As I write this, I am surrounded by 16 blowers, 2 small dehumidifiers, and 1 large dehumidifier. Why? Because this basement flooded yesterday.
A completely finished basement, with multiple bedrooms and family rooms, this repair will probably cost -wild guess here – $3000. All to deal with soggy carpeting and about 4″ od soggy drywall, panelling, and insulation. I’d like to reflect on some of the things that might have reduced this loss.
These ‘preventative measures’ come in two varieties: the original house construction, and the manner in which the remodeling was done.
The basement is accessed by a stairwell, and in the bottom of the stairwell is a drain. This drain was plugged with leaves, leading to the flood. The drain had been cleared the day before.
Had the drain NOT been centered in the stairwell – in the middle of the walkway and the door swing – it would have been possible to use something besides a flat plate to screen it. Such a raised screen would have been more resistant to plugging.
While it’s nearly impossible for a floor to be perfectly flat, it would have been nice had the sump been in the low spot and the carpet in the high spot – rather than the other way around! I would suggest that the simple addition of shallow grooves to the concrete – just like the ones used as ‘stress reliefs’ in sidewalks- with the grooves leading to the sump, would have reduced the extent of the damage.
Indeed, placing another drain inside the doorway, tied to the outside drain, would probably have caught most of the water.
As for the remodel:
As I see it, mistake #1 was in running the drywall and panelling nearly all the way to the floor. You have baseboard: USE it. That is, space the wall treatment a couple inches above the floor; there exists plastic trim that would be perfect for this. Then, cover that with larger baseboard. This will eliminate the wicking issue. While you’re at it, there’s no need to run the insulation all the way to the floor either.
Mistake #2 was laying the carpet atop a botched tile job. There’s plenty of opportunities for mold and mildew to form under that tile.
Mistake #3 was in not having even attempted any sort of flood alarm. Such alarms are simple, cheap (under $50), and installation is a snap.
Something done right #1: At least the carpet and padding were NOT glued down. Being able to raise the carpet greatly reduced the loss. Perhaps a layer of some sort of grid or screen under the carpet would also have reduced the loss, as the water would have had somewhere to go besides into the padding. A raised floor? Not a bad idea.
Something done right #2: The bar itself was not anchored, and in pieces small enough to be easily moved. The sink and counter were NOT set atop the carpet, greatly simplifying the removal of the carpet.
A point to ponder: who says interior walls have to go all the way to the floor anyway? Imagine if the track -this flood highlighted the benefits of steel framing over lumber in basements- had been spaced an inch or two above the concrete, and the sheathing stopped short as well. Now, if you’re building atop a raised floor, you already have this gap. Either way, you’ve just eliminated wicking as a concern.
Replies
This all happened in Reno, NV??? How did you get a flood there? Guess I'm even surprised you have a sump - with a pump!
Hope all works out well for you.
Don
The Glass Masterworks
"If it scratches, I etch it!"
Of course, if you raise the drywall 2" above the floor, the floodwater will reach to 3".
We have a "split entry" with a "lower level" that's about 4 feet below grade. The water table is high here at times, and even better builders didn't do much of a job of tiling back in 76 when the place was built (and ours was not one of the better builders).
The blessing/curse of the basement is that it has heating ducts in Transite pipe below the floor. (That's right, asbestos-cement heating ducts.) These are quite leaky, and they flood first when the water table begins to rise. I first used a drill press and one of those drill pumps to empty water out of the duct, then got a proper utility pump with a cut-to-fit tube to dip into the duct, and more cut-to-fit hose to reach out the window and into a piece of PVC running under the deck to the yard. Found a contact-type water level sensor to actuate the pump. (There was no accessible sump.)
When the heating system was redone, the downstairs furnace (which sat over the only sump) was replaced by a duct from the zoned system, and that gave me an opportunity to cut a hole in the duct and install a proper sump pump. Life is much nicer now -- it just comes on when it has to. No sleepless nights babysitting the thing.
Anyway, before we got this all worked out we had a couple of instances where the carpet in one BR got pretty soggy. In fact, mushrooms grew up out of it. But we dried it out, smashed the mushrooms and vacuumed them up, and the carpet's been fine for the 20 or so years since.
We live in an old house. When finishing our basement, we opted for the 'just stain the concrete' instead of carpet.
Had I installed carpet, I'm pretty sure it would have flooded a week after I had finished it all.
I appreciate everyone's sympathies. I really do, but I was hoping to inspire folks to take it one more step ....
Many here are in the trades, or actually build things for a living. A few are even chair-borne design types. What I would like to see is for everyone, involved in any way with a basement, to look at the job from the perspective of: What will happen when it floods?
After all, this was a little flood. Not even enough to get your socks wet - yet the clean-up will cost thousands of dollars. I submit that a little attention to detail along the way would have prevented, or greatly reduced the loss.
The prime example of 'detail' is the slight reverse slope to the basement floor, that served to make the sump pump useless.
Two more suggestions have been made since I last posted:
First, the words 'dank' and 'basement' are used together far too often, even when there has not been a flood. This is a ventilation issue. When we make basements, we need to ensure a steady exchange between the air within and the air outside. In an incident like this, we need to be able to flush the basement with massive amounts of drier outside air.
The second is more subtle, and is certainly not cheap. Hydronic radiant heat. That is, having pipes in the floor to directly heat the floor itself, driving moisture up and out of the carpet.
BTW,,,, for those looking for work .... it seems the folks at Servicemaster have more work than they can handle these days.