Be very careful if you're removing healthy trees. Aside from what the loss of shade can do to your property and utility bills, trees can suck up a LOT of water. I had 2 mature maple trees that happily and quickly absorbed the water runoff from 50% of my roof, when they were cut down I suddenly had a massive drainage problem that is going to take probably $10k to really fix.
Thanks for the warning. We will probably leave the larger trees in place and just deal with the smaller ones.
We got the quote from the drainage company and it's $16k~
$8k to remediate one side of the house (involves excavating, adding waterproof membrane to the foundation, and then adding a french drain and all the drainage to a new curb cut in the street...this doesn't including clearing the existing plants [rose bushes] and capping off the existing irrigation/sprinklers), and the other $8k to re-grade the other side of the house where the concrete alley is with water pooling....
The landscapers I got bids from would charge me around $1000 minus material costs to clear out the area and slope/grade the dirt to drain to the existing drains + adding gravel/rock but not only that - they would remove plants from other areas of the yard that I don't want and clean-up, trim, etc the rest of the yard.
Drainage company says existing drains are compromised and they would likely need to run new drains out to the street. The first landscaper who came out ran the hose into one section of drains and water seemed to be flowing out from the curb fine. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't root balls inside any portion of the drains either.
Right now the priority is mitigating whatever is causing the wet wall condition. I'm still not sure what that is either - I removed dirt from the front area and exposed the weep screed but the wall still registers high moisture. I would think that by removing the dirt covering the weep screed, it would at least allow some room for the walls to 'breathe' - maybe it is drying out but just takes a much longer time?