Wet basement blues

[maddmaxx ★]

In my passive drain system (no power outage fears, only root intrusions every 20 years or so) there is a vertical pipe from the under floor drains down to the outlet pipe under the foundation footers.  At this point it sounds like Niagra Falls.  I wonder if I could install a turbine wheel there and make power.  

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

19 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

I wonder if I could install a turbine wheel there and make power.

 

[Kzoo]

57 minutes ago, Thaddeus Kosciuszko said:

 

Does Maxx have fish in his basement?

[Digital_photog ★]

2 hours ago, donkpow said:

Indiana has had some serious flooding woes of late.

It was an  all time record flood here. Goshen Kroger store had over 4 ft of water in it.  We have now sent the worst of it on to southwest Michigan. @shotgun

[Longjohn ★]

4 minutes ago, Digital_photog said:

It was an  all time record flood here. Goshen Kroger store had over 4 ft of water in it.  We have now sent the worst of it on to southwest Michigan. @shotgun

There should be some discount groceries now. The bread would probably be a bit soggy.

 

[shotgun]

15 minutes ago, Digital_photog said:

It was an  all time record flood here. Goshen Kroger store had over 4 ft of water in it.  We have now sent the worst of it on to southwest Michigan. @shotgun

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

[donkpow]

36 minutes ago, Longjohn said:

There should be some discount groceries now. The bread would probably be a bit soggy.

 

No problem. Cinnamon toast all around.

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

2 hours ago, Longjohn said:

The bread would probably be a bit soggy.

 

You could take it to park and wrestle the pigeons over it, just for fun...

[maddmaxx ★]

9 hours ago, Kzoo said:

Does Maxx have fish in his basement?

Not since I had a proper drain system installed.  The best built houses around will be wet if the surrounding terrain pushes water into contact with the foundation.  That water will find cracks eventually.  Some of mine was coming up through the floor (2 floors actually as someone tried to fix the problem by pouring more concrete) due to the water pressure under the house.  The best way to fix it is to install drains around the house, in my case inside the foundation, to move the water somewhere else.  I had to pipe it 125 feet to the street and then down the street to the nearest culvert to get far enough downhill to make the system purely passive.  Now there are no worries about power failures or pump burnout.  There is an old pump stashed on a shelf as backup in case anything happens to the pipes but it hasn't been used in years.

I was fortunate enough to find a company that knew exactly what they were doing and to have it done before I finished the basement.  It would be a great deal more expensive to do it today.

[Ralphie ★]

8 hours ago, donkpow said:

No problem. Cinnamon toast all around.

I am having some Cinnamon Toast ala Kirby with my eggz now.   No sugar.

 

[Ralphie ★]

21 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Not since I had a proper drain system installed.  The best built houses around will be wet if the surrounding terrain pushes water into contact with the foundation.  That water will find cracks eventually.  Some of mine was coming up through the floor (2 floors actually as someone tried to fix the problem by pouring more concrete) due to the water pressure under the house.  The best way to fix it is to install drains around the house, in my case inside the foundation, to move the water somewhere else.  I had to pipe it 125 feet to the street and then down the street to the nearest culvert to get far enough downhill to make the system purely passive.  Now there are no worries about power failures or pump burnout.  There is an old pump stashed on a shelf as backup in case anything happens to the pipes but it hasn't been used in years.

I was fortunate enough to find a company that knew exactly what they were doing and to have it done before I finished the basement.  It would be a great deal more expensive to do it today.

I wish I could have done that, but it would have been a ton of digging.  In my neighborhood after these monsoons it looks like we are in an anti-gravity field, because the houses on the hilly side of the street all have water oozing along the sidewalks, but the downhill side is totally dry.  So the hill has to have a clay base to it.   No wonder I have a respect for irony and perverseness.

[Scrapr ★]

6 minutes ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

I am having some Cinnamon Toast ala Kirby with my eggz now.   No sugar.

 

what are you doing up???? I haven't even gone to bed yet  

[Ralphie ★]

Just now, Scrapr said:

what are you doing up???? I haven't even gone to bed yet  

I always leave for work at 5 AM.  

[Scrapr ★]

2 minutes ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

I always leave for work at 5 AM.  

wake me when you get to work 

metric time please

[Ralphie ★]

2 minutes ago, Scrapr said:

wake me when you get to work 

metric time please

You Shirley are up late!

[maddmaxx ★]

17 minutes ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

I wish I could have done that, but it would have been a ton of digging.  In my neighborhood after these monsoons it looks like we are in an anti-gravity field, because the houses on the hilly side of the street all have water oozing along the sidewalks, but the downhill side is totally dry.  So the hill has to have a clay base to it.   No wonder I have a respect for irony and perverseness.

You can still do it on the outside of the foundation.  It is a bit of digging because IMO the drains have to be at the same level as the bottom of your foundation.  The piping needs to have anti silt "socks" around it and be set in a bed of trap rock or small stone.  The biggest problem is what to do with the water after you drain it.  I was fortunate enough to have a town culvert.  A "beehive" wouldn't have been large enough to accept the amount of water I'm moving in the spring.  You can't just dump it into your neighbors yard.

[Ralphie ★]

I have the inside drain, but would love to ditch the pump.  It goes into the yard and makes it a swampy area.  

I guess I should extend and bury the outlet pipe but the nearest culvert is one house away.  I guess a perforated extension would be best. Would be a lawn watering device!  Luckily it is gravity flow toward the street. I should do that! I shouldn't have to go down far at all I wouldn't think. It has never frozen yet right above ground. 

[Longjohn ★]

My French drains exited the ground about 75 feet from the house. Some years all it did was make the grass grow really lush and green but other years the ground stayed soft most of the summer and you could get the lawn tractor or zero turn stuck in that area. Last summer I bought a 100 foot roll of 4” perforated pipe and hand dug the trench to run it down almost to the road. I’ll have to see how it works this year.

[12string]

My dad always had summer projects for us boys.  One year it was a french drain inside the house.  Large rancher,  nearly the entire perimeter.  Jackhammer the floor, dig  about a foot down, carry it all up the stairs and out in 5 gallon buckets.  Then carry all the stone and backfill back down and in.  Then the concrete, which required running with buckets because those guys don't stop the flow.  But at least we never had to stay up all night with the shop vac after that.

[jsharr ★]

19 hours ago, Kzoo said:

Does Maxx have fish in his basement?

If he does, this will not kill them, so there is that.

[shotgun]

Ugh. It rained the other day, just as the seepage was slowing down. I've got a pump that will pump some of the water into my sump pit, and then finishing up with the shop vac. Someone is coming on Wednesday to look it over and give us an estimate for "waterproofing".

[Longjohn ★]

1 hour ago, shotgun said:

. Someone is coming on Wednesday to look it over and give us an estimate for "waterproofing".

Don’t expect it to be cheap. I had a basement waterproofing company give me a quote on one of my houses and they wanted twice what I paid for the house and it didn’t eliminate the pump. I didn’t have any problems as long as the electric didn’t go out so they basically were not going to accomplish anything.

[maddmaxx ★]

23 minutes ago, Longjohn said:

Don’t expect it to be cheap. I had a basement waterproofing company give me a quote on one of my houses and they wanted twice what I paid for the house and it didn’t eliminate the pump. I didn’t have any problems as long as the electric didn’t go out so they basically were not going to accomplish anything.

I agree.  Unless it's just a little bit of leakage, the moving the water away from the house is the only thing that really works.  Depending on the grade of your yard and where you can send the water a passive French drain system solves your problems almost forever. (root intrusions may rear their head every 20 years of so.)

[shotgun]

I’m getting about 10 gallons an hour. Overnight, it migrates from one end of the basement to the other, and into the carpet. Pumping and sucking have grown very tiresome over the last 10 days. 

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

4 hours ago, shotgun said:

Someone is coming on Wednesday to look it over and give us an estimate for "waterproofing".

I would suggest asking them how their product and technique will stop water from entering the entire basement (including up through the floor) and not simply transfer the problem to some other spot in the basement where the consequences of water entry would be worse.

Water will find the path of least resistance into the basement.  Right now it's coming in where you can see it and manage it, because that happens to be the weakest, lowest resistance spot in the basement wall.

Seal up that spot, and the water then finds the next  weakest spot in the basement wall.  If the waterproofing doesn't address that spot, or the next weakest spot, or the next etc then all you will do is chase the leak to the next point where the water finds its way in.

If their 'waterproofing' involves a latex based coating on the interior wall, just skip it.  They simply peel off.  I've had good luck with an oil based sealant, but only after prepping the walls well and doing all the walls.  Another product that gives good results is often called 'nanotechnology' which, when applied to the porous block and/or concrete, creates a water impervious layer within the concrete or block.  To work, though, it has to be applied properly, mixed properly, and cured properly.  It will not work if the walls and floor are deteriorated, or if there are open cracks.

Another approach, which may seem counter-intuitive, is to create an intentional 'weak spot'.  This could be a sump pit that goes down through the floor slab, for example.  This essentially relieves the water pressure against the foundation and floor, but it is akin to pulling the drain plug in the stern of a boat, too.  On the plus side, though, you now have a place where you know the water will enter the basement, where you will have control over it, and where you can apply standard techniques and equipment to manage it and keep it from damaging the other areas of the basement. 

[shotgun]

Plugging a leak is not what I’m looking for. There’s excess ground water that needs to be released and sent bye bye. 

[donkpow]

On the route to my job a number of years ago, there was a new house. A couple of years after construction, I saw the owner digging out around the foundation wall of the whole house by hand. He was an older guy and he spent the summer installing a curtain drain around the new house.

[maddmaxx ★]

26 minutes ago, donkpow said:

On the route to my job a number of years ago, there was a new house. A couple of years after construction, I saw the owner digging out around the foundation wall of the whole house by hand. He was an older guy and he spent the summer installing a curtain drain around the new house.

Wouldn't it be nice if houses were built that way to begin with while the impact on costs were minimal?

[Longjohn ★]

3 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Wouldn't it be nice if houses were built that way to begin with while the impact on costs were minimal?

They all are built that way in Western Pennsylvania. The problem is the ones that just run the drains into a sump pump pit that has to run 24/7. They need to stop digging the basements so deep that they are to the water table. One of the most common styles of house here is the raised ranch. That has half of the basement above ground and is often built on a slope where there is a side or back entrance at ground level. They are great until you get old or break a leg and then the steps become a problem.

[Ralphie ★]

2 hours ago, Longjohn said:

They all are built that way in Western Pennsylvania. The problem is the ones that just run the drains into a sump pump pit that has to run 24/7. They need to stop digging the basements so deep that they are to the water table. One of the most common styles of house here is the raised ranch. That has half of the basement above ground and is often built on a slope where there is a side or back entrance at ground level. They are great until you get old or break a leg and then the steps become a problem.

That is my problem.  The idiots dug the basement too deep and the other idiot still bought the house anyway. 

[Ralphie ★]

On 2/27/2018 at 6:28 AM, Longjohn said:

My French drains exited the ground about 75 feet from the house. Some years all it did was make the grass grow really lush and green but other years the ground stayed soft most of the summer and you could get the lawn tractor or zero turn stuck in that area. Last summer I bought a 100 foot roll of 4” perforated pipe and hand dug the trench to run it down almost to the road. I’ll have to see how it works this year.

So howzit working, LJ?  That is one home project I might actually work up the energy to do.  How deep did you dig it?  My surface level sump pump discharge pipe has not frozen yet, but I guess it should be below the frost line so the frozen ground doesn't cause it to freeze.

[Longjohn ★]

1 hour ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

So howzit working, LJ?  That is one home project I might actually work up the energy to do.  How deep did you dig it?  My surface level sump pump discharge pipe has not frozen yet, but I guess it should be below the frost line so the frozen ground doesn't cause it to freeze.

I just dug it deep enough to cover it. There is a slope to the yard in the direction I ran the pipe. I had no issues with it freezing this winter. I know where the pipe used to end and was ready to quickly dig it up at that point if needed. 

[Ralphie ★]

13 minutes ago, Longjohn said:

I just dug it deep enough to cover it. There is a slope to the yard in the direction I ran the pipe. I had no issues with it freezing this winter. I know where the pipe used to end and was ready to quickly dig it up at that point if needed. 

Thanks!  Sounds like a plan.   I have a steep slope toward the street so that is good.  It almost might be worth making sort of a catch basin to provide an ottomatic bypass in case of trouble with the new system.

 

[donkpow]

Depending on the lay of the land, drainage could terminate in what I know as a "dry well". This is a hole in the ground, filled with gravel, and topped with soil. Old timers laid a level of straw between the gravel and soil to prevent the top layer of soil from washing into the gravel. There are fabrics ("geotextiles") that are available for that. I would probably wrap my perforated tile in a "sock" of that fabric.

While labor intensive, it's not that difficult to add sub slab drainage to a basement. Concrete saw and a sledge hammer. Bust out a web for the interconnected tile, pea gravel, tile, and install the concrete cover. Same with the sump. I believe they make plastic tubs suitable for the sump. Set in concrete.

Of course, a barrier to moisture intrusion through the foundation walls is easy to install during construction. I would venture to say it is standard practice now days, along with a layer of thermal insulation. The old timers used a bucket of tar and tar paper before back filling the foundation wall. The ideal solution would be a fairly substantial amount of gravel backfill with embedded drainage tile at the footer and against the wall. Foundation plantings would be prohibited in this case. In fact, foundation plants should be prohibited in all cases as the soil and plants hold the moisture right up against the wall.

There is a paint on solution for the interior. It is a product that "grows" into the pores of the concrete/block thereby blocking moisture infiltration, albeit, after the fact. I used to have the specs on the product but I have been cleaning out my library.

Retrofit options for weeping interior walls include a trough at the base of the wall where the moisture drips to and is removed. This is not ideal because you'll need to build false walls and moisture is still present in the atmosphere.

When you get ready to do this, don't call me. I'm retired. 

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

3 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

but I guess it should be below the frost line so the frozen ground doesn't cause it to freeze.

You could bury the pipe as LJ did, and then run a gutter de-icing cable down the pipe, and plug the cable in if the pipe freezes up. 

I have a 30' run of underground drain pipe that carries a gutter discharge away from the foundation.  The pipe runs about 8" to 18" deep and the far end runs to daylight.  I ran the cable through the pipe and left an extra foot or so cable beyond the pipe so the water can run away from the pipe before it freezes.  This is the first winter for operation and so far no issues.

[shotgun]

So, we got a quote today and are going with a drainage system that does not compromise the integrity of our foundation. It channels water into our sump, which is going to get a battery backup system added to it. The bad news is that they can't do it until three weeks from now.