Basement

Whenever it rains our basement looks like this:





















We've gotten pretty good about avoiding the water in the basement by either putting our stuff up on blocks or strategically placing it so that the water doesn’t flow towards it. But constantly worrying about the water is really annoying and one of the things we learned from our last house was that it is so much easier if you just fix the leaking basement in the beginning instead of trying to work around the leaks for the next five years. We don't plan to use the basement for more than storage, but we'd like to be able to store stuff in it without it getting wet. Also, over the last six months we noticed some heaving of the basement columns which has caused several new cracks to appear in the walls above the basement columns and the doors above these columns have became difficult to shut, further pressing the need to fix the basement issues.








Column Heaving








All of this leads us to our recent project. While one team of contractors was in the yard working on the driveway another team was in the basement. We hired them to dig a trench around the perimeter of the basement, install drain tile inside the trench and wall, install a sump to pump out the water and then recovered the trench with concrete. They also replaced our existing steel columns with new adjustable columns. This will be allow us to adjust the columns if we experience further heaving issues.



Before they started we moved the entire contents of the basement to the northeast corner of the room so that the contractor could excavate the trench. We decided to not trench the north and east perimeter walls because they do not have any issues with leaking.































It only took them two days to excavate the trench and fill with drain tile, cover it back up and install the sump. It then took another couple of days to replace the columns.



Here are pictures of the trench before it was filled in:









































And below is the final product. The sump is under a clear plastic lid. The lid looks cracked, but it is just the condensation on the inside of the hole.





















The trench is approximately 12" wide around the perimeter.























Last week we had a huge rainstorm and were happy to find that we had zero leaks around the perimeter. Unfortunately we do have issues with water coming in over the top of the basement wall. This was due to the gutters not working properly and the water pooling right in front of the house and then flowing back into the basement. The problem arose after all of the driveway and site work was performed, but we didn’t realize it until it started raining. To fix it, my superhero husband quickly ran to Lowes and bought some flexible gutters. In between thunderstorms we were able to attach the flexible gutters and dig a trench for them to flow away from the house. It rained through the night and into the morning but the basement was dry and we were very relieved.



The final step in the basement repairs will be having a contractor grade the soil around the house. This will hopefully force the water to flow away from the house and prevent any further column heaving. We hope to get this done next week.