Water in the basement

I have my shop in my basement. It's a small ranch, wish it was a walk out.

Anyway, I have never had water in the basement before this weekend. It's a finished basement, sheetrock and insulation. Originally for my son to play in, then it morphed from a small shop to the whole basement.

Well I have ripped out the bottom of the walls and glass batts to stop the mold. I am airing out, and thanks to a moisture meter, I can tell I'm doing better. It will take a while.. Some of it I didn't get to until today. That was very moldy..

I want to redo the bottom and close it up. Building code here requires the walls be sealed up.

What to do. Sheetrock and fiberglass batts again..

Or something that won't soak up the moisture and require ripping apart. If it happened once, it can again.

Anyone know of a good choice for the bottom of the wall?

That will promote drying, not be a sponge, and not mold over easily. I have cut out the bottom 8" to promote the drying further up... I might have to cut some areas out completely, but 8" seems to be working. The wet stuff higher up is drying out mostly.

Most all my tools survived unscathed.. I haven't looked under the jointer, bandsaw.. to see if they are rusting out the bottom...

Some wood was damaged, my new bench was damaged by dirty water. It was a piece of furniture, now its just a workbench.. (well it always was a workbench, it just looked so good before the dirty water stained the legs.

Reply to
tiredofspam
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Durock

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or hardiboard. (James Hardie fiber cement backer board) for the lower 2 feet or so of the walls.

Max

Reply to
Max

Had that done to us 50 years ago - 6' (2M) flood in the front yard. Water was kept out of the house and that was a task. Sandbags. The shop tables - oak with linoleum on top. They were from a library that got modern tables. The 4x4" legs were nice and strong.

Anyway the tables lost all of the varnish. The linoleum was curled. Tools and stuff in boxes - like a nice set of 35mm movie film was under water.

Oh - did I say we just moved in - half of the stuff was in the back yard.

If you varnish a top - varnish the bottom. Do keep the boards in the same drying percentage. Otherwise they will cup.

The sheetrock - I'd use the blue board that retards or forbids mold. It is used in bathrooms. It won't soak up water like normal sheetrock.

I'd consider using he spray foam that will give you isolation and some water. It seals with closed cells. pricy - about $100 for 100 square ft.

Mart> I have my shop in my basement. It's a small ranch, wish it was a walk out. >

Reply to
Martin Eastburn

Mould is bad, you need to disinfect it otherwise it will always be there and could cause respiratory problems. Spray with bleach or there are other products out there. Just letting it dry out is not good enough. I am not talking out of my arse here, I do work for various Yukon government departments and specialize in housing economics. We have serious mould problems in the Yukon in houses with inadequate vapour barriers. and it's usually very expensive to fix.

No, Styrofoam (extruded polystyrene?) and plywood. I had a similar problem with the wall between the gara^H^H^H^H shop and greenhouse. The bottom of the fiberglass was soaked as was the drywall. I replace the bottom two feet of insulation with Styrofoam, and replaced the plywood sheathing in the greenhouse. I still have to replace the drywall in the shop.

That is good, but would not have been fatal. Unless it reached the motors, nothign that WD-40, stell wool and elbow grease can't fix.

Reply to
Luigi Zanasi

Or forget the elbow grease, and go with T-9 Rust Free.

Reply to
-MIKE-

----------------------------------------- I'd use cement backer board and sheet foam insulation.

Based on your description, I'd remove the bottom 24".

Doesn't add much work but buys a lot of safety.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

Never mind *that*.

What you need to do *first* is find out how and why the water got in, and fix *that* problem. If it was only a little bit of seepage, applying a waterproofing paint such as Dry-Lok to the inside of the wall may be sufficient. If it was a lot, and it was flowing, not seeping, you may need to install perimeter drains and waterproof the foundation on the outside.

Regardless, you need to examine your rainwater drainage:

- Is the ground immediately next to your house sloped to drain surface water away from the foundation, or does it allow water to pool next to the foundation (or worse, drain toward it)?

- Do the downspouts from your gutters have extensions that direct rainwater some distance away from the foundation before dumping it on the ground? Five or six feet is good. Ten inches is not.

- Have you checked your gutters and downspouts to make sure they're not clogged? In a heavy rain, an overflowing gutter can dump an amazing amount of water right next to the foundation.

- Are your gutters and downspouts large enough to handle a heavy rain? Do you have enough downspouts? If water can't get out of the gutter system at least as fast as it comes in, you're going to have an overflow somewhere.

Reply to
Doug Miller

How'd it get wet?

Excavate around the building, pressure-wash and dry, seal with paint-on membrane or use EDPM, whatever code approves in your area. Insulate it while you're there, too. And do a walk-out then?

-- Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. -- Seneca

Reply to
Larry Jaques

If you are in a frost area, adding a walk out requires that you underpin the footings down to the newly created frost line, otherwise the frost will be in the walkout area and could cause the foundation to heave/buckle.

Reply to
EXT

Irene????

Reply to
Larry Blanchard

Also, if your downspouts go into the ground, they likely go into drain pipe that wraps around the perimeter of the house and connects 2 or more drains. This pipe can leak, and cause all your problems.

Unless your area was flooded, or you can visibly see gutter problems, it would be a good idea to stick a hose in the downspouts for at least 1

1/2 hours and see if water starts coming in. If it does, your problem should be an easy and cheap fix. If not, you have to find out what caused the problem, and stop it. The best way is keep the water away from your foundation, the worst way is to try to make your basement a waterproof swimming pool.

The overwhelming majority of water in basement problems is from one or more of the above causes.

Reply to
Jack Stein

I have my shop in my basement. It's a small ranch, wish it was a walk out.

Anyway, I have never had water in the basement before this weekend. It's a finished basement, sheetrock and insulation. Originally for my son to play in, then it morphed from a small shop to the whole basement.

Well I have ripped out the bottom of the walls and glass batts to stop the mold. I am airing out, and thanks to a moisture meter, I can tell I'm doing better. It will take a while.. Some of it I didn't get to until today. That was very moldy..

I want to redo the bottom and close it up. Building code here requires the walls be sealed up.

What to do. Sheetrock and fiberglass batts again..

Or something that won't soak up the moisture and require ripping apart. If it happened once, it can again.

Anyone know of a good choice for the bottom of the wall?

That will promote drying, not be a sponge, and not mold over easily. I have cut out the bottom 8" to promote the drying further up... I might have to cut some areas out completely, but 8" seems to be working. The wet stuff higher up is drying out mostly.

Most all my tools survived unscathed.. I haven't looked under the jointer, bandsaw.. to see if they are rusting out the bottom...

Some wood was damaged, my new bench was damaged by dirty water. It was a piece of furniture, now its just a workbench.. (well it always was a workbench, it just looked so good before the dirty water stained the legs. =============================

It doesn't matter what you put on the walls the insulation will have to be ripped out if it happens again.

Fix the source and then redo the walls with normal drywall again.

If you can't sleuth and logic the problem out get an expert. This problem will cost you big bucks and you need to solve it properly.

Reply to
Eric

I'm not sure that there's a whole lot one can do about "fixing" hurricanes.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Bingo. The ground here is so soaked from all the rain in August, that this just exacerbated the situation. I had no power so the sump pump wouldn't run. When I finally got the generator set up and going, my feet were ankle deep in mud outside. My 2 volleyball courts with poles over

2 feet down, and 160 pounds of cement on each pole could be moved easily. The ground was supersaturated.

I d> >

Reply to
tiredofspam

"tiredofspam" wrote

I want to redo the bottom and close it up. Building code here requires the walls be sealed up.

What to do. Sheetrock and fiberglass batts again..

Or something that won't soak up the moisture and require ripping apart. If it happened once, it can again.

Cut about 2 1/2" off the bottom of all of the studs, after supporting the studs by fastening them to the wall higher up. I leave that to your imagination.

Replace the bottom plate with a treated 2x4, but it should now leave 2 1/2' air space below the bottom plate. Use plastic commercial baseboard, with the bottom of it caulked to the floor, and a groove cut in the floor will help the caulk grab more strongly, and make the air space under the wall pretty much water tight.

At each end of the wall, make a hole for a shop vac hose right down on the floor. When it floods, you can hook the vac up leave it running 24/7 and suck the water up when it is first noticed, and keep it off of the floor. The air being moved though the space while the vac is running will also dry the moisture up quickly after it stops coming in.

There was once a commercial product like this that told you to drill a small hole into each core of the blocks, so water would drain to the baseboard, then around the outside into a sump pump or gravity drain. My parents used it long ago, and it worked pretty well.

-- Jim in NC

Reply to
Morgans

Wow, I guess so!

OK, you probably don't need to do the trenching and insu, but consider it anyway. It will keep you from having the problem again, it will make your basement drier and comfy all the time, and it will save you some on your heating bills.

-- Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. -- Seneca

Reply to
Larry Jaques

What was the cause of the water in the basement?

If it was inundated by the storm, for instance, that is a different sort of problem from a "damp/wet" basement.

My issue seemed to be seepage (we are on the middle of a hill and our basement is a full eight foot deep and was -likely- never properly sealed on the outside of the concrete block) so I started with DRY-LOK on the walls. I am doing it in stages ($100/bucket for DRY-LOC) and finished a second section this year.

We experience damp floors in high humidity during the hottest Summer days. This leads me to (hope) surmise the moisture may be atmospheric

- humidity interacting with the much cooler concrete floor - rather than ground water seepage up through the slab.

When applying the DRY-LOC onto the second section, the wife put on a thinner coating than had I on the other walls. WE noticed dampness and mold forming. I re-applied a bleach solution and re-coated that section the other day with a thick coating and hope that will do it.

The entire basement is damp - evidence rusting on steel tools, sander belts that snap apart on first use (after storage down there) and, of course, the moist floor.

There was carpeting on the rear area of the flooring and it did not appear damp on its surface. But, when I removed it to paint the DRY- LOC, the concrete started to appear wet when the heat and humidity increased.

Anything made of wood that is closed up or setting on the floor, shows evidence of mold - especially where there is no air circulation (inside my wooden tool boxes, for instance).

A couple of years ago we had two basement specialists come and advise a trench would need to be dug about the foundation and drainage pipe and a pump installed to achieve a warranted solution at about $12,000.00.

My approach will be to continue with the DRY-LOC until all the wall surfaces are thickly coated and see if there is any change. My idea is to isolate/insulate the cooler concrete floor from the moist/humid air with vinyl flooring and, finally, air-conditioning using portable units as there are but three very small windows in the one end of the

1500 sf basement - no where near enough.

One idea I had was to install ducting from the window-less rear up through the walls into the attic upon the assumption that the air would rise up through these ducts/vents via natural convection and this would afford air movement and help remove moisture.

As to the DURA ROCK suggestion, I thought of that as well. It does not attract/serve as a medium for MOLD (Hardi-plank/Hardi-board is another product I thought of. But, then, I was surprised to see mold form on the DRY-LOC (As I said, think it was not a full coat) and hope the second coating will fix this issue.

I have heard that raw fiberglass insulation does not support mold growth - that is the paper backing that does support mold growth. If anyone has a source to confirm or disabuse me of this notion - welcome.

Bottom line is that you have to get to the source of the moisture and fix that first. Then you can consider re-building and the best moisture-resistant (non-organic) materials for that task.

For one, I will continue reading this thread in hopes of learning what might be available!

Good luck.

Reply to
Hoosierpopi

Lay some plastic material to seal the floor against room air humidity condensation and look under it after a week once your immediate problem is cleared up.

------------

- humidity interacting with the much cooler concrete floor - rather than ground water seepage up through the slab.

Reply to
Josepi

I'll say. Bit of difference between a flood and some rain.

That might be, but if water is kept away from the foundation, it doesn't matter.

If it is just atmospheric, then all you need is air circulation, and perhaps a dehumidifier if you live in a rain forest. Where are you located?

I had 1/2" if water in my basement every time it rained hard for several years before I fixed the problem, and I don't recall my sanding belts breaking?

That's a lot of humidity I'd think.

They could be right, but that's what they do, so that's always their solution. Since you live in the middle of a hill, I would dig a trench a foot deep across the length of the house, put in a drain pipe, fill it with gravel. That will keep the water away from your foundation, and would cost next to nothing. I would make SURE it's not roof water first.

If it's humidity, it's not a water seepage problem, just condition the air. If it's water getting around your foundation, you need to stop the water from getting there. Water around the foundation is either ground water running toward your house (easy fix), roof water, (easy fix), water table (unlikely) or natural spring. When I was a kid, the "experts" told me it was the water table and I needed a $$$ french drain. He was an idiot, and I told him so. I was, of course, right:-)

Reply to
Jack Stein

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