Basement water infiltration, suggestions?

[Dan Shulman]

Hi all,

I am having some water infiltration, not sure if it's through the wall or up from the floor, it is a small amount (a pint at most), and only during the hardest rains. There is evidence of previous water damage (i.e. mold), but that seems to be minor. I have heard a lot about various methods of mitigation, including french drains, installing a sump pump (it's a 1928 house, I think before sumps/floor drains), excavating/reparging, landscaping, etc. I have consulted with Mid-Atlantic Water proofing (any comments on them??) I was wondering if people here have experience in this or thoughts on what to do.

Thanks in advance,

Dan Washington, D.C.

[LB]

First check all around the outside of the house. Be sure water is being drained away, or at least not toward a wall. A little well placed dirt may solve the problem. Other ideas will follow:-))))

LB

[roger61611]

I've had a few wet basements, come to think of it, all of them were wet. A pint of water in a 77 year-old basement is enviable. Not to blather but there's many potential causes and remediations, so many that my main piece of advice is to discuss the matter with multiple (3 ?) waterproofers.

The causes range all over the place, for example, your ground sloping toward the house instead of away, your neighbor put in a sump pump and is routing all there water towards you, your gutters are clogged, etc. If you clear up all the obvious things like that it does come down to sump pump(s) and drain systems. My brother had this done some time back though and now his basement wall (concrete block) is starting to buckle in, so there's still quite a bit of hydraulic pressure.

The other option is to accept that your basement is in the 99th percentile of dryness for old houses and just accept it, which is what I did.

[Joseph Meehan]

Look outside for your answer. The soil around your home must slope away from your home on all sides; ideally 10-20 feet. All downs pouts must be directed away from the foundation. Make sure this is done first.

[rumpleforskin]

At my house in particular, we had same problem, signs of water infiltration over the years. The previouse owners had almost taken care of the problem by doing a few common sense things. The first thing they did was install new gutter system. The second thing they did was regrade the exterior landscape. The third thing they did was install a Concrete walkway around the house with a gentle slope away from the house. These three things almost entirely fixed all the problems. Unfortunately we had same problem you do, which was once in a while during a hard rain or watering the lawn near the house, caused a very small infiltration of water at one side of the basement, always in the same place. Opon thinking more about this I noted that the grass on that side of the house was of poor quality, not growing well and in a very sandy soil. We rototilled the soil to loosen it up and dug it out for about 18 inches deep. Replaced with a good top soil, grew new lush grass. This seems to have solved the problem. Zero water for over a year now. The problem in our case was the grass would not absorb the water penetration. Then the water would get down into the sandy soil, follow a tree root to the edge of our basement, where it had a natural underground "spring" directly to the edge of the foundation. Hope some of this helps you to at least think of the different things than can help cause your problems.