Tips to get moisture/water out of a basement?

[Mill]

Ok, here is my problem. I have moisture coming into my basement. How can I tell? A white chalky residue is being left on my walls, and after a heavy rain you can see the moisture on the wall -- although you cannot feel it -- and it does NOT collect in a pool or get onto the floor of the basement.

I've read that any type of "chemical" water sealant or paint applied to basement walls is marginal help at best, and I've read were some say that they work. I've also read that only excavating around the foundation and applying new sealant/sheeting to the outside foundation walls can stop it.

As of now, there is no mold, mildew, or water collecting, but I want to stop the problem before it starts. I'm worried that the water doesn't drain properly from the front of my house. My yard in the front is high and then slopes down toward the low point in my backyard. Therefore, my front yard is draining tons of moisture down past the basement before it reaching the backyard. I'm worried that the drain isn't draining completely, or if it isn't installed properly, or perhaps it isn't adequate?

Any help would be appreciated. What can I do?

 

[FoBoT]

the simplest thing to do is to stop the water from being on the other side in the first place

check all your gutters, clean them. make sure the down spouts have run off hoses or other devices to move the water away from the foundations

check the grounds slope near the foundation, make sure it slopes away from the foundation, if not, you need to get dirt and build that up so water runs away, not towards the foundation


if you don't have water seeping down against the foundation, then it can't seep through the block/concrete

 

[SunnyD]

Vapor barrier on the floor & walls (some excavation work) + a coat of sealer on the concrete/blocks on the walls. Not cheap though.

 

[SuperNaruto]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Vapor barrier on the floor & walls (some excavation work) + a coat of sealer on the concrete/blocks on the walls. Not cheap though.

What kinda of sealer would you recommend, is it something diy ?

 

[skace]

If you watch holmes on homes, they always attack: the source of the water, the cracks from the outside and inside, and then a special sealant.

In fact, the episode that was on last night was about this, they had to pull out some old pipe work that was corroded (outside, dug down along foundation relative to the problem). They had to fix the cracks in the foundation. Then they put this sealant on that I know little about. They had to fix the gutters, which weren't installed properly and weren't running water far enough away from the house. Then they even repaved the driveway because it didn't have a proper slop and wasn't channeling water (neighbors water was running right across driveway and towards their foundation).

I'm not a builder fyi, just like watching Holmes on Homes because it's a cool show.

 

[Ramma2]

I used cans of Dry Loc - it is a concrete sealer specifically designed to stop moisture. It is very thick, you have to sue a very coarse brush to apply, but when it dries it does its job.

We had water problems - serious problems, like water flooding into the basement before we finished it. We fixed the landscaping on the outside to improve the grade away from the house, and we also sealed all the concrete block with Dry Loc as well. Not a drop inside since.

But a warning - the stuff has very noxious fumes. The stuff nearly killed me when I was painting the brick under the steps in the storage area.

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
the simplest thing to do is to stop the water from being on the other side in the first place

That's key. In my wife's old place, we spent 3 years chasing leaks in the basement only to come to this realization. If you patch somewhere, it'll find another crack. If you patch all the cracks, it'll come up through the base of the wall (between where the wall and floor pours meet).

One of the major causes of basement wall cracking is hydrostatic pressure - wet earth on the other side of the wall.

Improve your drainage - keep the soil from being over-wet - do something with the excess water before it gets outside your wall.

 

[Ramma2]

Here is a link, it is actually called DryLok

http://www.ugl.com/drylokMason...ryWaterproofer/oil.php

Menards had it in our area.

 

[SunnyD]

^^^^^^^^
What that guy said.

Reverse quoting FTW!

Originally posted by: SuperNaruto

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Vapor barrier on the floor & walls (some excavation work) + a coat of sealer on the concrete/blocks on the walls. Not cheap though.

What kinda of sealer would you recommend, is it something diy ?

 

[Superself]

Install a french drain FTW. NO more problems EVER.

Not cheap though.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Superself
Install a french drain FTW. NO more problems EVER.

Not cheap though.

Is that slang for... something? :laugh:

 

[PingSpike]

I'm pretty sure a french drain is just a buried perforated pipe, filed with gravel and wrapped in a mesh that filters sediment. The idea is to basically give water a path of least resistance that goes away from your house.

doityourself.com has some decent articles on drainage, at least to me. They upgraded my drainage knowledge from absolutely nothing to something better then that.

I have a similar lawn to the OP. I don't have any basement water problems though, even though I lack a gutter system and the grading around the house slopes towards the house. The only thing I really have going for me is my mound system bumps up fairly close to the house, which likely blocks water flowing down the hill and then channels it off to the side.

I want to raise the grade slightly at the front and side of my house that face the hill. However, there are laid brick walkways at both sides and I'm loathing the very idea of pulling all that up, regrading and then relaying the brick...it seems like a nightmare. Otherwise all I would need is some fill and a tamp.

Realistically, I think I'll probably end up installing a vinyl gutter system this summer and say the hell with it.

 

[AbsolutDealage]

My parents had a similar problem ~10 years ago. They had some basement sealing guys come by, and it stopped it right away. I don't remember exactly what they called it, but they had a ground spike that distributed some kind of sealant into the ground around the house. They also cleaned and fixed the gutters at the same time.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: rivan

Originally posted by: FoBoT
the simplest thing to do is to stop the water from being on the other side in the first place

That's key. In my wife's old place, we spent 3 years chasing leaks in the basement only to come to this realization. If you patch somewhere, it'll find another crack. If you patch all the cracks, it'll come up through the base of the wall (between where the wall and floor pours meet).

One of the major causes of basement wall cracking is hydrostatic pressure - wet earth on the other side of the wall.

Improve your drainage - keep the soil from being over-wet - do something with the excess water before it gets outside your wall.

Seconded.
In my experience, painting the inside walls with something like Drylock won't do much - if the pressure is high enough, it'll just push the Drylock away from the wall and get in anyway.

At the house I lived in for my first 4 years, the landscaping was excellent, but on top of it, the cinder block basement walls were coated on the outside with either asphalt or tar, I don't remember which. It was quite waterproof though.

The house after that, the landscaping sucked - it sloped toward the house on three sides, the walls were poured concrete, and they weren't coated with anything. Doing that would have required digging down up to 8ft all around the house just to get to the basement floor-level. If we got rain for a few days in a row, the basement would start to flood. It'd go up to only about 1.5" deep before it would reach the lip of a doorway in the back of the house, and flow out. The water came in not only through cracks in the walls, but also up through cracks in the floor, and the sump. There was a sump pump, but when there was heavy rain, it would almost run continuously just to keep up with the constant inrush of water, and it of course did nothing for the water coming in everywhere else.

Solution*: A 10' deep trench dug around the front and side of the house, with a perforated pipe at the bottom, crushed stone on top, filter fabric, and then dirt on top. In the back, a hole was drilled through the frost barrier, into the crushed stone bed under the foundation, to allow the water there to drain out.


* - I have no idea if any of that stuff actually works. Since it was done a few years ago, it hasn't rained enough to really know for sure if it is effective.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

what you're seeing is efflourescence. Use DryLok and that should solve your issue.

 

[imported_Imp]

You probably want to talk to a Building Science Engineer about this. Anyways, to sum it up. It's probably not just rain getting inside, probably quite a bit to do with condensation. Your basement's underground and the ground takes a long time to heat up/cool down. During the summer/spring (when it rains), the ground is still cold from winter, so the humidity (especially high during rain) condenses on the wall, thus moisture. This "could" and I emphasize "could" be why there isn't any pooling, unless you have really small holes drawing in water through capillary action.

Don't know what your area's building code is, but most new houses here need to have a vapour barrier on the outside to keep crap from seeping in. If you don't have one or yours is fuxxor3d, then you could look into replacing that. Another way is to have a crushed stone layer between the house's basement wall and the dirt outside (porous so water drains to bottom, doesn't stay in soil to seep in... or something like that); I'm not entirely sure on this one since I took the course last semester and remember things in fragments, so if your house falls down, don't blame me). And finally, buy a de-humidifier?

 

[Mill]

Thank you all for the help. I'm going to be running pipe off the downspouts tomorrow, and I really think that will help solve it. If not, more drastic measures will commence.