CraigT wrote:
I don't think the ground is super saturated or is their high hydrostatic
pressure. The area of the crack is only 2 feet under grade. The crack
seems to be a stress crack from settling (house is only 8 years old). The
water has been held back for the entire 4 years I've been the house by
nothing more that caulk. The leak is 20 inches to right of that window and
note the grade: http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Squisher/leak.jpg
Where is the water coming from? Your house is not a swimming pool.
Trying to stop leaks seldom/never works for long. You first must
identify where the water is coming from. Most of the time it comes from
leaky gutters or from drainage pipe often wrapped around your house tied
into the downspouts. You can find out by sticking a hose in the gutters
and run water for at least an hour, or run the downspouts temporarily
through a flexible downspout hose extension that takes the water away
from the foundation
If you are getting ground water (not from your roof) you probably will
need to put in a french drain. If your walls are only 2 feet below
grade, a french drain would be fairly easy. Fixing gutters or drainage
tile is the easiest and easiest to investigate.
Gutters are clean and twenty plus feet up in a 8 year old sub-division. Not
much chance for plugging unless done by varmints.
It's pretty easy to look at them when it rains and make sure they are
not leaking. It's also possible that the drainage tile is leaking from
settling. roots, poor installation etc. I once had a house that
leaked, and turnout the terra cotta drainage tile around the house was
destroyed. It was about 1 1/2 feet below the ground and looked like
someone attacked it with a sledge hammer...
The idea is to remove the water source if possible. Removing or
stopping the water after it seeps through your walls is not a good
solution.
Foundation cracks are part of life, no need to worry much about them if
if water is out of the equation, which is what you want to shoot for.
All downspouts enter
irrigation pipe in which they and my sump pump drain into a pond that runs
behind all the houses. http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Squisher/IMG_6629.JPG
Walkout basement floor is probably 6 feet higher than the high water mark of
the pond.
My sump pump only runs during times of very inclement weather.
I guess you don't have enough fall to slope a pipe to the pond? I also
assume your basement leaks only during times of very inclement weather,
when the sump pump runs?
Given that the crack is only 2 feet under grade I'd like to address the
crack from the outside,
Is your basement only 2 feet under grade, or is just this crack 2 feet
under grade? Are your walls concrete block, poured cement or something
else? If water is building up around your walls, there are very likely
many places it seeps in.
but all the flexible repair products seem to be
designed for use from the interior.
Thats because it seems far easier to try the inside repair. Often it's
easier to fix a gutter/drainage tile problem. After you do this inside
"fix" several times, you will eventually be back to finding the source
of the water, and stopping it from reaching your walls in the first
place. If you need a french drain, you will be digging out the outside
walls, and there are lots of products intended to seal the walls from
the outside.
The big thing still is to get the water away, if you can't, then french
drain is the solution.
--
Jack
Using FREE News Server:
http://www.eternal-september.org/
http://jbstein.com