitting
- Sheet piling where a bayside edge has to be cut off
When the Water Has Already Done Damage
On a barrier island the structural side follows the drainage side more often than owners expect, because the failure mode is material leaving from underneath rather than the ground compressing. The drainage work stops the water. The structural work corrects what has already moved.
- Foundation repair in Redington Beach and house leveling in Redington Beach
- Foundation settlement repair, which explains uniform settlement, tilt, sagging and hogging
- Helical piers, push piers and pipe pile underpinning through loose coastal material
- Weathered cracks and how to read what a crack is telling you
- Steel corrosion in coastal concrete
- Foundation repair in Clearwater and Tampa
- Flood asset protection and foundation inspection
Statewide context sits on foundation repair in Florida and drainage and waterproofing in Florida.
Where Else We Work
Drainage and Waterproofing Florida · All Locations · Madeira Beach · Indian Rocks Beach · St. Pete Beach · St. Petersburg · Clearwater · Tampa · Apollo Beach · Holmes Beach · Anna Maria Island · Longboat Key · Lido Key · Sarasota · Port Charlotte · Flood Asset Protection · Efflorescence · Steel Corrosion · Foundation Inspection Florida · Warranties
Get a Drainage and Waterproofing Inspection in Redington Beach
Because Florida has no statewide waterproofing code, you need people who understand local soils, a sea level water table and what an infiltration based stormwater system can and cannot do. What the code does require is narrower than most owners think. The Florida Building Code requires grading that falls six inches within the first ten feet of the foundation, and two percent on impervious surfaces within that distance. It requires a real foundation drain only where a foundation both retains earth and encloses habitable or usable space below grade, which a Florida slab on grade house never does. Outside a mapped flood hazard area there is no minimum finished floor elevation above adjacent grade and no elevation certification.
Put plainly, on a typical Redington Beach house the detail that would keep water out of the slab is not required, is therefore usually not there, and there is no inspection regime in this town that would ever find it missing. We build it anyway, because the absence of a requirement is not the same as the absence of a problem.
Under new slabs we detail vapor retarders to ASTM E1745, which caps water vapor permeance at 0.1 perms across all classes and requires 45 pounds per inch tensile and 2,200 grams puncture resistance for Class A. The 2021 IRC raised the residential requirement to a minimum 10 mil Class A sheet with 6 inch lapped joints.
Inspections are free, and in a town where nothing else triggers one, that is not a small thing. We will look at the swale, the grade, the discharge and the slab, and tell you which of them is actually your problem.
Nobody Else Is Going to Look
Call for direct help with standing water, a swale that will not clear, moisture through a slab, hydrostatic pressure, washout under a driveway or a pool deck, or ground dropping behind a seawall. We will tell you what is wrong before we tell you what it costs.