Basement Remediation

I agree. My house, built in 1980, had the same issues, and a half-hearted attempt was made to fix the problems by the seller (7 years ago, when we bought it). To avoid legal battles and endless comebacks by incompetent contractors, I decided to simply fix the thing correctly. I dug / redug French drains and graded the land on the uphill side to provide a low area about 5' out from the house. Surface water flows away along this low area. The French drains go all the way to the foundation base and between them and the foundation is heavy Visqueen. The gravel is covered with geofabric all the way around, so water on the uphill side can find its way into the drain, and to prevent the gravel from clogging. (I recently dug up part of one drain to get access to a leaking water main, and they are still in great shape.)

I continued the French drain on the high side down the back yard to a point well away from the house and below the base of the foundation.

From as far as I can tell, many foundation remediation places do a pretty poor (to obscene) job of fixing the root cause. Slap on a little sealant, and the symptom is fixed for a short, time but the problem remains, and leaks will return after the contractor is gone.

7 years later, our house is still bone dry (whereas it had a full inch of water in the lower two levels when we moved in (coincidentally in a hurricane) after having been "fixed" by a foundation contractor as part of the sale contract. It's been through several hurricanes, etc since.

So regrade and dig drains first, then follow with landscaping, only after you are certain the system is working right. Be certain that all gutters are kept clean and that their output is directed to points well away from the foundation. Anywhere where there are likely to be problems form gutter drainage, using drain pipes underground is a good idea -- rather than the short concrete things that you often find under downspouts.

Yup like Tornado says, remove the source of the problem first.
and we have since been fighting a legal battle for non-disclosure to an existing problem with our house.
Hmmm, yes, and all that will do is line the pockets of the laywers and ruin your health.
Whatever happened to good old 'caveat emptor'?
Presumably you had it surveyed?
Dunno why we pay these 'professionals' who then hide behind disclaimers when they don't spot the problems we employ them to find.
You have my sympathy, despite any appearance to the contrary.
Del

Wow. Thank you so much for your time. We live in southern Minnesota in a neighborhood established in the early 1970s. We do not live on a flood plane, but do live on the side of a hill and back up to a flat public park. We often have standing water about 30-40 feet away from our house in the back yard for a week or two after the spring thaw, but I would think that would be too far away to really make an impact on seepage. Our soil has a high percentage of clay and we have about 4 in deep of small landscaping stone on the side of our house on the upslope of the hill. Our foundation is made of concrete blocks and I am unsure if we have any kind of asphalt barrier on the exterior foundation walls. We're currently working with a landscaper, but it's good to know that you're in agreement on the excavation and exterior drainage system. Lots of good ideas to think about. Thanks again!

CaptMoosie nailed it, and in less space than I. I agree also with the other poster re: sealing from the inside and the issue of hydrostatic pressure. This is a temporary, at best fix. You have a high bentonite concentration in your neck of the woods.

The Orange-Red area is very high in the stuff, aka...CLAY.

	Over 50 percent of these areas are underlain by soils with abundant clays of high swelling potential.
	Less than 50 percent of these areas are underlain by soils with clays of high swelling potential.
	Over 50 percent of these areas are underlain by soils with abundant clays of slight to moderate swelling potential.
	Less than 50 percent of these areas are underlain by soils with abundant clays of slight to moderate swelling potential.
	These areas are underlain by soils with little to no clays with swelling potential.
	Data insufficient to indicate the clay content or the swelling potential of soils.

http://geology.com/articles/expansive-soil.shtml gives you more info on the stuff.

Removing the soil from around the foundation and replacing it with clean, hi-perc fill would be a big help in getting the water that does get to the foundation walls down to the drain tiles and away from the house, and while you are there, seal the outside walls with an elastometric waterproof sealer. A French Ditch upslope with a good drainage system would help as well.

A final comment to all of this. If you take these remedial actions and the water is diverted to a neighboring property who then suffers a catastrophic foundation failure such as yours, then you may well be speaking to an attorney for an entirely different matter as they may, and probably will, blame YOU for their problem.

CaptMoosie- you get a GA from me, but there is one point I would make, based on experience trying to seal concrete walls on several occasions under a variety of circumstances. Sealing from the inside is virtually impossible. Excavate and seal from the outside. Sealing from the inside generally fails because one has a pressure differential pushing the moisture barrier away from the substrate. Sealing from the outside, the pressure differential pushing the barrier into the wall...

Hi, You don't say where you are in the world, But in England we have as you can imagine more properties with basements than those without, Because of the problems with damp,spring water or flash flood, there are a number of companies who specialise in sealing basements, one of the most successful ways of sealing a damp basement is injecting a silicon based material all around the perimeter walls,this will keep the area dry, But if you have spring water building up against the walls you will need to lay in ground drainage to remove the build up of pressure which if left unchecked will force it's way through the walls or up through the floor, this is in some properties more of a problem than the damp, In London there is no way of draining this type of buildup so it is channelled into sumps then pumped up into the drainage system, It is impossible to just waterproof render the inside walls as the buildup of pressure will eventually blow the render off, also rendering tends to move the problem to another part of the basement.

I would if it were mine, I would channel around the perimeter to the deepest point ie,the ditch needs to be 2ft lower than the basement floor at the deepest point then kept at an angle to drain away, Laying in drainage pipes,back fill with pea shingle, whilst the ditch is exposed is a good time to inject the walls with silicon, The one thing to watch out for is not to transfer the problem to your neighbour down the hill unless he sold you the house in the first place.

I agree with Dr Moosie. I wanted to add that I bet your house does have a drain tile system already....it's just plugged. No matter how you add it up it's time to get out a shovel and move some Earth.

This is not a fix for your problem but I have heard that the water will travel along the old "lay of the land" before houses were placed there. So if some of the early settlers into your neighborhood could tell you about your specific hill and downslope, you might learn additional details in how to implement some of the good answers above!

No, I think you'll find thats elephants!

Hello Baschu02,

I'm glad to have been of assistance to you and your husband. I'd like to add one more comment to my initial posting.

I think that your best strategy would be to apply two coats of the Xypex Concentrate to the inside of your foundation wall. It may be the most cost effective option as well as the most easiest to implement. Of course you may want to do a cost comparison between applying it or one or more of the other options that Forum members suggested.

Xypex Concentrate can be applied to either face of the block wall. It really doesn't matter with this material, and will eliminate the need and huge expense o excavating around the entire house. You can apply it with either a brush or roller. It'll also seal hairline cracks and the pores of the CMU wall.

It is very effective against resisting hydrostatic pressure (water pressure due to it's depth). The US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) have tested it up to a hydrostatic depth of 405 feet (175 psi water pressure), and the result of those tests was no observable leakage through the concrete test samples. You must have a saturated and damp wall surface prior to applying this produce for it to become effective. Here's a short blurb about those tests from the Xypex Corp. data sheet:

Test Data

PERMEABILITY

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) CRD C48-73,

"Permeability of Concrete", Pacific Testing Labs,

Seattle, USA

Two in. (51 mm) thick, 2000 psi (13.8 MPa) Xypex-treated

concrete samples were pressure tested up to a 405 ft.

(124 m) water head (175 psi/1.2 MPa), the limit of the

testing apparatus. While untreated samples showed

marked leakage, the Xypex-treated samples (as a result

of the crystallization process) became totally sealed and

exhibited no measurable leakage.

http://www.xypex.com

I have specified this material the past 15 years during my engineering career for just about any concrete or masonry underground or water retaining structure imaginable, and I'm not aware of any failures due groundwater penetration or retained water leakage ever occurring. Also, this material is permanent and not subject to degradation and hence requiring replacement during the life of the structure. Those structures were foundation walls and slabs in structures of all types, water treatment plants and pump stations, wastewater treatment plants and pump stations, homes, government and commercial buildings, stadiums, parking garages, bridges, vaults of all types, and even dams and other Civil Works to name a few.

Good luck with your project. Please let us know what solutions that you plan on implementing, and later on how successful that work was. Have a great sunny day!

Once again Capt Moosie is precisely correct. I have survived a catastrophic basement failure and recommend expeditious compliance with the suggestions presented: primarily and foremost, the excavation and placement of a drain on the upslope side of the home.

I experienced the complete collapse of the west basement wall of my home during a torrential downpour which lasted for several hours and overwhelmed my gutters and surface drains. Of course, it didn't help that my basement was hand dug in 1954, aproximately 30 years after the house was built, and that a 38 foot section of the wall was constructed using blocks of an inadequate size.

The failure was not an overnight occurence, however. There were warning signs, such as seepage, cracking, and subtle, yet nevertheless detectable, stess breaks in the soil underneath the foundation of the home.

The basement retaining wall-I call it this because it served no function other than holding the soil in place- was inset about three feet from the foundation. Over time, a bulge began to appear, which became gradually more noticable as wet weather persisted. My mistake was waiting too long to make the necessary repairs.

Subsequent to this failure, my insurer quickly informed me that within the general exclusions section of my policy, it was clearly stated that NO damage resulting from shifting soil and/or water would be covered. The bank wasn't very interested in helping fund the repairs either. My attorney basically told me that I was "legally" on my own. Thank goodness for good friends who help you through times like that (not a reference to Mr. Jack Daniels).

For your own sake, be hasty. This will prolong the existence of your life savings.....

Z

It's not exactly clear where you are geographically, but if you have any chance of having to endure a summer rain storm, you should immediately construct an intercepting swale all along the high sides of your property in order to quickly carry water around your (structures), and out into the street, at the lowest street elevation within your property frontage, while you still can...