I have wall to wall carpeting in my basement on a concrete floor. Water comes up through the concrete about once or twice a year when we have steady rain. Is there any solution for this problem,since i don't see any cracks in the concrete, just the water seems to appear.
French drain. Not cheap.
nate
I would try to avoid carpet altogether. It sounds like you have a high water table. If you put down linolueum or ceramic tile, at least you know water would not affect it that much.
I would try to avoid carpet altogether. It sounds like you have a high water table. If you put down linolueum or ceramic tile, at least you know water would not affect it that much.
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Wanna bet?
My laundry room disagrees with you. (just spent a lovely weekend scraping up the old linoleum tiles, which were all lifting, curling, had nasty dirt underneath them, etc.)
Fortunately in my case, all of the water in the basement came from inside; I had a leaking water heater, furnace condensate drain, deep sink faucet, etc. etc. etc... girlie says she's even caught the washing machine leaking although I haven't seen that yet. I swear if there's something down there that uses/produces water, some niggly little bit of it is/was leaking. I don't know how the previous owners put up with it.
My parents had a similar issue as the OP's at their house; we'd tiled the basement (actually I did a lot of it myself, and I think I did a pretty good job for an 8th grader who'd never done same before) which was previously unfinished. The water did loosen the vinyl tiles and generally made a mess. Investigation revealed that the house had been built without any French drain whatsoever, installation of same has resulted in a reassuringly dry basement ever since.
nate
(dreaming of a dry basement)
first make sure all downspouts and gutters are clear and send the water from from the home, make sure ground slopes away from home.
then install interior french drain with a sump pump but preferably drain to daylight away from home.
its impossible to seal water out of basement the most you can do is redirect water away from basement
Remove the carpeting. Fix the water issue (proper drainage, downspouts, grading, sealing concrete, French drain, etc). When you notice you have a dry basement for 2-3 years, install the carpeting or better yet vinyl flooring.
No one else is top posting. Fixed that for you.
Water coming thru the middle of the floor isn't uncommon. The french drain goes around the perimeter. It relieves the water pressure under the entire slab.
They break up the concrete around the perimeter and put in drain pipes to a sump pump. The sump pump sends the water where ever you want. It should go somewhere outside where the ground slopes away from the house.
Thanks for also giving the OP a demonstration of how white space works. :-)
age
normally around perimeter although a section running to the water source can be added easily at the time of initial installation. its a good idea if its a major source
It's a wonderful thing.
But can be
over used.
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One thing I don't understand is if the water table is high, would'nt the water that gets pumped out eventually make it's way back to the ground and eventually back to the basement?
No, that's why I said it should drain somewhere that slopes away from the house. Mine goes out to the street and runs down a hill from there.
The sump pump is set to start pumping when the water is about 1 foot below the slab. Effectively, for the area around my house the water table is lowered by that much.
Our clay soil is only semi-permeable. You can create a locally lower water table without pumping day and night. Across the street we have a spring that comes right to the surface most of the year.
Water made some of my vinyl?/asphalt?/? tiles come loose. The ones that were broken from dropping things on them, but I couldn't tell they were broken, came loose in several pieces, making it more difficult to stick them back.
Wouldn't the water get under the linoleum and never be able to dry out?
OP, just don't be like a neighbor of mine who put down natural fiber carpet. In a basement! I presume you are using synthetic, and they can dry pretty well as you probably know by now.
There are lots of threads about keeping basements dry. Try to find some of them in groups.google, in addition to whatever is said in this one.
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