My sister owns a house in the Philadelphia suburbs. She has an increasingly wet basement. She has a sump pump; there are concrete aprons around two sides of her row house to keep roof runoff away from the house. Pachysandra plants grow up to the apron. The foundation is mortared field stone. Water seeps through the floor and walls.
She has had a basement waterproofing (franchise) outfit called B-Dry in to give her an estimate for fixing her problem. They are very expensive. What other alternatives can anyone suggest for fixing the problem?
Replies
Figure out where the water's coming from. Make sure the concrete apron is sloped away from the house (if not, have it mud jacked). Make sure the water has somewhere to go when it runs off the apron.
Consider the possibility that a water line has burst underground, especially if the water seems to be coming mostly from one end.
By no means am I am an expert but my house has a similar situation in the philly suburbs. The owners before us put in a french drain system with a sump and before we regraded the yard in the rear and ran the gutter away from the house did the water stop coming in the basement. We got some serious rain this past week and the pump didn't turn on once.
As i understand it you reaaly don't want to cover the fieldstone walls with anything harder than the stone/mortar that it's constructed of, those walls can break down overtime. They need to breath, so to speak.
I think the best solution would be to examine the gutter situation and the grade of the yard and if that doesn't take care of the problem then consider a french drain/sump setup.
There are a lot of wet basement thread here on BT. And in every one of them, the first advice is to deal with the water OUTSIDE the house first.
Anything you do on the inside will just hide the problem for a while.
Thanks for the suggestions. My sister's house is within fifteen feet of a neighbor's boundary on the left. The house sits on gradually-sloping land. Perhaps a swale on the left would direct upslope runoff to the street. Do you think it'd be worthwhile to excavate the foundation wall and apply sealant to it?
She tried sealing the aprons with concrete to keep runoff away from the foundation, but that didn't work. I don't think she has gutters (yet!)
While you are checking to see if there are gutters on your sister's house, take a look at the neighbor's gutters and down spouts.
Check to see where they drain and where that water drains.
If the downs are drained into a pipe that goes somewhere unknown underground, it may be that the underground drain pipes are sending the water into your sisters basement. Clogged, broken or improperly installed???
You may have to do some investigation during a rain storm to really see where and how the water flows from the gutters at sisters house and the two neighbors houses.
Best of Luck.
....................................Iron Helix