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December 18, 2007
Secret to Dry Basement?
What is the secret to waterproofing a basement (poured concrete) with rear staircase to backyard. There is a drywell near basement backdoor. Water seems to come from wall and seam between wall and floor. Any suggestions?
Comments
A few things it could be. Check your roof and gutters to make sure it's not coming from the top floors and leaking all the way down. Make sure your exterior facade is sealed and interior brick is pointed. Is the pitch of your property leading away from your house? If you see puddles near the back, that's your culprit. Are you sure the drywell is functioning properly? It's not easy keeping the basement dry. A sump pump is always a good idea in any case.
Posted by: rh at December 18, 2007 6:19 PM
Condition the backyard soil too. If it's seriously compacted as most brownstone backyards are in brooklyn after a century of abuse, rain won't drain quickly enough. Call the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and ask them for advise or to recommend a gardener who can help. You can actually get mail order worms in little capsules that you drop in the ground. You bought dirt as well as bricks and mortar. Get the most out of it.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 12:01 AM
What ever you do, don't try to patch it from the inside. That will just lead to future trouble.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 9:17 AM
Well, my strategy so far has just been to live with it. I spent bucks a while ago putting in drains in the basement floor. Now the water is coming in from a different side of the house. I live in Park Slope, so I figure all the rain just washes down the hill, and there's really nothing you can do about it. I believe a lot of my neighbors have the same problem.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 10:02 AM
Great post. We have problems too and a contractor recommended French drains (we have a sump pump already). Does anyone have a French drain and does it help? I ask because it involves tearing up the slab to put these in.
Posted by: ohiise at December 19, 2007 11:11 AM
Not a good idea to just sit while you have a wet or damp basement. Trouble may come, sooner or later. Better take care of the problem now. For mild case a good de-humidifier will work wonders, for serious cases you may need to waterproof the outside wall (including the foundation). 9:17 is absolutely right: fix the problem at the source, don't just patch the inside.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 11:26 AM
Last year we put in a french drain system and larger sump pit in the cellar of the store behind my house. It seems to have worked well except for two heavy rains in July and August, and that seems to have been because the tenant didn't plug in the sump pump. Prior to putting in the drain we had gotten as much as 6" of water over a 700 sf area.
We used was plastic drain pipe from Home Depot or Lowe's. It's about 6" in diameter and has holes about 1/4" in diameter along the top. The holes aren't that close together. I was dubious about the performance and would have preferred something with more and larger slots. Also, the plastic pipe isn't supposed to be legal for installation in the City, but it was all we could find retail.
On another note, we'd always wondered how old the rear addition to our +/- 1875 house was. Interestingly, under the tile and concrete we found a lot of red slate that matches the curb beneath our fence.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 11:39 AM
11:39, did you have to break the floor to do that? Also how do you prevent the holes from clogging up? Do you have any pics?
Posted by: ohiise at December 19, 2007 11:52 AM
It's me, 11:39.
We did have to dig to trench the floor. We just broke up the concrete and tile in the area where we trenched. It wasn't easy and it was very messy. We lined the trench with gravel and put the pipe in a mesh sleeve. We used connector pieces where we made a corner and made holes to fit the pipe in the side of the sump bucket and perforated the sump bucket a little up from the bottom of the bucket to catch any residual water. All the pipe was pitched slightly toward the sump bucet. Sorry, no pictures.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 12:20 PM
Happiness is a dry cellar.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 4:55 PM
You can waterproof and put in drains all you want, but the real problem is you have water coming in, and those actions don't address that problem at all.
Where is the water coming from? Roof gutters should drain into the storm sewer not down the sides of the house. The grade at the back of the house should direct water AWAY from your house and into a drywell in the cement in the yard. The back cellar/basement door needs to have a drain instlled if there isn't one, or cleaned out if it's full of mud. Start with all that, then and only then start waterproofing and putting in French drains.
Posted by: guest at December 19, 2007 8:32 PM
Yeah 8:32? And what do you do if the water table itself is high, say you are close to the water in a flood zone? Our backyard is graded away from the house, and the part nearest the house is covered by cement. The gutters go into a rainwater barrel (that does not overflow). We even have a sump pump. Even then, when there are heavy rains, say one of those hurricanes downgraded to tropical storm things that come up here sometimes, we get 3-6" of water. Seeping out of the floor, the backdoor, the sump pit and sometimes backflow from the tub, etc.
Posted by: ohiise at December 20, 2007 8:40 AM
Ohiise, we've managed to solve 2 basement problems with previous homes through trial and error and we've yet to get to our 2 current homes. Perhaps your yard isn't graded enough or your pump isn't big enough. Have you considered BDry? It's pricey, but if all else fails...
http://www.bdry.com/
**Disclosure, I haven't tried it. Just heard positive feedback from others.
Posted by: rh at December 20, 2007 9:50 AM
8:40, there's no way rain barrels will collect all the water off the roof in a heavy rain. A heavy rain produces several hundreds of gallons of water off a roof. Look up the stats on that; the runoff is calculated per square foot on roof size. Your rain barrel would have to be massive to collect every drop of roof runoff. It needs a valve to flip and send the rest into the storm sewer once the barrel is full. If you don't have that then that means you have water coming down the sides of your house and then into the foundation. Also, the cement part near your house, do you have a drywell and drain there? The grassy part of your yard will not absorb water fast enough if it's already saturated with a previous rain, or if it's been dried out from a dry spell before a heavy rain. I still would think your problem sounds like too much runoff with no where to go but into the house.
Posted by: guest at December 22, 2007 11:58 PM
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