On Wed, 01 Apr 2015 20:38:51 -0400, micky
wrote:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2015 08:33:13 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

| Which did you mean.
|
The former. It's an inside, perimeter drain. I've
seen several of them that work perfectly. As Bob
said, they're generally guaranteed. But the OP is
talking about a brick foundation wall. I don't know
how long that can be expected to hold up exposed
to constant dampness. The use of french drains I've
seen is where there's a high water table that floods
in occasionally, and the foundation is made of field
stones. Thus, the water won't hurt the foundation

I have a friend with a cinder block basement iirc. Certainly not brick
or fieldstone and a 40+ year old house which I don't think would have a
cement foundation.

Why not? Concrete foundations have been common around here for well
over 50 years. Concrete block foundations are relatively common too,
because they were cheaper to build when labour was cheap.

Rubble and feild stone are virtually all over 70 years old.

She finally put in an interior french drain and
had no more problems after that. I guess the channel at the base of the
wall was wet but it drained to a sump and then dried out.

It only leaked during heavy rain, iirc, from the walls, not the floor.

I might have suggested the paint, but she doesn't take my suggestions
very often.


wall and it would be impossible to stop the rising
water table from coming in. Sometimes it just comes
right up through a concrete floor. The french drains
work there because they drain and pump out the
water from a level below the floor level, and they
only need to function for a few days at a time, typically
only once per year or so.

I have a customer who lives on a steep hill and
got stuck with that problem. It turns out her house
is in a bedrock bowl, so she has her own private
water table. A french drain took care of the
problem. But as noted above, that's solving a problem
coming up from the bottom, not in from the side.