I have a large crawlspace. I have seen water in two corners of the crawlspace. Not standing water or anything, just dampness… just enough water that I know there is water getting in. It's not just the dirt, it's the actual cement of the foundation that is getting wet, and it gets slightly worse when it rains.
I had a general contractor suggest to me that the dirt on the corners of the house needs to be graded away from the house. That's obviously something that can and should be done, but it doesn't seem like an actual fix, rather a temporary solution.
EDIT:
It seems that the solution would be to slope the soil away from the foundation.
Reworded question:
What's the best method to re-grade/slope the soil around the foundation to move water away from the house? Are there special types of soil that can/should be used?
Best Answer
What the contractor is "full of" is excellent advice.
If you really want to spend money like you have a firehose connected to your wallet, dig out around the outside of the house to the footings and put drains there which slope out to daylight (or a sump if you want to be beholden to a sump, and its pump forever) - and coat the walls while you have it open, but the drains are the important part of that job. It's the ultimate drainage retrofit (and SHOULD be done as a matter of course any time a footing/foundation is poured, as that's the only time it's CHEAP to do, since the hole is already there and open), and it STILL goes with fixing the grade around the house when you refill the hole.
If you "dig back on the corners" and coat them, you'll "magically" get leaks elsewhere along the walls - if you are going to dig, dig all the way around and get that over with so you can drain it properly.
It's a far more economically sensible approach to start with removing the source of water trying to drain into the basement in the first place by fixing the grade. There are other relatively less expensive steps you can take as well while doing that, such as laying a plastic or EDPM rubber barrier under the soil that slopes away from the house for some distance, without involving digging all the way down to the footings. But you don't have to be economically sensible, if that's against your principles.
Unless you are 10 feet tall, 7 feet is a basement, by the way. Not one with a lot of headroom, perhaps not one you can finish under some codes, but if you can stand up in it, it's a basement...