wrote in message
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On Apr 28, 12:51 am, micky wrote:
On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:30:18 -0400, "CraigT"
wrote:

My walkout basement leaked a bunch of water from under the drywall
right
next to my doorwall last week when we had a really hard rain storm. I
thought it was another crack in the poured concrete walls, but to my

So you have that wood *below* your poured concrete walls?

The pictures are of where your feet would be walking from the basement
to the yard? And the walls of the basement are poured concrete?
Yet there is wood at foot-level? Is there concrete farther down?

What about all around the house? AIUI, the concrete or cinder blocks
should be higher than the earth. And no exterior wood should be
below ground level.

Do you have neighbors whose houses were built by the same builder?
(Or non-neighbors ) You should talk to them about their houses and
yours and what they've done, and what worked and who did it . .




When I first saw this I assumed that there was an option when
houses were built to where people could have gotten a larger doorwall, so
they just framed in the sides to accommodate a smaller doorwall. That
ledge
the sill plate is sitting on is the footing the basement walls were poured
on.

Any excavation of backyard would not be easy. The house faces on to a
pond
and the slope away from the house is kind of important.

Looking out from that doorwall: http://i.imgur.com/zccgcSe.jpg

View of the house from the back: http://i.imgur.com/fIMddGR.jpg

Now I'm no contractor, but isn't it common for the outside of the opening
of
the concrete walls around a doorwall to be framed with treated wood to
make
the installation of the doorwall easier? I can't really tell if the wood
is
treated, but I would have assumed I would have seen a lot more rot after
10
plus years in the ground.

So far I think my best bet is to cut that sill plate out, pour concrete to
make it higher, then reinstall a new higher sill plate on top. I might be
able to do some local landscaping around that doorwall too.

As you can kind of see from that one pic (looking at the pond) all the
houses are landscaped exactly the same. Grade was brought within an inch of
the bottom of the door wall. If it doesn't rain today I'm going to dig in
front of the doorwall and on the far side to see what they did. The more I
think about it, I might have to pour some concrete to replace the wood AND
maybe pour a small concrete landing/patio couple inches under the doorwall,
which won't require too much of a slope away from the house (like 1/4" per
1'). This should get all wood above grade.