Water Coming up from Slab in Living Room?

The houses and development seems to obstruct the flow of water in the soil.

The best solution would be for the authorities to put in a storm-water drainage line.

In the mean time you can consider a dewatering pump or trenching around the house (filled with stones) to divert the flow away from your house.

Yes, trenching around the house with stones may help. Sometimes, this is called a "French drain". Check out this Wikipedia entry for the basics.

If you are able to determine the direction water wants to travel, digging a trench that is deeper than the foundation of the house, and filling with gravel should allow the water to pass beyond your house. This trench can be covered with dirt to go on with your life. But the problem will only serve as a temporary solution until the water's path is redirected properly.

A swale is what is used to redirect surface water. It should be no deeper than necessary. A trench above the house will only increase hydraulic pressure. A trench below the house will relive hydraulic pressure. I would draw it for you, if I were using my old laptop. Not everything works as it should on Vista

Draw the section view of a house in the middle of a slope. Put a trench below the house. Draw a curve below the soil level to represent the hydraulic pressure line to the bottom of the trench, where it is carried away. Now draw one to a trench above the house. See? It's not drainage but pressure that is the problem, coming up from below.

I've gotta get the bugs outta the drawing program.

One word for you - OSX. Or, load XP on that Vista Dwindows machine.

I'm taking it as a given that drainage was put in around the footings of your house as per every building code I've ever known. It also sounds like you live on a slope with sufficient pitch to carry away surface water.

Your house has never flooded. So the drainage is working. Is the pond uphill, or downhill? A pond uphill would increase hydraulic pressure to areas down slope.

How old is the roofing? What's it's condition? Is there mold, or moss growing on it? Does this leakage happen when there is wind during significant rainfall? If so, I suspect the problem is with the roofing or flashing. There is a leak somewhere, probably running down a rafter until it meets a horizontal member, like a ceiling joist or truss web. The leak then runs along the joist until it meets an obstruction, like the lap or truss plate in conventional construction. It will be more difficult to find the leak the better your house was constructed. A vapor barrier and/or 5/8" fire-code sheetrock on the ceiling could mean you have a veritable pond up there. Check your attic access, which is probably in a closet somewhere. Do it NOW. The longer you let it wait, the more costly the repair. If you can't get a contractor to fix the leak right away, drill a hole in the middle of the ponding area an put a trash can under it. It's easy to fix the sheetrock after it dries. If your roofing is crusty, get it replaced.

I'll agree it could be a roof leak, but given the description would also suspect ground saturation - if the builder split the slab she could very well find concrete expansion joint under the dividing wall she refers to.

I have had water "wicked" up indoors, in my case it was a plumbing leak, but since all you have to do is pull the baseboard it is an easy inspection.

I operated as a waterproofing contractor in Arkansas--and the surrounding states--for about 15 years.

I am not currently in that line of work but I have not forgotten what I knew and I do know some people in the area who could fix the problem.

If you wish to call and talk about it I am at 479-899-7053

Depending upon where in the state you are I can reccomend someone who will know what to do

A trench deeper than your foundations with a drainage pipe and filled with gravel. This should enable the water to be intercepted before it reaches your house.

Because capillary action "sucks" water up from the water table, the interception drain needs to go well below foundation level.

Depending on the terrain and the underground drainage direction (not always the same as the above ground direction), the flow can then be drained away by a connecting drain.

A more reliable way to get rid of it, but also more expensive, is to dig a good size sump and install a pump.

You can then pump the surplus water into the street and let the council drains take care of it.

An underground wall around the house outside the drainage trench, with the sump and pump inside will significantly reduce the amount to be pumped from your sump.

If that doesn't work, maybe you should consider selling the house during fine, dry weather and move!

Besides the drainage issue has your husband caulked around the outside of the house between the slab and the siding. It's a relatively cheap precaution and might save you from leaks from the outside getting between the siding and the concrete slab. He should do it maybe once every 3-4 years.

Our house sits at the crest of a 20' hill. The back yard is pretty much flat for 600'. The soil is clay and glacial till. This soil doesn't drain well at all. The net result is that there was a lot of surface and ground water trying to move off the flat space through the house and down the hill. After having the same problems you have for several years we dug an 8' deep trench across the back of the house and then took the trench out the side of the hill at the bottom. A drain pipe was put in and then the trench backfilled to 1' below grade with coarse stone. After a layer of ag paper (keeps the dirt from settling into the stone) a foot of topsoil was added. There were drains to the surface placed at strategic locations to catch any run off.

The basement has been dry for two years now.

If you don't have a hill somewhere you will have to have the drain go to a crock and then trash pump the water to somewhere "safe". Maybe right onto the street? Are there storm sewers in your area? Lots of questions, call the guy who left his phone number.

Good luck!

A house is a lot like a boat and every boat has a bilge pump...........

Consult an attorney to sort this out in your best interest.

You are in what was probably once a flood plain or a local flood plain had been diverted to your house. (Lucky you).

Trench around the home for best results... Sorry to hear about this, but keep in mind that the county allowed someone else to divert the water in your direction. Any new major developments built within the past several years?

JL Mealer

Generally, this is NOT a good thing.......most houses built on basements below grade level are essentially swimming pools in the making. This is especially true if the underground water table (the level below the surface when you would hit water if you drilled a hole) is high to begin with, or if the area is known to have local streams or if there had been a lake there previously.

What you are seeing/feeling is the water table becoming higher than your floor level. Concrete is essentially porous, and unless there was some sealing done before the concrete was poured, you are seeing a resurgence of the water table which does come and go depending on local rainfall over a period of years.

We had a similar problem, and the only resolution is to pump it out faster than it fills up. You can improve your situation by having a so-called French Drain dug around either the outside of your foundation or just inside the foundation. Essentially, you dig a moat around your house, fill it with gravel, cover it to prevent water borne silt from plugging up the spaces between the gravel/rocks, and then place sump pumps in one or more locations to pump out the water which fills the moat from underground. The pumps must have the capacity to pump out more water than flows in, or you are fighting a losing battle.

You must pump the water preferably to a site which is LOWER than your basement floor, or you are just recycling the water, which will then flow back into your French Drain "moat" again.

We had some houses near us which were built on a spot which had been a small lake. Then the water table went down, the lake dried up, and a builder built houses there. 5-10 years later, the water table rose again, the lake came back, and it flooded basements and even made swimming pools overflow.

You need a reputable builder, a reputable waterproofing company (DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO COAT YOUR HOUSE FROM THE OUTSIDE WITH SOME KIND OF CLAY SLURRY OR TAR), or a good lawyer.

Hello Guest,

You wrote, " you have checked behind the refrigerator and did not find any leak, presumably, the ice maker/cold water facility that is part of your system.

If you have any other water lines in that part of the wall system you may find that where water pipes come up from under the concrete slab, the are openings that are a little larger than the pipes. This is to prevent the concrete from coming in contact with the copper pipes, as the corrosive nature of the concrete would eventually cause leaks in the pipe at the floor level, within the wall.

As mentioned else where, there may be a cold joint in the concrete floor that is covered by the wall, this could allow for water to rise up through the crack that exist where cold joints are are created. Further, very few concrete floors are truly flat. They often will have low spots on the surface and any water that can get into the building will naturally flow and puddle there.

You have not stated any information about your exterior walls, however weather they are wood framed, metal studs or cement block, where the bottom of the wall and concrete floor meet this may well be where water is entering from the outside. I found this to be the case with a home that I once owned.

It appears that your home has been constructed in what is called a flood plane. This simply means that water will flow to the lowest area around and pond there. This water may well generally flow mostly underground during much of the year, however when the rainfall exceeds the carrying capacity of the soil, it will do exactly what it is doing now.

Your County/City should have topography maps that show where water will flow under the circumstances that you have posted here on CR 4. The builder should have been required to construct the floor of your house above this anticipated flooding level. Here in Florida this is taken into consideration when any new home is constructed. If the contractor wants to build homes on concrete slabs, they must first provide compacted fill high enough to prevent your problem. This means that each of these homes are constructed on a hill. Flowing water passes around each home and into a swale along each side of the streets and on into the nearest ponding area. The Contractors must provide a "Site and Drainage Plan" for each home he constructs and for an entire subdivision if such a development is being constructed. I suggest that you go to your local planning and zoning Dept and ask to see aerial photos of the area you live in. Ask weather or not the community has a S&P Plan for that Dept.

You might also check with your local Road & Bridge Dept. regarding the same issue. They determine the elevation of the crown in the streets and just where drainage pipes that exist beneath the road are placed and just how big they must be. Often these drainage pipes are too small to permit large amounts of water to pass through, and even more often these pipes are not kept clean of sand and debris, causing the water to back up until it can get high enough to cross over the road. You should check around your neighborhood for this problem.

If this problem exists through out your entire neighborhood, you and your neighbors should all show up with a plan at your next City Council/County Commissioners meeting and demand that your public works resolve this problem. It is clearly a health hazard. Any time that moisture can regularly get into the exterior wall of your home you are likely to find mould growing there. Inhaling the mould spores can be fatal. If this problem cannot be solved with a suitable drainage system constructed in your neighborhood, these homes may have to be raised/elevated or even demolished.

The son and his wife , of a friend of mine, recently found that a home that he bought in a location similar to that which you have described as your neighborhood, found that there was a natural spring that was flowing up hill from his home, and the ground remained saturated in his front yard much of the year. Then he found that there was mould growing in the walls of his home. The local health dept condemned the building, and caused him to move his family from there. He is suing the previous owner as that party by law must disclose any information that could impact the sale of the home. Mould is just one example of that kind of information.

BTW, the owners of a condominium project in SL Tahoe sued the builder regarding access to a loft area that was part of the construction, and only accessible by a ladder. The building code does not permit ladders to be used to access bed rooms, and this was a creative idea used to promote sales of said condo's. As the result, the owners association prevailed, and I got to construct 252 stair cases to this loft area. That was a really good project for me.

TooMuchFun

Hello Guest..

We also live in Arkansas, Hot Springs area to be exact.

This same thing happened to my Mother In Laws next door neighbor!

If you wish to respond, I will ask them how they solved it, as I noticed workers over there doing repairs the other day..

And the rain keeps coming down... Just call me Noah in the Ark..

Fortunately, Our house is on the top of Mount Ararat

and in twenty years we have not flooded..

Donald

The presence of mold suggest that the dampened wall and baseboard was/is not just a transitory event...such as would have been the result with your occasional "gully washers." But, you mentioned nothing about the condition of your house's roof and sealing around any roof penetrations. Because you live in a wet summer area, the repeated addition of smallish quantities of summer shower water would be more conducive to mold growth than a heavy wetting that happens only rarely, and has time to dry up before the next torrential rain event.

A leak in the roof can show up just about anywhere in the house (not just directly below or in the ceiling), as water can flow across down rafters and joists, and down studs in wall cavites...until there is something, such as a floor, to stop it.

You might try inspecting in your attic space looking for:

• Daylight showing through the roof
• Water coagulation of loose fill insulation
• Discoloration of batt fill paper backing
• Water caused discoloration (on yellow pine, usually darkening) track running downward along (and on bottom surface of) rafters and joists...which will trace from the point of rainwater entry to the point where water goes into walls or through ceiling.

Of course, an inspection with flashlight of the house crawl space could find wicking up from the ground (mostly through masonry...masonry without properly installed vapor barrier, that is).

I have a similar problem with leakage from the roof which, after some years, I finally traced to leakage around some of the screws holding the (corrugated iron) roof sheet. I think some of the washers were damaged when the screws were put in.

As I live in an area with about 2 meters of rain a year, roof leakage can be quite noticeable!

The solution will be for me to climb on the roof and silicone every single screw head.

I'm waiting (but not looking forward to) the wet season to end before doing it.

I am an expert in building envelope waterproofing. You mentioned that water was running down the wall. Is the wall below ground? You mentioned you noticed water damage on your hard wood floor in the middle of the room. Is it below ground? We will start there for questions. I know many colleagues that may be able to help you with in reasonable distance from where you live if I cannot help you diagnose it on line

regards, joe

You have acquired the assistance of some folks from Arkansas who seem to be familiar with the variety of leaks that your concerned about. I will yield to their experience with leaks in that vicinity of our nation. HOWEVER; I highly advise that you determine weather or not you have cultures of mould growing in your wall cavities. I lost a very good friend to the ramifications of unknown mould found growing in his interior walls. By the time they found out about the issue and got him to the University Hospital the infection had ruined his lungs. He died there 3 days later.

TooMuchFun

How do you go about testing for mould cultures??...this is something that I have been worried about myself. I often smell a mildew smell in the morning when I wake up and wake with headaches.

We had an environmental come out and culture the visable mold growing on our baseboard and do air quality culture in our bedrooms. They also did a culture of the outdoor to get the baseline to compare to. The baseboard grew out mulitple molds including Aspergillus/Pencillium. The indoor air in the bedroom cultures grew out 7 molds that are sporating inside and not outside including with the highest of Aspergillus/Pencillium. I have read this is one of the molds that produce mytotoxins and causes health associated problems. They also tested the rest of the flooring and baseboards to find high levels in moisture all under the house and several high readings in baseboards.....Not sure what to do from here!!!! They asked if it was possible to have a spring under our home because of the way the levels were reading in different places.

Don't eat the mushrooms.