We've been getting water in our basement for years, and we finally did something about it.
A plastic water-powered timer had been hooked to the hose line for use with the garden soaker hose a year or so before we moved in. Rather than turning off the water with the spigot (which was broken), the timer was set to the off position. So in the winter, the water that was in the timer froze, expanded, and cracked the plastic on the timer. When the temperature cooled off, the water started to flow again, and ran straight into the ground outside the house. There was just so much water that it ran deep into the ground and found an easy way into the basement.
The water pooled in the house, and since nobody was living there at the time, it went mostly unnoticed until the water company saw our water usage and shut it off at the street. This is a good thing because this particular spigot was hooked into the water line before the main shutoff valve for the house. We wouldn't have been able to shut it off if we were there, anyway.
When it was all over, the basement had two inches of water in it, and pretty much everything in that height range was soaked or floating. Well, the carpet was replaced, and some furniture that was there survived, but it was never really the same. Ever since then, water has been more easily able to find its way into the basement.
We've been dealing with the wet basement problem ever since Floyd. We used to keep all of our entertainment center and computer stuff in the basement near the open gad heater (where it's warm). But when the remnants of Floyd hit, we were standing in an equally formidable pool of water, and rather than being mostly empty like before, it was mostly filled with our valuable posessions.
Things have gone on for a while like this, and although the situation has improved a bit with the addition of extra-long drain spouts, we still get too much water in down there to be good for the house. My main fear has always been about mold. Mold can be really nasty, causing bad and strange respiratory illness. People who found mold in their house have had to burn down their house and all of their stuff to get rid of it, because it would be cheaper to claim insurance on losing the property than applying any other known solution. Ick.
Berta talked to some people at the recent home show in Fort Washington about doing work in the basement to fix the leakage problem. They scheduled an appointment and a guy came out to talk to us about the work and inspect the basement itself.
He was pretty social, although somewhat salesy, and you know how I feel about being schmoozed, but it wasn't too bad. He described some really expensive options for fixing things that involved digging around the house, and that just didn't seem reasonable to us. But he offered us another solution.
Basically, they rip up the carpet around the edge of the room and cut the bottom half of the wall out, along with a few inches of the studs. Then they bring out the heavy equipment and dig a hole in the cement floor around the perimeter of the floor. Into the hole they place some corrugated stuff, then a pipe with some holes drilled in it. The pipe leads downhill toward a larger, deeper hole. The deep hole houses a sump pump which pumps out the draining water. At the bottom of the cinder block wall, they drill holes every so often. These holes allow the empty spaces between the blocks to drain water into the trench under the floor, which is separated by a weird elevated plastic sleeve that fits into the bottom corner of the room. They fill in the rest of the trench with rocks and cover the whole thing over with new cement.
The effect is that any water that comes from the walls drains down through the cinder blocks, into the holes, down into the pipe trench, through the pipe to the sump pump, and out of the house. Likewise, water rising under the house from a storm-filled water table finds its way into the trench and is pumped out with the rest of the water.
All of the work and equipment is guaranteed through the residency of the next owner of the house, and they guarantee a dry basement, or they'll fix things up. Not a bad deal for $6000, I guess.
I must admit to a certain amount of trepidation to the use of jackhammer-like devices in my basement, as well as the removal of wall studs and, well, half of the walls. But the Basement Doctor people were very good about their work. And what was supposed to be a 3-day job only took them 1. That's pretty quick. They were also very courteous, and even cleaned our filthy basement windows before putting them back in the frame.
Hopefully this ends our wetness problems. We're going to move a lot (read: all) of Abby's toys down there so that she can play in the basement instead of having her toys all over the living room, dining room, etc.
Here are some pictures of the finished work. Obviously, we'll still need to put up some walls before it's ready for Abby, but it should be a nice, dry space.
