David:
DG> Our new house (new to us; it was originally built at least 100 years ago) DG> has a full concrete basement. One side is above ground, and has a garage DG> door in it; the yard slopes around the sides, so the back is completely DG> below ground. It typically has a dank, musty smell. When it rains, there'
Consider a fan, ceiling or otherwise, running at low or medium to move the air around. Also don't put any furniture, boxes, etc., directly on floor or against the walls to allow for better air movement.
DG> definitely water coming in somewhere (small puddles on the ground, water in DG> the drain in the center of the room), though there's not much water, and it DG> seems to drain out fairly well. I haven't taken the time to track down DG> exactly where the water's coming in yet--too many other projects on my list
DG> :-)
I can relate!
DG> What options do I have? Would installing rain gutters on the buried side DG> (where I'm nearly positive the leaking is) be sufficient? Re-grading the DG> yard? Can I do something to the inside wall to fix this? Or do I need to DG> dig out the below-ground sections and patch the outside?
All may work, all may not work. Here the problem is the water table rises and water leaks into the basement (fully below grade). We have a few "signs" telling us when to get ready for water: a puddle will form in the neighbour's back yard (about 100' feet away). Duck Creek will get near the top of its banks (that's two miles away on the way to work). Gutters and gutter extensions helped; regrading helped. Digging around the house here to install drainage was considered but not done as none of the contractors could guarantee it would stop the seepage -- again the basement here is below street level while your's is partially underground.
DG> (When we were looking for a house, we looked at one where the owner said DG> he'd coated the inside of the basement walls with some sort of DG> concrete/fiberglass mixture to solve a similar problem. Is that what I DG> should be considering?)
Might work -- I used that cement coating in my workbench area. Is the one where they have a cement block with one half painted with the stuff and the other half unpainted. Nice off-white looked nice plus no water running down the wall via the cracks.
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