Leaking basement, THROUGH THE FLOOR?!?
We are closing on a house tomorrow. It is raining extremely heavily (already 4+" in the past 24 hours) and expected to rain through Sunday.
We just noticed our basement is leaking, up through the floors. We have lived in this house since December and haven’t had this problem yet — even our last heavy rainstorm.
Now, I read somewhere that if it’s leaking up through the floors, you can use Concrete Sealer to seal all cracks and solve the problem. The issue is, half our basement is finished and it’s leaking on the finished side — not carpet, but TILE.
What can we do to fix this? We DO NOT HAVE GUTTERS and our yard has HUGE puddles right next to the house.. we are installing gutters and downspouts the next day it’s dry. Will they help enough??
Is it worth backing out of the sale and our contract to avoid having to deal with this??
Gutters will help your situation but you still need to move the water out away from the house as far as possible. This could be done with field line pipe without the holes in it running at a slope to insure sufficient drainage away from the house. Some landscaping can help your situation too by bringing in topsoil to slope the ground from the house outwards to help move the water away from the house.
The topsoil can also help cover any gutter drainage pipe more easily with less trenching. This will also cure the problem of puddling water standing next to the house. As for the basement, are you sure that the water is coming from the floor? This can sometimes be deceiving in exactly where the water is entering the basement. Depending on how the basement walls are finished, it would be wise to determine how the finished walls were installed. Such as, are they 2×4 framed walls at the block? Just firring strips nailed to the block? I have even seen drywall glued straight to the block wall.
Waterproofing the floor is a good idea and making sure that the walls are not part of the leaking problem is another. Without finding the area or area’s of water entrance and getting that treated and stopped, One instance of basement flooding proves there will be another if action is not taken.
It is hard to advise on whether to back out of the closing or to press on with repairs. Each leaking basement is different in ways but also similar in others. The amount of work and expense to dry up a problem basement can vary greatly depending on the actual cause of the problem. Just from the sound of your situation it would seem that some gutters and landscaping can greatly improve your chances of success, although some inside work will also need to be evaluated and performed. How much remains to be seen.
Good luck and I hope this helps.
Have gutters installed, running into buried PVC pipe that carries the water away from the house (downhill) or to the street.
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Your soil is saturated and the water is higher than the bottom of the basement. You could dig a sump and install a sump pump to pump the water away from the property. I don’t know wha tit would take for capacity and how far away, without being there. A lot of houses have a sump in one corner of the basement with a sump pump.
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i think an adjusrment should be made on the price.or let them correct it befor you close.
References :
Gutters will help your situation but you still need to move the water out away from the house as far as possible. This could be done with field line pipe without the holes in it running at a slope to insure sufficient drainage away from the house. Some landscaping can help your situation too by bringing in topsoil to slope the ground from the house outwards to help move the water away from the house.
The topsoil can also help cover any gutter drainage pipe more easily with less trenching. This will also cure the problem of puddling water standing next to the house. As for the basement, are you sure that the water is coming from the floor? This can sometimes be deceiving in exactly where the water is entering the basement. Depending on how the basement walls are finished, it would be wise to determine how the finished walls were installed. Such as, are they 2×4 framed walls at the block? Just firring strips nailed to the block? I have even seen drywall glued straight to the block wall.
Waterproofing the floor is a good idea and making sure that the walls are not part of the leaking problem is another. Without finding the area or area’s of water entrance and getting that treated and stopped, One instance of basement flooding proves there will be another if action is not taken.
It is hard to advise on whether to back out of the closing or to press on with repairs. Each leaking basement is different in ways but also similar in others. The amount of work and expense to dry up a problem basement can vary greatly depending on the actual cause of the problem. Just from the sound of your situation it would seem that some gutters and landscaping can greatly improve your chances of success, although some inside work will also need to be evaluated and performed. How much remains to be seen.
Good luck and I hope this helps.
References :
http://yourhowtopartner.com