basement flood/waterproofing?
We are considering buying a modest brownstone in prime Bklyn, and need the cellar to increase total sf (house is small) but the cellar shows signs of past flooding (sump pump, mold on sheetrock walls, etc.) The inspector found the walls to be dry now, but there was a lot of water in the sump…
We are considering buying a modest brownstone in prime Bklyn, and need the cellar to increase total sf (house is small) but the cellar shows signs of past flooding (sump pump, mold on sheetrock walls, etc.) The inspector found the walls to be dry now, but there was a lot of water in the sump pump. One theory he had was that the sump pump is basically working, and past mold is from previous floods. Also, problem might arise from fact that current owner dug out half the cellar (where sump pump is). That is, back half of cellar is about 2-3′ deeper than front half, and maybe the house hit ground water.
My question: what are the odds that this basement can be waterproofed to eventually be a usable basement? We would love to dig up foundation to raise ceiling height, and make room into usable family room type place (I’ve seen others do this) but is there any way to know before signing contract if this is possible – that is, how can we figure out ahead of time if this basement will be usable and not prone to problematic and/or chronic flooding? Our inspector said it really is a matter of water “management” but how easy/difficult it is to manage the water so that flooding does not occur?
Concrete waterproofing
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Consider installing a French Drain (aka Weeping Tile) around your perimeter if your walls are wet where the foundation wall meets the slab. If the entire wall is wet you gotta waterproof the wall. Make sure to check the NY BBB when you choose a water proofing contractor because most of them are terrible.
Consider using Solar Tubes to bring in natural light to your basement. You install these things on the roof and run them whereever you want some natural light.
I would also think a good HVAC system would make sense to keep your humidity down in the summer and to allow you to breathe clean air in the winter.
-ev
This is what I did-don’t use drywall down there, bad idea, use cement board for the first foot off the ground at least. Use ceramic tile and tile borders instead of wood molding. Install a good sump pump and consider installing manual check valves. You can avoid a lot of flooding but sometimes if you are on a bad block, like the above posts mentioned, and you get terrential rain downpours, you’re still going to get flooded. Don’t keep antiques down there and you’ll be fine.
There will always be some mold spores in cellars even if you do all you can to keep it dry. Which still won’t be enough to keep it from getting wet once or twice a year. I was told by an expert the weather trends for NYC with global warming will be long dry periods with deluge downpours, like we saw last year. Bad news for basements. Therefore don’t put bedrooms in a cellar. It’s unhealthy to breathe the mold and dust however slight, all night every night. I’ve seen very fun casual party rooms in cellars with a hatch for light as you describe. But it makes a horrible bedroom.
Well I’ve done some more research and here’s what I found. There is a stream on the block but the neighbors do use their basements (or cellars, as I believe is the correct term) as living space but informal i.e. for their kids to play and/or have band practice/watch TV, etc. One neighbor excavated, the other did not, but they both kept concrete floors. They have occasionally had some water, but that’s because the owner of the house we’re considering buying has not properly sealed up holes in the back walls that adjoin the neighbors’ property (she has taken terrible care of the house, which is pretty much a wreck/total gut). An architect tells me we might be able to get a little light from the garden with a hatch window somehow, but even if we don’t, and even if in the future we don’t “officially” consider it part of square footage, we would like to do something similar – even if it’s with a cheap tile or concrete floor. We don’t delude ourselves that it can be a real bedroom – we’ll probably just try to get 3 bedrooms out of 2 of the other floors, whether on garden and top floor, or garden and parlor (house is 3 stories, 16.5 x 40), but again, we’d like to squeeze every bit of usable space out of it…
If others have had luck, or think this is crazy, let me know…
It’s a cellar, you say? It doesn’t have any windows at all? If you really need this room for living space, it’s not the house for you. You just wouldn’t use a room in which you have to have a sump pump as a family room or den. It would be okay for laundry and storage, but be sure to put the machines and everything else on an elevated platform off the floor for when it floods. Which it will do sometimes.
Or maybe use as a teenager’s party room for his garage band, that kind of thing. But I’d never install any kind of truly finished room in a cellar or basement that doesn’t have windows. Plus you would not get back your investment because you can’t count that square footage in the house when you resell it. Cellars don’t count.
What Denton says above is correct, and I will add also that there is no such word as “waterproofed” for a basement, just various preventions you can take.
You really need to find out exactly why the basement was wet before in order to answer how to prevent it from happening again. Water table? Seasonal underground stream? leaking water main? Broken house storm or main? I have seen all of these variations just in Greenwich Village alone, and those are just the ways I know about (in other words there’s probably a lot more).
Denton’s advice on contacting neighbors is a great idea. But your thought that you can easily find the source of a past water flood in your basement quickly (meaning before you purchased) is unlikely unless it is something obvious like a broken storm drain.
This is not to say a finished cellar isn’t possible in your case. But given the past evidence, you’d be wise to choose your materials with an eye to water resistance (for example, using a ceramic tile floor rather than wood).
It may help if you gave more exact location.
A large part of it will depend on whether you are living in a flood-prone location, i.e, the bottom of a hill. Some areas (like 4th Ave in G-slope) are near the water table already.
One thing to do is simply ask neighbors on the block how prone their basements are to flooding and under what conditions.
Water management is a great theory if your house is in the middle of a 100 acre wheat field in Kansas. I assume you have neighbors on each side, so it will be difficult for you to trench around the entire house and waterproof from the exterior. Still, I imagine you can do something.
Anyway if you choose your materials carefully you could still do some kind of family room even if you were to have a problem every coupla years.
I don’t necessarily see the existence of a sump pump as indicative of a problem–the installation of one is a prudent act. Pipes break, all kinds of stuff can happen in an old building.