Hello, We recently purchased a 30 year old home in Wisconsin that has an exposed basement tied into a boulder retaining wall.
Upon exploration I found that the entire “fill” around at least this part of the house is stones, broken bricks etc, with foam board and a waterproof membrane against the foundation.
it appears to extend 5 feet or so from the house, not sure how deep but likely to the footer? I don’t think there is drain tile down there as there is no obvious outlet and no sump pump.
Im asking because I’ve never encountered this before, and this side of the house is “uphill” so that it may be exposed to water movement to and past the house.
They disclosed that the basement had water last year during an epic(14 inches in 24 hours) rainstorm, but it’s been dry during some heavy rain this year.
Do I carve a berm and awake uphill to divert water, perhaps a long trenched French drain to intercept and divert water around?
Or is there a need to excavate this and install a more modern dimpled barrier and footer drain?
I’m trying to be proactive to make sure we don’t have water, sorry for the length of this post.
Replies
That sounds like a ton of work!
I dug mine up by hand this summer and it almost killed me ?
Mine was in northern IL and had an active water problem. Had to gut entire lower level of our bi-level house from long term water damage and mold. Super awesome....
Do you know where the water came in at? Where floor meets wall, from the wall itself?
I've lived in houses that had serious water problems. To me it sounds as if you must decide if the effort and expense of excavating and redoing the foundation drainage is worth it to solve a problem that is fairly minor. That's not to say that it can't get worse as extreme weather events ramp up in frequency.
Your idea of a water diverter uphill certainly has merit if the landscape has not been properly graded to channel surface water away from the house. This could be done a bit more reasonably, as well as making sure that water coming from the roof is also collected and drained away from the house.
How effective these things will be partly depends on the type of soil around your house. If your soil is sandy water from uphill will likely be moving below the surface, and you will need a drain system at the footing level. But if heavy rain generally is not a problem, most of these things seem to already be in your favor. Also, you may not have spotted the place where a foundation drain daylights. I sometimes had trouble finding ones I put in myself.