Hi everyone,
I am in the process of tearing down an old house and building a new home . The existing house has always had water in the basement due to a very high water table. I am raising the new floor level of the house as much as i can and installing an exterior perimeter drain as well as an interior drain with a pump. Does anyone know of any other precautions i could take to try and keep the basement dry?
Replies
Yeah. Use a Superior Walls precast foundation.
Warm and dry. That's their motto.
They typically cost more than a concrete foundation that is formed and poured, but if you are going to have any of your basement done as finished living space, and if you are going to have any brick or stone facing on the house, the cost premium starts to get offset by what the Superior system offers.
Concrete is very absorbant, like a big sponge. Use a membrane material on the outside with a drainage plane to encourage the water to go into the perimeter drain.
Use a seperate drain system for the gutters so that the perimeter drain will last longer.
Install a continuous membrane (like Tu-tuf) under the slab to prevent 'rising damp'. Insulate to prevent condensation in the summer.
Edited 2/10/2005 1:29 pm ET by csnow
Make sure to slope the grade away from the house. (Somebody else may have already mentioned that.)
Use pea gravel or any of a variety of proprietary drain membranes on the exterior to help any water that does get near the walls find its way quickly down to the drains.
If it's really wet at your location, think about keeping everything several inches up off the basement floor, just in case all your precautions fail at the same time.
This is a question that has always bugged poor ignorant me. From reading here I understand that basements can only really be damp-proofed, that a perimeter drain is essential, yada, yada, yada. My question is why? If a swimming pool can be built to keep all the water in, why can't a foundation be built to keep all the water out? Why can't a swimming pool be turned inside out to make a truly waterproof foundation?
The short answer is that it can but it costs big bucks to do it properly.
IanDG
I don't think most swimming pools keep all the water in.
I used a product like this on the house I built:
http://www.deltams.com/deltams/index.html
Can't say enough good stuff about it. I'll never build another house without it.