35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up. Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off. Options I've
seen are trenching out around the basement and applying a sealer to outside,
injecting a clay type material into the ground around the basement to seal
it off, drilling holes in the bottom row of concrete blocks inside the
basement and using short sections of hose to connect to a header and then
the sump, etc. I'd like to see if there's a consensus on the most cost
effective (emphasis on effective) method that has actually worked for people
to the advertising B.S. that I generally find on-line. I'd also like to
know which methods generally wind up being a waste of time and money. Will
probably be selling in 5-10 years. Grading appears to be good, sloping away
from house, and gutters have also been directed away from house.

In article , Erehwon says...

35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up.

That's not minor - that's major.

Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off. Options I've
seen are trenching out around the basement and applying a sealer to outside,
injecting a clay type material into the ground around the basement to seal
it off, drilling holes in the bottom row of concrete blocks inside the
basement and using short sections of hose to connect to a header and then
the sump, etc. I'd like to see if there's a consensus on the most cost
effective (emphasis on effective) method that has actually worked for people
to the advertising B.S. that I generally find on-line. I'd also like to
know which methods generally wind up being a waste of time and money. Will
probably be selling in 5-10 years. Grading appears to be good, sloping away
from house, and gutters have also been directed away from house.


Do you know the condition of your footer drains? What kind of soil do you have?

I've had similar problems, and the soil in my area is clay. The interior drain
system I had installed by B-Dry ten years ago has been very effective. The only
thing I regret is that there was no good place to have the water drain outside
by gravity, so I need to make sure the sump pump is powered through heavy rain
events. By the way, I repaired a foundation frost-heave problem on one corner
of the foundation and added drainage as well. Even though this was on the
downhill (slight slope) side of my house, the sump pump well has taken on
significantly less water. Water movement in some soils is complex.

Banty


--

Banty wrote:
In article , Erehwon says...

35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up.

That's not minor - that's major.

Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off. Options I've
seen are trenching out around the basement and applying a sealer to outside,
injecting a clay type material into the ground around the basement to seal
it off, drilling holes in the bottom row of concrete blocks inside the
basement and using short sections of hose to connect to a header and then
the sump, etc. I'd like to see if there's a consensus on the most cost
effective (emphasis on effective) method that has actually worked for people
to the advertising B.S. that I generally find on-line. I'd also like to
know which methods generally wind up being a waste of time and money. Will
probably be selling in 5-10 years. Grading appears to be good, sloping away
from house, and gutters have also been directed away from house.


Do you know the condition of your footer drains? What kind of soil do you have?

I've had similar problems, and the soil in my area is clay. The interior drain
system I had installed by B-Dry ten years ago has been very effective. The only
thing I regret is that there was no good place to have the water drain outside
by gravity, so I need to make sure the sump pump is powered through heavy rain
events. By the way, I repaired a foundation frost-heave problem on one corner
of the foundation and added drainage as well. Even though this was on the
downhill (slight slope) side of my house, the sump pump well has taken on
significantly less water. Water movement in some soils is complex.

Banty


Sounds like good advice. It's very hard to diagnose these problems
without actually seeing it. The OP says the grading "appears" to be
sloping away from the house. I would get outside during a heavy
downpour and see what is actually going on. I've done this and been
surprised by what actually happens, compared to what you think should
happen.

For example, I had water show up in my basement. Everything looked OK.
But when I checked during a heavy downpour, I found that one of the 8
ft long plastic pipes I had placed over the end of the leader was not
fitted high enough up. Given a heavy rain, water was pouring out from
where it connected to the leader, right at the foundation. You'd only
see that type of thing in a heavy rain by standing there.

--

"Erehwon" wrote in message
...
35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems
that I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running
from walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up. Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off. Options
I've seen are trenching out around the basement and applying a sealer to
outside, injecting a clay type material into the ground around the
basement to seal it off, drilling holes in the bottom row of concrete
blocks inside the basement and using short sections of hose to connect to
a header and then the sump, etc. I'd like to see if there's a consensus
on the most cost effective (emphasis on effective) method that has
actually worked for people to the advertising B.S. that I generally find
on-line. I'd also like to know which methods generally wind up being a
waste of time and money. Will probably be selling in 5-10 years. Grading
appears to be good, sloping away from house, and gutters have also been
directed away from house.



I think you have two problems. First, you're not diverting water that is
around your foundation (hence the seepage). You'll probably need drain
tiles (perforated pipe) for that. Normally that would drain into your sump
pump.

Second, your sump pump can't keep up with the really, really heavy rain.
This doesn't sound right at all. Is the sump pumping to a sewer system or
into your yard? If its going into your yard, then the water is probably
working its way back to your house.

S

Erehwon wrote:
35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up. Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off. Options I've
seen are trenching out around the basement and applying a sealer to outside,
injecting a clay type material into the ground around the basement to seal
it off, drilling holes in the bottom row of concrete blocks inside the
basement and using short sections of hose to connect to a header and then
the sump, etc. I'd like to see if there's a consensus on the most cost
effective (emphasis on effective) method that has actually worked for people
to the advertising B.S. that I generally find on-line. I'd also like to
know which methods generally wind up being a waste of time and money. Will
probably be selling in 5-10 years. Grading appears to be good, sloping away
from house, and gutters have also been directed away from house.

We put in a BDry system (french drain) at our old house as we were
having the same kind of major water issues that it sounds you're
having. Cost around $3k (1998), all water issues stopped.

In our current house, we regraded and installed drywell connections
from the downspouts (about $3k, 2004) -- based on the slope of the yard
and configuration of the house, this approach made more sense than
BDry. (And it also meant that we no longer had the mosquito-puddle or
ice skating mini pond right outside.)

In the interim house, we just used the waterproof-paint stuff (2001),
as the seepage was trivial -- almost at the 'condensation' level of a
small hand-sized patch after the umpteenth 'hundred year rainstorm.' ,
BDry laughed at us when we called them out -- said point-blank that it
would be a waste of our money and complete overkill, and suggested we
just paint the wall.

I think the answer depends on the problem -- for what you're
experiencing, it sounds like giving BDry a call might be a good idea.
Not sure of how to calculate payback, given that a wet basement is
unusable (imo).

Caledonia

Erehwon wrote:
35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up. Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off.

I am no expert, but I can tell you what I was told when we had an
expert come in to look at our basement seepage, realizing that our
situation may be totally different than yours.

In our situation, we are at the bottom of a hill, 100 year old house,
property has been professionally graded, basement has a french drain
all along the walls, and a sump pump at the lowest spot. We still get
water seeping through the back wall in the "wet" part of our basement.
It seeps through the cracks and runs down into the french drain, which
then connects to the sump pump.

We were told never to apply sealer on the inside of the walls. We were
told sealing off the cracks could cause the pressure of the water to
build up on the outside of the wall, and could potentially cause the
whole foundation to cave in. We were told to consider the seepage a
"good" thing because it takes off some of the pressure.

We recently had a 75-year rain over a period of days, and the result
was a LOT of seepage, overwhelming the sump pump inside the basement.
Understandable, given this was a 75-year event! But we ended up
installing a second sump pump outside the back foundation wall. That
helped immensely to control the seepage to manageable levels during
these heavy rains. And now when it rains normally, we are getting much
less seepage.

jen

In article .com, shinypenny
says...


Erehwon wrote:
35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up. Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off.

I am no expert, but I can tell you what I was told when we had an
expert come in to look at our basement seepage, realizing that our
situation may be totally different than yours.

In our situation, we are at the bottom of a hill, 100 year old house,
property has been professionally graded, basement has a french drain
all along the walls, and a sump pump at the lowest spot. We still get
water seeping through the back wall in the "wet" part of our basement.
It seeps through the cracks and runs down into the french drain, which
then connects to the sump pump.

We were told never to apply sealer on the inside of the walls. We were
told sealing off the cracks could cause the pressure of the water to
build up on the outside of the wall, and could potentially cause the
whole foundation to cave in. We were told to consider the seepage a
"good" thing because it takes off some of the pressure.

We recently had a 75-year rain over a period of days, and the result
was a LOT of seepage, overwhelming the sump pump inside the basement.
Understandable, given this was a 75-year event! But we ended up
installing a second sump pump outside the back foundation wall. That
helped immensely to control the seepage to manageable levels during
these heavy rains. And now when it rains normally, we are getting much
less seepage.

Is the back side of your house the higher, or lower side in elevation? Is it
the side cloest to, or away from, the hill (not necessarily the same as the
first question)?

I'm asking because I'm intrigued by my observation that having installed more
outside drainage pipes and gravel on the *downhill* side of my house has led to
much less seepage. I had installed the drainage there under the adage of - give
my problems, any time I dig, I should take advantage of the situation to add
drainage. It was on the walk-out side of my basement (or bottom floor) which
abuts my driveway, where the work took place, and, other than having observed
the frost heave damage to one wall and heaving along the side under the
driveway, there was no reason to observe that it was particularly wet.
(Driveway is, and was, sloped away from the house.)

Hmm - maybe the driveway was over a particularly wet area. But there was no
particular wetness along the sides of it ever.

Banty


--

Banty wrote:
Is the back side of your house the higher, or lower side in elevation? Is it
the side cloest to, or away from, the hill (not necessarily the same as the
first question)?

Not sure what you mean exactly, but let me describe it more and
hopefully it'll answer your question!

The back of the house abuts the hill, which slopes upward a few streets
behind us. (We are not *quite* at the bottom of the hill itself...
there is another two streets below us). It doesn't abut the hill
directly though. There is a level, 10 foot deck, then a 3-foot high
stone retaining wall (that's been there for 100 years and we are told
should *never* be removed), above which is a 10 foot area that is a
garden, and then about 5 feet of shrubs. It slopes from there on up a
fairly steep incline. The garden and shrubs do a fair job soaking up
rainwater coming down the hill from all the neighbors above us who've
regraded to dump water away from their house and down the hill to
ours.....

The trouble spot is on the corner of the house, which is underneath the
neighbor's elevated deck. Like our half, there is a 10 foot level area
between house and stone retaining wall. Since it's under their deck,
there is just gravel there. What happens is that water comes down the
side of the hill, and tends to collect right in the corner of the house
where it is level. (We've ruled out the gutters - it is definetly not
coming from there - you can see the water pouring down in one stream
from the hill, and into a puddle under the deck and against our back
wall).

Get enough water, and it builds up under the deck in the area
coinciding to the part of the basement that tends to get the most
seepage. We've tried regrading so the water had some place to go, but
it doesn't work (and even when it was originally graded, and we didn't
get this puddle, we still had seepage... as I said, we are told to
always expect some seepage on this back wall).

The sump pump we installed outside - right where this puddle tends to
form - gets rid of this puddle very efficiently, pumping it out to the
far side of the house. When we first turned it on about midway through
the 4 or 5 days of heavy rain, it stayed on constantly around the
clock, and didn't stop pumping until days after it had stopped raining.


I'm asking because I'm intrigued by my observation that having installed more
outside drainage pipes and gravel on the *downhill* side of my house has led to
much less seepage.

I've heard that can work too. I've been researching. :-)

We may have to do some of this ourselves, as this 75-year rain caused
seepage coming up through the middle of the basement floor in the
lowest part - despite french drains and sump pump - and apparently
completely unrelated to the back wall seepage. From my research, my
guess is that there is an underwater spring under the basement that
gets overwhelmed when there's an unusual amount of water.

I should also mention that the builder added in cement "bumps" on the
walkway around the house too... not sure what you call these... but it
is yet another feature of the drainage system they put in when the
house was renovated. The whole cement walkway is specially tilted away
from the house, with these side bumps to keep water running down it
instead of into the basement.

I had installed the drainage there under the adage of - give
my problems, any time I dig, I should take advantage of the situation to add
drainage. It was on the walk-out side of my basement (or bottom floor) which
abuts my driveway, where the work took place, and, other than having observed
the frost heave damage to one wall and heaving along the side under the
driveway, there was no reason to observe that it was particularly wet.
(Driveway is, and was, sloped away from the house.)

Hmm - maybe the driveway was over a particularly wet area. But there was no
particular wetness along the sides of it ever.

We're fairly certain there is a spring underneath our driveway - saw it
when they installed the new water pipe. Annoying as can be - we only
resurfaced it last year, and already it is sinking!! But the driveway
is well below and away from our basement and foundation, so it's not an
issue with the water problems.

Hmmmm... come to think of it though....

The place in the basement where we got seepage coming up through the
floor is in the corner where the old water line comes in. It is
disconnected since we installed a new line on the other side of the
house, but now I'm wondering.... could this have had something to do
with the seepage?

jen

In article .com, shinypenny
says...


Banty wrote:
Is the back side of your house the higher, or lower side in elevation? Is it
the side cloest to, or away from, the hill (not necessarily the same as the
first question)?

Not sure what you mean exactly, but let me describe it more and
hopefully it'll answer your question!

The back of the house abuts the hill, which slopes upward a few streets
behind us. (We are not *quite* at the bottom of the hill itself...
there is another two streets below us). It doesn't abut the hill
directly though. There is a level, 10 foot deck, then a 3-foot high
stone retaining wall (that's been there for 100 years and we are told
should *never* be removed), above which is a 10 foot area that is a
garden, and then about 5 feet of shrubs. It slopes from there on up a
fairly steep incline. The garden and shrubs do a fair job soaking up
rainwater coming down the hill from all the neighbors above us who've
regraded to dump water away from their house and down the hill to
ours.....

The trouble spot is on the corner of the house, which is underneath the
neighbor's elevated deck. Like our half, there is a 10 foot level area
between house and stone retaining wall. Since it's under their deck,
there is just gravel there. What happens is that water comes down the
side of the hill, and tends to collect right in the corner of the house
where it is level. (We've ruled out the gutters - it is definetly not
coming from there - you can see the water pouring down in one stream
from the hill, and into a puddle under the deck and against our back
wall).

Get enough water, and it builds up under the deck in the area
coinciding to the part of the basement that tends to get the most
seepage. We've tried regrading so the water had some place to go, but
it doesn't work (and even when it was originally graded, and we didn't
get this puddle, we still had seepage... as I said, we are told to
always expect some seepage on this back wall).

OK, so the wet side is towards the uphill side (and there's a place for water to
collect. It's no wonder you get seepage there.

I get drainage from my being halfway down a hill, too, and it's not all surface
water. Regrading didn't change my situation much.

What kind of soil do you have?


The sump pump we installed outside - right where this puddle tends to
form - gets rid of this puddle very efficiently, pumping it out to the
far side of the house. When we first turned it on about midway through
the 4 or 5 days of heavy rain, it stayed on constantly around the
clock, and didn't stop pumping until days after it had stopped raining.

Yep. Makes sense.



I'm asking because I'm intrigued by my observation that having installed more
outside drainage pipes and gravel on the *downhill* side of my house has led to
much less seepage.

I've heard that can work too. I've been researching. :-)

Really? But why would that work?


We may have to do some of this ourselves, as this 75-year rain caused
seepage coming up through the middle of the basement floor in the
lowest part - despite french drains and sump pump - and apparently
completely unrelated to the back wall seepage. From my research, my
guess is that there is an underwater spring under the basement that
gets overwhelmed when there's an unusual amount of water.

Ouch.

Well, the fear is always that there's this spring, but I'm fairly sure there is
water movement underground, and also with a big enough event you can just get
the water table rising enough. That's not quite the same thing as a spring.


I should also mention that the builder added in cement "bumps" on the
walkway around the house too... not sure what you call these... but it
is yet another feature of the drainage system they put in when the
house was renovated. The whole cement walkway is specially tilted away
from the house, with these side bumps to keep water running down it
instead of into the basement.

I had installed the drainage there under the adage of - give
my problems, any time I dig, I should take advantage of the situation to add
drainage. It was on the walk-out side of my basement (or bottom floor) which
abuts my driveway, where the work took place, and, other than having observed
the frost heave damage to one wall and heaving along the side under the
driveway, there was no reason to observe that it was particularly wet.
(Driveway is, and was, sloped away from the house.)

Hmm - maybe the driveway was over a particularly wet area. But there was no
particular wetness along the sides of it ever.

We're fairly certain there is a spring underneath our driveway - saw it
when they installed the new water pipe. Annoying as can be - we only
resurfaced it last year, and already it is sinking!! But the driveway
is well below and away from our basement and foundation, so it's not an
issue with the water problems.

Hmmmm... come to think of it though....

The place in the basement where we got seepage coming up through the
floor is in the corner where the old water line comes in. It is
disconnected since we installed a new line on the other side of the
house, but now I'm wondering.... could this have had something to do
with the seepage?

Maybe in extreme conditions it makes a channel for the water?

Water goes where it will. Damn stuff.

Banty


--

Caledonia wrote:
Erehwon wrote:
35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up. Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off. Options I've
seen are trenching out around the basement and applying a sealer to outside,
injecting a clay type material into the ground around the basement to seal
it off, drilling holes in the bottom row of concrete blocks inside the
basement and using short sections of hose to connect to a header and then
the sump, etc. I'd like to see if there's a consensus on the most cost
effective (emphasis on effective) method that has actually worked for people
to the advertising B.S. that I generally find on-line. I'd also like to
know which methods generally wind up being a waste of time and money. Will
probably be selling in 5-10 years. Grading appears to be good, sloping away
from house, and gutters have also been directed away from house.

We put in a BDry system (french drain) at our old house as we were
having the same kind of major water issues that it sounds you're
having. Cost around $3k (1998), all water issues stopped.

In our current house, we regraded and installed drywell connections
from the downspouts (about $3k, 2004) -- based on the slope of the yard
and configuration of the house, this approach made more sense than
BDry. (And it also meant that we no longer had the mosquito-puddle or
ice skating mini pond right outside.)

Taking care of water problems by properly grading and channeling
downspout water away is always the first and most important thing and
really shouldn't be evaluated as an alternative to any basement drying
system.



In the interim house, we just used the waterproof-paint stuff (2001),
as the seepage was trivial -- almost at the 'condensation' level of a
small hand-sized patch after the umpteenth 'hundred year rainstorm.' ,
BDry laughed at us when we called them out -- said point-blank that it
would be a waste of our money and complete overkill, and suggested we
just paint the wall.

I think the answer depends on the problem -- for what you're
experiencing, it sounds like giving BDry a call might be a good idea.
Not sure of how to calculate payback, given that a wet basement is
unusable (imo).

Caledonia

shinypenny wrote:

The sump pump we installed outside - right where this puddle tends to
form - gets rid of this puddle very efficiently, pumping it out to the
far side of the house. When we first turned it on about midway through
the 4 or 5 days of heavy rain, it stayed on constantly around the
clock, and didn't stop pumping until days after it had stopped raining.



Having installed this system, why do you have to turn it on? I would
think it would be set up with the sump pump in a pit that would come on
automatically once the water level rises. What happens if you're away
and a sudden and large downpour arrives?

wrote:
Caledonia wrote:
Erehwon wrote:
35 year old house has a basement with relatively minor seepage problems that
I'd like to stop. Generally just get a small amount of water running from
walls to floor drain after a heavy rain but have had, on perhaps 3-4
occasions over the past 10 years, up to several inches when the sump pump
just couldn't keep up. Inside walls have had a water proofing material
applied (almost like a mixture of cement and paint) but last prolonged
period of heavy rain caused some of that to start popping off. Options I've
seen are trenching out around the basement and applying a sealer to outside,
injecting a clay type material into the ground around the basement to seal
it off, drilling holes in the bottom row of concrete blocks inside the
basement and using short sections of hose to connect to a header and then
the sump, etc. I'd like to see if there's a consensus on the most cost
effective (emphasis on effective) method that has actually worked for people
to the advertising B.S. that I generally find on-line. I'd also like to
know which methods generally wind up being a waste of time and money. Will
probably be selling in 5-10 years. Grading appears to be good, sloping away
from house, and gutters have also been directed away from house.

We put in a BDry system (french drain) at our old house as we were
having the same kind of major water issues that it sounds you're
having. Cost around $3k (1998), all water issues stopped.

In our current house, we regraded and installed drywell connections
from the downspouts (about $3k, 2004) -- based on the slope of the yard
and configuration of the house, this approach made more sense than
BDry. (And it also meant that we no longer had the mosquito-puddle or
ice skating mini pond right outside.)

Taking care of water problems by properly grading and channeling
downspout water away is always the first and most important thing and
really shouldn't be evaluated as an alternative to any basement drying
system.

Generally, I'd say yes. For house #1, it was built on and into a hill
(blasted out of the surrounding rock in the 1940's) -- re-grading would
have been prohibitively expensive for us. (Actually discovered that in
the mini-mansions nearby -- not the McMansions of today, but the 1910
version of the same -- the more recent owners generally just went with
BDry instead of re-grading.)

(And danged if I can't find out what type of rock it was -- I know back
in day there was a quarry -- for granite, I think -- near McLean/Rock
Meadow. Maybe it was granite?)

Caledonia

Banty wrote:

What kind of soil do you have?

No clue. I did just recently read in the newspaper that we are in an
area that issupposed to be safer in the event of an earthquake (more
solid rock - granite?). And around us are apartment buildings built
into the hill, and you can see how they had to blast into the rock to
build. Not sure if that applies with our house specifically though,
since our hill used to be part of a farm. I do recall when they dug for
the rain pipe the soil looked somewhat clay-ish (but not quite as
clay-ish as where I grew up). And they did hit a few major rocks while
digging.


I've heard that can work too. I've been researching. :-)

Really? But why would that work?

All I remember is that during this deluge, I started surfing on the web
and I found a site that explained it, and had diagrams, etc. Something
about how the best thing you can do is dig down around the foundation
and install something (was it drains?) directing water away from the
house.

Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark it, and didn't pay too much attention,
because this would be hard for us to do because we'd have to disrupt
cement to do it properly. According to the site, our builder did just
about every other possible thing to keep water out of our basement, I
wouldn't be surprised if he did this as well before he installed the
cement walkway and steps, but there simply are no guarantees, period.
You get a 75-year event and....

We have a "wet" half and a "dry" half. The wet half is where we get the
wall seepage along the back wall, and it will probably always have
water coming in, and where we were told the seepage is a "good" thing
actually. French drains and sump pump take care of it and keep it from
becoming a flooded basement. Humidifier keeps our storage area okay
(but I'm not about to store anything in there that I care about).

The dry half is the front part, and half of it is even above ground.
This part is finished. This is where we got the seepage through the
floor, just in a small, 2 x 2 foot area. Ruined a carpet, but it really
wasn't anymore water than we could mop up with a bath towel or two.
Has been dry ever since, no signs of mold, so I think we're okay as
long as we don't get another major rain event.



We may have to do some of this ourselves, as this 75-year rain caused
seepage coming up through the middle of the basement floor in the
lowest part - despite french drains and sump pump - and apparently
completely unrelated to the back wall seepage. From my research, my
guess is that there is an underwater spring under the basement that
gets overwhelmed when there's an unusual amount of water.

Ouch.

Well, the fear is always that there's this spring, but I'm fairly sure there is
water movement underground, and also with a big enough event you can just get
the water table rising enough. That's not quite the same thing as a spring.

I don't think it's the water table. If it was, there'd be other parts
that would have had seepage, and they didn't. Far as we can guess, it
could be a part of the sump pump drains beneath the floor that got
clogged or merely overwhelmed. Or, it could be a spring that only
occurs during really unusal rains (this idea I got from that site I
found).


The place in the basement where we got seepage coming up through the
floor is in the corner where the old water line comes in. It is
disconnected since we installed a new line on the other side of the
house, but now I'm wondering.... could this have had something to do
with the seepage?

Maybe in extreme conditions it makes a channel for the water?

That would be concerning.

I remember when they came to install the new pipe, they made a big deal
about only stopping off the old pipe and not removing it. Presumably to
save money, but you never know, maybe there was a tradeoff to keeping
the old pipe there?

Water goes where it will. Damn stuff.

Yep!

jen

In article . com, shinypenny
says...


Banty wrote:

What kind of soil do you have?

No clue. I did just recently read in the newspaper that we are in an
area that issupposed to be safer in the event of an earthquake (more
solid rock - granite?). And around us are apartment buildings built
into the hill, and you can see how they had to blast into the rock to
build. Not sure if that applies with our house specifically though,
since our hill used to be part of a farm. I do recall when they dug for
the rain pipe the soil looked somewhat clay-ish (but not quite as
clay-ish as where I grew up). And they did hit a few major rocks while
digging.


I've heard that can work too. I've been researching. :-)

Really? But why would that work?

All I remember is that during this deluge, I started surfing on the web
and I found a site that explained it, and had diagrams, etc. Something
about how the best thing you can do is dig down around the foundation
and install something (was it drains?) directing water away from the
house.

Sure, a perimeter and/or footer drain system. What I'm curious about my house
though, is how the water my interior drain system picks up decreased in volume
after I put some drainage by the *downhill* side of my house.

In two years (possibly next year), I'll be getting drainage/further regrading
done in the uphill side of my house (y'know, what should have been done before
the downhill side of the house, if it weren't for other work going on there
in order to do some hardscaping and a walkway. By then, after 14 years I expect
I will have addressed all these drainage problems best as I can. Ever year,
some one of my neighbors are putting in more drainage somewhere. If our
neighborhood had a neighborhood banner, it would have a backhoe and a pile of
gravel on it I swear...


Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark it, and didn't pay too much attention,
because this would be hard for us to do because we'd have to disrupt
cement to do it properly. According to the site, our builder did just
about every other possible thing to keep water out of our basement, I
wouldn't be surprised if he did this as well before he installed the
cement walkway and steps, but there simply are no guarantees, period.
You get a 75-year event and....

We have a "wet" half and a "dry" half. The wet half is where we get the
wall seepage along the back wall, and it will probably always have
water coming in, and where we were told the seepage is a "good" thing
actually. French drains and sump pump take care of it and keep it from
becoming a flooded basement. Humidifier keeps our storage area okay
(but I'm not about to store anything in there that I care about).

It's a "good" thing only in that the water is going somewhere, and that releives
the hydrostatic pressure. But it's better that the water has somewher to go
that's not going through your foundation.

Cheers,
Banty


--

Banty wrote:
Sure, a perimeter and/or footer drain system. What I'm curious about my house
though, is how the water my interior drain system picks up decreased in volume
after I put some drainage by the *downhill* side of my house.

I suspect because it changes the course not just on the downhill, but
on everything uphill from it too. There's no water backing up on the
downhill, so maybe it flows faster and more efficiently uphill as well,
instead of backing up early on in the process?

If my recollection is right, the article talked about how in spring the
ground deep down is still frozen. Get a major rainstorm before it
thaws, and the water goes on top of the frozen part, which is higher,
artificially raising the water table. Drainage on the downhill side
would keep this water flowing instead of rising into your basement.



In two years (possibly next year), I'll be getting drainage/further regrading
done in the uphill side of my house (y'know, what should have been done before
the downhill side of the house, if it weren't for other work going on there
in order to do some hardscaping and a walkway. By then, after 14 years I expect
I will have addressed all these drainage problems best as I can. Ever year,
some one of my neighbors are putting in more drainage somewhere. If our
neighborhood had a neighborhood banner, it would have a backhoe and a pile of
gravel on it I swear...

I really wish that our uphill neighbors would be required to put in a
100-year storm drain or two or three, or that the city would put a few
in. I know when we looked into building a driveway on the side of our
house, we were told that we'd have to put in a 100-year storm drain
because that's now the law here anytime you pave part of your lawn.
*Very* expensive!!!

But uphill, we have many neighbors who didn't go through legal channels
to get permits before putting in driveways and paving over swaths of
their property to make room for extra cars (our area was built in
horse-and-buggy time, so the houses never meant to have places for two
cars). So no drains, and lots of pavement which makes the water flow
more easily downhill.

Walk around our neighborhood during a major rainstorm or snow melt, and
you see water coming down driveways and walkways like a friggin' river,
then pouring out across the street, then into the lawn across the
street. It's a real nuisance in winter time too. We have one neighbor
that always has a giant sheet of ice in front of their house when the
snow melts and then refreezes in the street. Several car accidents
there. One of these days, someone will get killed, then maybe the city
will install a drain.

It's a "good" thing only in that the water is going somewhere, and that releives
the hydrostatic pressure. But it's better that the water has somewher to go
that's not going through your foundation.

Yep!

DH and I talked about this last night, while enjoying our deck. We are
thinking that the ultimate solution might be to build out the retaining
wall so that it goes farther across our side lawn - across the part
where water currently streams downhill with nothing to stop it, and
then collects under the deck.

jen

In article . com, shinypenny
says...


Banty wrote:
Sure, a perimeter and/or footer drain system. What I'm curious about my house
though, is how the water my interior drain system picks up decreased in volume
after I put some drainage by the *downhill* side of my house.

I suspect because it changes the course not just on the downhill, but
on everything uphill from it too. There's no water backing up on the
downhill, so maybe it flows faster and more efficiently uphill as well,
instead of backing up early on in the process?

If my recollection is right, the article talked about how in spring the
ground deep down is still frozen. Get a major rainstorm before it
thaws, and the water goes on top of the frozen part, which is higher,
artificially raising the water table. Drainage on the downhill side
would keep this water flowing instead of rising into your basement.

Wow - water not backing up anymore...

It'd have to be underground movement of water; believe me I've done the walk
around my house during heavy rain many times.




In two years (possibly next year), I'll be getting drainage/further regrading
done in the uphill side of my house (y'know, what should have been done before
the downhill side of the house, if it weren't for other work going on there
in order to do some hardscaping and a walkway. By then, after 14 years I expect
I will have addressed all these drainage problems best as I can. Ever year,
some one of my neighbors are putting in more drainage somewhere. If our
neighborhood had a neighborhood banner, it would have a backhoe and a pile of
gravel on it I swear...

I really wish that our uphill neighbors would be required to put in a
100-year storm drain or two or three, or that the city would put a few
in. I know when we looked into building a driveway on the side of our
house, we were told that we'd have to put in a 100-year storm drain
because that's now the law here anytime you pave part of your lawn.
*Very* expensive!!!

You might have recourse. Firstly, the town highway department is supposed to be
providing drainage for town streets. Are you on a town street? If not pursue
it with whatever other munincipality it belongs to. I had the storm drain on
the uphill property line failing when I moved in. I pursued that with the town,
and the highway department came in and replaced it. Big job, ripped up all the
hedging along that property line (but, hey, there was an easement and I knew
about it), and some problems subsided.

Also, there may be laws concerning uphill neighbors' responsibilities not to
direct drainage toward others' properties. Worth looking into.


But uphill, we have many neighbors who didn't go through legal channels
to get permits before putting in driveways and paving over swaths of
their property to make room for extra cars (our area was built in
horse-and-buggy time, so the houses never meant to have places for two
cars). So no drains, and lots of pavement which makes the water flow
more easily downhill.

Walk around our neighborhood during a major rainstorm or snow melt, and
you see water coming down driveways and walkways like a friggin' river,
then pouring out across the street, then into the lawn across the
street. It's a real nuisance in winter time too. We have one neighbor
that always has a giant sheet of ice in front of their house when the
snow melts and then refreezes in the street. Several car accidents
there. One of these days, someone will get killed, then maybe the city
will install a drain.

It's a "good" thing only in that the water is going somewhere, and that releives
the hydrostatic pressure. But it's better that the water has somewher to go
that's not going through your foundation.

Yep!

DH and I talked about this last night, while enjoying our deck. We are
thinking that the ultimate solution might be to build out the retaining
wall so that it goes farther across our side lawn - across the part
where water currently streams downhill with nothing to stop it, and
then collects under the deck.


I'd consult with an engineer on that.

Banty


--

Banty wrote:
You might have recourse. Firstly, the town highway department is supposed to be
providing drainage for town streets. Are you on a town street? If not pursue
it with whatever other munincipality it belongs to.

Yeah, that's the tricky part: we're right on the line between two
towns, so I'd be pursuing with two different towns because people in
both are contributing to it. And it would get complicated because if
you see these water streams, it comes from a house in one town, then
crosses the street into the other town. So who's responsible?

I know how it works around he they'll say it's not the town, it's
the homeowner.

I had the storm drain on
the uphill property line failing when I moved in. I pursued that with the town,
and the highway department came in and replaced it. Big job, ripped up all the
hedging along that property line (but, hey, there was an easement and I knew
about it), and some problems subsided.

Also, there may be laws concerning uphill neighbors' responsibilities not to
direct drainage toward others' properties. Worth looking into.

Yes, it might be. Our immediately uphill neighbor, however, isn't
really contributing to the problem, in my estimation at least. They
have a huge garden that backs up to our lawn, and I have to believe
that a lot of water gets soaked up there before heading down into our
lawn. They also don't have a driveway.

On the left of them, however, is a property that is not quite
abandoned, but close enough. It is not well maintained at all, but
someone lives there, a senior citizen who can no longer maintain the
place. Much of the backlot is paved, so I think this creates the
problem. But I wouldn't have the heart to pressure this person about it
- and I imagine they don't have much money to address it anyway even if
I did. I'll wait until the owner moves on and a new one comes in.
Likely whoever buys the place will tear it down and rebuild, so then I
can get in there and have them rebuild it right and up to code.

And that would help out my next door neighbor too, because she is far
more affected by the water coming down the side lawn than we are. Her
basement routinely floods, even with just a little bit of rain.

jen