When, as today, there has been over an inch of rain. there is a crack in my basement wall where water comes in. It starts a couple feet below the level of the outside ground and goes down from there. It is not large and there is not enough water to wet even the furnace room where it is. This looks like something that could be very expensive to repair. Unless there is some way of doing it from the inside. Any advice?
Do you know if you have weeping tile? It might just be a matter of replacing and/or installing it.
I’d get someone in to do an estimate. That process costs you nothing, and talking to the person would be useful in helping you decide.
I’m not sure how helpful us outsiders can be, we can’t see the crack or the lay of the land around your house (a house atop a hill, for instance, will have less flooding problems than a house in a flood plain), or your sump pump or drainage tile or…
To little known to be accurate.
But it will have to be sealed from the outside. That is done by drilling holes and pumping the sealant on the outside.
:eek: Hari Seldon is having Foundation trouble? :eek:
Maybe R. Daneel can help.
[sub]sorry, couldn’t pass that up. Carry on[/sub]
Thanks for the advice. I guess I will have to get an estimate. It is not large. Oddly enough most of the houses on my block have serious water problems during the snow melt season, but I have never had that. The basement did flood the day we had some 10" of rain in one day, including 4" in one hour (Bastille Day, 1987, I recall).
If only I could get R. Daneel Olivaw.
If you are short on funds and willing to spend some time and you are somewhat handy, you can make passable fixes by chiseling out a good groove and using a top-quality crack sealer. Note that this will require time and care to make sure you make a good, complete groove that is the correct geometry, and that you clean everything as well as possible before applying the sealer. And the type of crack sealer is critical - I failed miserably with two different types until I tried Quickcrete Water Stop. Five years of occasional brutal rains since, and not a drop.
We had a similar leak, and figured that water coming in was bad, no matter the amount. There is a heavily advertised company called Permaseal in my area that came out and plugged the leak, and it was much less expensive than I had thought. The evaluation was free, and the repair was a few hundred, not a few thousand.
The warranty for the work is a lifetime one, transferrable to a new owner upon selling the house. This winter was bad, and the basement did not leak.
But surely you have a Second Foundation already in place in anticipation of just such unforeseen eventualities?
That was worth the effort to raise the question. I howled.
Best Thread Title/UserName EVAH
We’re going through a similar thing in the new condo building where we live. You should definitely get an estimate from a basement waterproofing company. I found ours on Angie’s List. If you don’t get the problem fixed then potentially water could start eroding the supports for the house and then you will eventually have a job that costs twice as much. If you catch it early enough they can fix it more easily.
For example, the way they’re going to fix ours involves digging a trench along the inside of the perimeter, running some kind of pipes along it and installing a pump to pump it all outside. Also putting up some kind of water barrier up along the inside of the foundation wall. And a couple of other minor things.
Don’t put it off or the problem will get worse. If it gets bad they may have to dig up around the outside of the foundation, etc.
Water leaking into a basement is always something to worry about. Small water now = big water later.
Had a similar situation last year. Went to radonseal.com and got the low pressure injection kit for $150. A couple hours on a weekend later, problem was fixed. When talking about a foundation crack leaking water - $150 is about a cheap as you can get.
Don’t do the dovetail/hydraulic cement trick - it’ll only last temporarily because the water is still wearing away the concrete from the outside. This is why una indicated this method is only a passable fix. Very important qualifier.
The other option is to dig from the outside and seal that way. But with the advent of low pressure injection, the DIYer can have a lasting fix done at home with short money and time investment.