[ntucker]

This is a great observation about the home inspector being more likely to give you an impartial diagnosis. There's an old guy who's a semi-retired home inspector down the block from me and it makes me think I should hire him for consultation when thinking about big projects.

[CydeWeys]

Definitely do it. I got easily 20X the value out of my home inspector than what I paid him. Not just here on the drainage problem but on other stuff as well. I paid him $800 in total to inspect two homes, he gave me detailed reports for each one plus all sorts of useful insights during the several hours each inspection took, and then he answered a bunch of questions via email for free after I ended up closing on the second house and discovering the various problems with it. And for consultation on just a single issue I'd expect you'd pay a bit less than $400.