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June 15, 2008
Basement waterproofing
Heavy rain saw our worst ever basement flooding last night ! Hard to tell exactly where the water is coming from. Any recamendations for contractors / companies who waterproof basements ? Any advice/thoughts would be greatly appreciate.
Comments
The first thing to check is whether or not the water is getting in through your drains, clogged house trap, etc. Or a leak under a bulkhead door. I'd do this before calling a contractor, who's probably only going to give you an expensive cookie-cutter job that may not address the real problem.
You have to do a bit of sleuthing, looking for instance for concrete that's damper than elsewhere and signs of leaves and dirt which would indicate that it's probably not a porous foundation problem. If it's the foundation the wall will be damp for a couple of days.
I had a couple of floods in my basement which after some investigation turned out to be because of two things. One was a restriction in a back yard drain. Leaves had gotten into the drain, probably from the roof, and clogged the horizontal drain downstream of the basement bathroom. That caused the shower drain to overflow because these old houses were built tying in the storm drains to the sanitary sewer. The other reason was because of some yard work my neighbor had done which caused her downspout water to dump under my deck. A $40 drain cleaning and a short, self-made brick retaining wall fixed the flooding problem.
It was tough to find the problem though because a few minutes after the rain ended, the pool of water under my deck receded into the slow yard drain. I found it by standing like an idiot in the back yard with a flashlight during a heavy thunderstorm and saw what was happening.
Posted by: Steve at June 15, 2008 11:30 AM
Yep. Had a similar problem Water started pouring in every time it rained heavily, but only when it rained heavily.
Contractors and a bunch of plumbers came in - crack in basement, water coming in from unfinished back yard foundation, nothing can be done yadda yadda. Sessa Plumbing came in. Big firm. A bit pricey but diagnosed the problem. Turns out there was a drain under the permanent floor prior owner had installed. Drain backed up in heavy rain and let water into the basement. They found the drain and installed one way valve. Problem solved . . touch wood.
Posted by: Johnny at June 15, 2008 11:52 AM
Sessa is more than a bit pricey but Richie and his guys are the best around. When I have a tough plumbing problem, they get the call.
Posted by: Steve at June 15, 2008 12:27 PM
We had to take several steps to solve the problem of water coming in our basement. We'd have a heavy rain, fix one thing, then the next heavy rain there'd be some more water so we'd fix another thing.
All of it was connected to proper drainage and grading. Sometimes it's one simple thing as the others described. For us it was 3 simple things to fix.
Touch wood for us too, but we have a dry basement after these recent heavy rains.
Posted by: guest at June 15, 2008 12:36 PM
Be advised that if you have a backflow valve (one-way valve, etc.) you may need to get it serviced periodically -- our valve "froze" in the open position and we got nailed last summer. I've settled on every six months as the proper frequency. (Frantically knocks wood.)
Posted by: BklynJace at June 16, 2008 12:02 PM
Hey Steve: You weren't an idiot for going out in the rain with a flashlight to see what was really going on with the water. That was smart. Of course, you'll really be an idiot if next time you don't bring bring a seat and a six-pack. Better yet get someone else to do it. You had your lesson in flood management.
Posted by: guest at June 16, 2008 2:48 PM
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