Meredith names its brooks. Fourteen of them are on the town wetland map — Hawkins, Blake, Dolloff, Mill, Page, Stoney, Merrill, and the rest — and each one carries a 100-foot buffer where you can’t build, fill, or grade without a special exception. Almost every drainage problem we see here ends in one of those brooks, a wetland, or a lake. So the job isn’t just getting water away from your house. It’s getting it there legally, and slow.
The buffers are the first thing. A designated brook gets 100 feet from the top of the channel. A non-designated one gets 75. Prime wetlands get 150, designated wetlands 100, everything else 50. Inside those you can’t add fill, dredge, or change the surface without going to the Zoning Board with a wetland scientist’s report. That rules out the lazy fix, which is a pipe that dumps at the brook bank. The outlet has to stop at the buffer line and let the last 100 feet happen through the ground. Little wetlands under 3,000 square feet can be exempt if a certified wetland scientist delineates them and files it with the code officer, and that one exemption has saved more than one backyard drain.
Wicwas is the shallow one. Three hundred fifty acres, 13 feet deep on average, 35 at most, fed by Dolloff Brook and draining out toward Winnisquam and the Winnipesaukee River. A shallow lake warms fast and reacts to every load of silt and phosphorus that reaches it, and the southeast shore is already wooded marsh. Around Wicwas the drainage design is about keeping sediment on your lot — stone-lined outlets, infiltration trenches, no bare dirt through a storm.
Waukewan is the one everybody drinks. The state Dam Bureau holds it at 540 feet in summer and lets it down a foot and a half for winter, and it leaves the lake through Corliss Brook with a 40-foot drop into Winnipesaukee — the same drop John Bond Swasey tapped in 1818 with a 600-foot rock-lined canal under Main Street, which is why the village exists where it does. Shoreline yards on Waukewan see that seasonal swing at the water’s edge, and the town’s Shoreline District puts special weight on protecting the lake’s water quality because it’s the public supply. Runoff there gets infiltrated, not piped.
The village itself is a hill that ends in Meredith Bay. Roofs, driveways, and Main Street all shed downhill toward the water. When an older house on that slope gets a wet basement it’s usually groundwater following the ledge downhill, and the fix is uphill of the house, not at the wall. Below the frost line, four feet plus, so the drain doesn’t freeze shut in February when it’s the only thing between the thaw and your basement.
Before you plan a drain in Meredith, pull the town wetland map and find your nearest named brook. If it’s within 100 feet of where you wanted the outlet, the design changes — better to know before the trench is dug.
We look during a thaw or a hard rain. A dry walk in August tells us nothing. We trace the water upslope to where it enters — a seep at the ledge, a road culvert outlet, a neighbor’s new roof — and figure out where it’s allowed to end up. Then we pull the wetland map and see which buffer we’re working against.
Most fixes are a curtain drain across the slope above the house: trench below the seep, perforated pipe in stone, fabric-wrapped, daylighted downhill to a spot outside every buffer. When there is no legal daylight — a small Shoreline lot, a brook on two sides — it’s a dry well or an infiltration trench sized to the water we measured. Roof water gets its own swale or downspout extension so it isn’t loading the same drain. Driveway culverts get sized for a real March melt, not a July shower, and set so the town ditch still works.
Grading last. Camp yards around the lakes were leveled with fill decades ago and a lot of them tip back toward the house now. We regrade to fall away, cut a shallow swale to carry water around the building, and put the loam back. Dig Safe before any of it. Nothing bare when we leave.
Curtain and French drains in Meredith run $2,000–$8,000 depending on length, depth, and how far the daylight is; regrading and daylighting downspouts usually less. Infiltration trenches on lake lots and anything near a buffer line get quoted after we’ve seen the water moving. Flat price, no per-foot surprises.
Toward it, yes. Into it, no. If it’s one of Meredith’s fourteen designated brooks you can’t place fill, pipe, or grade within 100 feet of the channel without a Zoning Board special exception and a wetland report. We run the drain to the buffer line and let the last 100 feet happen underground. It works, and it keeps you out of a hearing.
Because the hill is a watershed and your foundation is in the way. Groundwater follows the ledge downslope toward the bay and shows up wherever the wall interrupts it. The fix is a curtain drain uphill of the house, cut below the seep and daylighted, so the water never reaches the wall. Waterproofing the wall alone just moves the problem.
No. Inside the state’s 250-foot Shoreland band runoff has to be handled on the lot, and on Waukewan the town adds its own weight because it’s the drinking supply. We build an infiltration trench or dry well sized to your roof area so the water goes into the ground instead of the lake. It’s usually cheaper than pipe anyway.
It might. Meredith’s overlay covers wetlands not on the town map if they’re over 3,000 square feet or touch a brook or pond. Smaller isolated ones can be exempt if a certified wetland scientist delineates them and files it with the code officer. If your drainage plan runs near a wet spot, we get it delineated before we design around it.
It’s shallow. Thirteen feet on average, 35 at the deepest, and shallow water warms fast and reacts to every load of silt and phosphorus. The southeast shore is already marsh. So around Wicwas we design for sediment: stone at every outlet, infiltration instead of surface discharge, and no bare ground left through a storm. Small lake, small margin.
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