Replies

1. 
   DaveRicheson | May 29, 2005 08:56pm | #1

   No pictures

    

   Dave

1. 
   10D | May 29, 2005 09:07pm | #2

   Sorry - I'm working on it - did this work? 10D

1. 
   10D | May 29, 2005 09:10pm | #3

   I see why it took so long to download - any clues on how to make the pictures smaller?10D

1. 
   Piffin | May 29, 2005 09:42pm | #4

   almost any photo software has some sort of re-sizing capacity .If you can't find yours, google up Irfanview and download it. It is not dangerous. It is free, and it is easy to use. go to Image> resize image and have a blast. Then save as under a new name so you don't lose the original. Aim for a file size of 70 to100. That will be about 720pixels wide at 72 DPI 

    

   Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!

1. 
   MOWsr | May 29, 2005 09:51pm | #5

   http://www.irfanview.comRELAX... The work can wait... The fish might be biting...

2. 
   rjw | May 29, 2005 11:09pm | #6

   I resized them to 25%,,and lightened the shadows on a coupleTough to say from the pictures but it can be tough to keep such an old basement (cellar) completely dry without bigtime exterior excation and work

   View Image

   Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace

1. 
   10D | May 30, 2005 05:23am | #9

   Thanks! I think I just figured out how to do that!

   I will take some more photos of the larger area tomorrow so you all can see the gutter situation, as well. 10D

3. 
   lwj2 | May 30, 2005 03:57pm | #16

   Photos resized for regular and small jpg files.Irfanview will do a nice job for you, it's a free download.FWIW, these were done with Photoshop 6.0, which isn't free and is overkill for most folks. I do graphic arts work now and then, so I've got it.Edit: The _sm.jpg files will have less detail than the larger files.Regards,Leon Jester

2. 
   constantin | May 29, 2005 11:24pm | #7

   Hmmmm, I'd have a look over at Building Science Corporation, as they have a whole section on how to deal with basement leaks. From the little I see in your crawlspace, I surmise it features a dirt floor and some pretty bad sealing between the slab and the wall on the outside.

   The expensive and proper solution is to prevent water from accumulating around the foundation in the first place, i.e. to install a french drain that has cleanouts and that drains to daylight. Not always easy to do! Sometimes a sump pump is needed, though gravity tends to be more reliable in thunderstorms when the power goes out.

   An internal sump pump could keep the water from running into the rest of the basement. However, your walls facing that ground will still get waterlogged. A perimeter drain on the inside is usually quite inexpensive and can be effective at keeping the water out of the rest of the basement. Sealing the floor with a rat slab + 6mil polyethelyne vapor barrier may also prevent some of the humidity from rising from the ground and entering your structure.

   
   

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   Edited 5/29/2005 4:25 pm ET by Constantin

1. 
   10D | May 30, 2005 05:26am | #10

   A perimeter drain on the inside is usually quite inexpensive and can be effective at keeping the water out of the rest of the basement. Sealing the floor with a rat slab + 6mil polyethelyne vapor barrier may also prevent some of the humidity from rising from the ground and entering your structure.

   This seems to make sense - -  can you tell me what business/contractor I would call to get an estimate on something like this?  Concrete company?10D

1. 
   BillHartmann | May 30, 2005 06:50am | #11

   That last picture looks like it is outside. Is this near where the water comes in?Does that slab slope away from the house? What happens if you put a hose on it?An HONEST basement water proofing company should check grade and drainage and look at fixing that before they even talk about intereior drains and trying to "seal" the basement.But they aren't all that honest.You might need a mud jacker for that slab (or replacing it).Some landscape contractors do drain work.Like wise excavators. In my area there is a section in the yellow pages for Drainage work.

1. 
   10D | May 30, 2005 07:53pm | #20

   That last picture looks like it is outside.

   It is.  I am posting more pictures of the outside.

   Is this near where the water comes in?

   Yes.

   Does that slab slope away from the house? What happens if you put a hose on it?

   By "slab" do you mean the area of ground (please excuse my ignorance of exact terms).  I think it that area does slope toward the house.  And it continues behind the house (under the porch) where it is all dirt.  And yes, the simple hose to the various corner areas directs the water right into the basement. 

   An HONEST basement water proofing company should check grade and drainage and look at fixing that before they even talk about intereior drains and trying to "seal" the basement.

   But they aren't all that honest.

   Right.  I have had two companies come out in the past.  One guy gave me an estimate of $16,000 to put a drain system around the perimeter of the house but never wrote up the estimate.  The other guy was very, very nice but said his system of sump-pumping waterproofing addressed back-up through the sewer drains, not water that came in through cracks or foundation leakage.  I do not get a flooded basement - - just leakage in the back 5 feet or so near the foundation.

   You might need a mud jacker for that slab (or replacing it).

   What is a mud jacker?10D

1. 
   BillHartmann | May 30, 2005 08:04pm | #22

   This is the picture that I was talking about.http://forums.prospero.com/n/docs/docDownload.aspx?guid=35D10262-04BE-46DE-8280-131DB01309BC&webtag=tp-breaktimeSlab is concrete slab.My guess is that this to the right of the steps and the new picture to the right.Mud jacking where they will drill 2" holes in a concrete slab and pump a cement grout (mud) into the holes and that will lift up a slab that has sunk and make it level again or even tilt it the oposite direction.Is that wood siding?You are already down to the ground level with the side so you can't grade more dirt upto the house.So that means that you need to grade away. But the little amount that is shown in the first picture the yard is more or less flat.In that case you will need to form a low area in the middle of the yard and grade down to that. Then install a catch basin and pipe to drain it around the house.

2. 
   10D | May 30, 2005 09:34pm | #23

   Is that wood siding?

   Yes, it's cedar.10D

2. 
   BryanSayer | May 30, 2005 07:19am | #12

   B-Dry is a national company that does franchises in local areas. The nice thing about B-Dry is that there is a TRANSFERABLE lifetime warranty. This really helps when it comes time to sell. I used them at my last house and was reasonable pleased. They are not excessively expensive either.Many basement waterproofing systems work basically the same way. All the way around the perimeter on the inside of the basement, cut through the slab, excavate a trench, add a drain pipe and gravel, apply some type of material from the trench up the wall a bit to channel any water that weeps through the wall into the trench, repour the slab with high strength concrete. The drain pipes are channeled to a sump pump or a storm drain if available. In Chicago, you might have nearby access to storm drains (any exterior drains in your yard?). Like someone said, gravity does not go out when the electricity does.But first you should do the simple things outside. Make sure your downspouts drain AWAY from the house. Make sure the area next to the walls slopes down and away from the house. Any plantings near the foundation should have a shallow non-aggressive root structure.

1. 
   BillHartmann | May 30, 2005 03:29pm | #14

   "But first you should do the simple things outside. Make sure your downspouts drain AWAY from the house. Make sure the area next to the walls slopes down and away from the house. Any plantings near the foundation should have a shallow non-aggressive root structure."A friend of mine bought a house that had the inside drains and sump installed. But they still have water problems. So bad that the back wall of the foundation buckled and moved in over 4".Before she could even close she had to fix the foundation with steel i-beams for support and epoxy crack sealing.After she cleaned the gutters, put in drains to direct the water around the house, swhales to direct up hill water around the house, and mud jacked up the patio that was causing water to pond around the house no only is the basement dry, but the only time that the sump pump has run in 3 years was when I stuck a hose in it to see if it worked.I have since finished the basement.

1. 
   constantin | May 30, 2005 04:54pm | #19

   I totally agree that simple changes in the topography around the house can do wonders to reduce the influx of surface water into the structure.As best as I can tell, large portion of the water that destroyed the foundation of our present home came from the roof... leaders had been installed at some downspouts but a swale/bump beyond the reach of the leader ensured that all roof water from that sector ended up in the basement. As a result, our motar-filled rubble-foundation resembled a dry-fit foundation, as all the mortar was gone or crumbled.Interestingly, the worst foundation damage (i.e. 5" tilt) was on the downhill side of the building, i.e. where one would have expected the least damage. However, there was a lot of surface water there and the thaw/frost heaving action of winters did their thing by crushing the wall inwards. So, I'm a big fan of diverting water away from the home as much as possible. In very heavy clay areas, you may also do well to install a foot-wide, geotextile clad "buffer" consisting of crushed 3/4" aggregate around the house so that the expanding and contracting tendencies of clay soil during freeze/thaw have something else to crush besides your foundation walls. The clay should have a french drain at the bottom to help carry water away.However, the first step should always be to get the roof water away from the house. 4" PVC schedule 80 drains with cleanouts along the way make for a very inexpensive means of getting the water to where you want it.

2. 
   BillHartmann | May 30, 2005 07:54pm | #21

   "So, I'm a big fan of diverting water away from the home as much as possible. In very heavy clay areas, you may also do well to install a foot-wide, geotextile clad "buffer" consisting of crushed 3/4" aggregate around the house so that the expanding and contracting tendencies of clay soil during freeze/thaw have something else to crush besides your foundation walls. The clay should have a french drain at the bottom to help carry water away."The guy that did the epoxy crack patching on my friends house suggested installing a epdm membrane, hozontally about 3-6 ft wide around the foundation and covered with decorative rocks. The idea is to keep the ground dry. And wet clay freezing was her exact problem.Then I found some online referneces from some county extention services and building scieince places that recommended similar.

3. 
   constantin | May 30, 2005 11:07pm | #24

   Yup, the "umbrella around the foundation" idea has a lot of merit in extreme cases, or where digging up the whole thing is not in the cards (i.e. rubble foundations). I first saw it in the foundations book that Taunton publishes in the "for pros by pros" series, then also saw it at buildingscience.comOne ding against this approach is purely aethestic, i.e. how do you bring the membrane up high enough to prevent water from rolling over its basement-side edge? I suppose one could seal the membrane to the wall, but I'd always place greater faith in a membrane edge that is physically higher than the highest possible water level. Things have a way of getting unstuck over time.Anyway, this approach works great at reducing the battering ram effect that the freeze-thaw cycle produce, particularly with older rubble foundations that lack the strength of rebar-reinforced concrete.

4. 
   BillHartmann | May 31, 2005 12:34am | #26

   In the case that I was talking about it was not to water proof the basement, but rather to keep rain that fell from saturating the clay and causing it to freeze and expand putting force on the foudation.

3. 
   MikeK | May 30, 2005 07:26am | #13

   I live in the Chicago Suburbs. There's a large contractor in Chicago that specializes in basement problems. Permaseal I think is the name. I got a quote for a french drain in my basement and installation of a sump pump. Price quoted was $6500.Good Luck.Mike K

   Amateur Home Remodeler in Aurora, Illinois

1. 
   BryanSayer | May 30, 2005 03:46pm | #15

   When I did the B-Dry (about 2000), they offered a 20% discount if you allowed them to schedule at their convience. For our small bungelow, it went from $5000 to $4000. As I recall it was about 140 linear feet.

1. 
   BillHartmann | May 30, 2005 04:11pm | #17

   But the point is that you DON'T EVEN WANT TO THINK ABOUT THOSE SYSTEMS until all external conditions have been fixed first.

2. 
   reganva | May 30, 2005 04:12pm | #18

   I did a DIY fix to my basement seapage.  Found the two offending cracks by running a hose in the yard at various points for a long time.  Epoxy injected the cracks from inside.  Then dug up the foundation from outside and sealed the entire wall on that side of the house with waterproofer.  I used a product called blueseal.  Then backfilled and added about ten pick up trucks full of topsoil to slope the grade away from the house.  Put in plants and sod.  Waiting for the next monsoon to see if I got it.  Total investment was about $500 and lot of complaining from the wife about dirty clothes.

3. 
   jrnbj | May 31, 2005 12:02am | #25

   Can you tell us how/whose epoxy system you used?

3. 
   gstringe | May 30, 2005 12:22am | #8

   You didn't show pictures of the most important thing...How the water gets to the foundation. The gutters may be clean but where do they discharge the water? Do they discharge close to the foundation? Does the ground slope towards or away from the house?

   You may have to just direct the water quite aways away from the foundation. Maybe a sump pump would help and/or maybe waterproofing the basement walls.

   Old homes are sometimes way too much fun.

   I like your approach....now lets see your departure