So, I need to decide in the next year or so what to do with my parents house. They are both in extended care with zero potential of ever coming back home. So, I have a 4 bedroom house on two acres, paid for years ago. Problem is, it’s about 5 hours from where I live! It is on two nicely wooded acres, and it has been in my name for about 20 years.
So, in the next year, I need to decide whether I’m ever going to move back there, in which case, a paid for house would be nice to have. Or, I might just get it ready to sell, and sell it. Which would have it’s advantages as well.
So, either way, keep it or sell it, I figure I’m going to need to do some maintenance that my elderly parents deferred, and also some things they just never gave a shit about.
One of the things that they never cared about is the basement that leaks in almost every rain. “Leaks” runs the range from a little water coming under the wall in one particular corner, to 5 or 6 inches of water when there are heavy rains for a few days on end.
The house was built in 1940, with no intention of ever finishing the basement. I guess they expected it to leak in those days, cause there are two drains mounted in the floor. It’s a poured concrete floor, and the walls are cinder blocks. There is no sump pump or anything like that.
So, what are my options? Is it reasonable to think there is a way to completely eliminate water ingress? Or is a system to get rid of the water (like a sump pump) the best I can do?
The most likely solution that a company is going to come in, dig a trench around the perimeter of the inside of the basement, fill it with crushed stone and other water-permeable material. They’ll then drill weeping holes into all of your cinder block (which are all filled up with water, by the way). Then they’ll cap the trench with a special material that wicks the water away from the wall. The trench is dug at an angle that will drain the water around the wall to a sump pump (that will have to have a hole excavated out).
This will cost you around $10,000, if any of the estimates I got last year are any indication.
You can certainly install a sump pump, at a much lower cost than the more comprehensive solutions. A decent installation will deal with the water you describe. If you’re planning to keep the basement reasonably “raw” (unfinished), this could be a good way to go.
I recently bought a house that has a stream running through the basement when it rains or when the snow melts. It used to run into a sump where it was pumped out by an electric pump but the last owners got fed up with the basement flooding when the electricity went out. They paid a lot of money to have a trench dug on the low side of the house so that the sump now drains to daylight through a pipe about 25m long. The pipe has a heating wire to keep if from freezing up in the winter. They also did some work trying to divert water on the hillside above the house but this is an area with springs, even artesian springs, and a big hillside so they probably gave up on that strategy. I plan to channel the stream so it does not humidify the basement so much and so that amount of floor space that is wet is minimal, but I don’t expect to do more. I suspect the stream has been flowing through the basement for 200 years and the house is still standing so I’m inclined to let it be.
Yea, the only way to really fix the problem is to dig around the foundation. I’ve never heard of the above solution, but I guess this is what’s done for foundations constructed of cinder blocks. It’s a shame it doesn’t have a foundation made of poured cement, as fixing the problem is somewhat simpler.
getting water away from your house through landscaping, and getting water that gets near your house to drain away quickly, by filling around the house with stone, is the solution.
a sump pump would be helpful for water that gets to it; your basement has water in it or from the drainage around and under your basement. if you don’t have this drainage it will only pump out water in the basement that gets to it.
This is often called a French Drain. I don’t know why. It isn’t always necessary though. Sometimes a simple sump hole and pump is sufficient. Sometimes there are particular holes or cracks that can be sealed. And in the case of two houses I’ve owned you may just need to grade the land around the house to keep surface run-off away from the basement walls.
Odds are if you need an inexpensive solution, you’ll find out nothing less than a French Drain will do the job.
Or, maybe tear it down and start over? Sometimes older houses arent that great with poor plumbing and electrical systems. Starting over lets you have the house you want instead of the one your just going to settle for.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I’m wondering: why do people build basements if they don’t intend to use them?
An unfinished basement looks like a medieval dungeon. Dirty, always damp, sometimes flooded, full of spiders and who knows what else. Yes, you can put a furnace or a washing machine down there; but it’s just so damn unpleasant , why would you want that as part of your home? Why not make the house a nicer place,and save money, too by NOT building the basement in the first place?
Thanks for the responses so far. I’ll address some of the questions.
A). Overall condition of the house is good. One hard to find roof leak, but I’m sure I can knock that out just by spending some time to really diagnose entry point. The only thing really negative about the house is that it was built like most houses in the 1940s and 50s, which is that it only has one smallish bathroom. Other than that I can work with the rest of it. Real hardwoods throughout, detached garage for my car and motorcycle habit. Two acres of land.
B) I’m not retired, but retirement plays a part in my fixing up the place. I currently live in a suburb of Atlanta, and just turned 50. My wife and I are going through a divorce right now, and I’m taking stock of what the future holds. We have a house here that we are right side up on that I’m going to stay in at least for a while. I’ll refi to pull half the equity out and give that to the ex. And we are negotiating on splitting up the 401k pot. Regardless I’ll have less money for retirement than if we weren’t splitting.
The house in VA has dirt cheap insurance, dirt cheap taxes, and the area has an incredibly low cost of living. No traffic, etc. I’m thinking I can work for another 10 years, retire at 60 and live up there pretty inexpensively.
At the same time I may also be able to move up there sooner. I have a job that could be virtual, but not for about another year. Need to be here for this next big transition my company is going through. Once we are on the other side of that I could make my case to move up there soon. I make a decent salary and could really sock away some money with no mortgage and much lower taxes.
Probably over shared there, but wanted to explain the reasoning for considering fixing up the old house. Plus there is a sentimental side as well. It’s the house I grew up in. It’s my hometown. Still family up there.
My house was like yours in some respects - leaks in the basement every rain. But in my case it could come from any or all of three walls and my foundation is sandstone. It was so bad that a tool would rust to being useless if left down there for a couple months and we were only getting basic “low end life” from things like the washer and furnace. And the mold and mildew was causing some serious health issues.
To totally fix the situation I had to have the entire thing french drained inside all the walls and tubing/drain running through the gravel to a sump. I also had waterproof sheeting attached to the inside of the walls from slightly above ground level to just below the level of the tubing/drain. And then have the cement patched covering it all. With that I now have a very nice basement that one medium dehumidifier can keep under 50% even after days of rain…
Cost? More than the house is worth IMHO ($17,500) but I will say that with the super-wet weather last winter and this year ---- problem solved.
I live in a house built on a slab.
A nice solid floor, no creaks when I walk, no fear of flooding down below, no maintenance.
It works fine for me.
I grew up with a basement. It was a dark, scary place for a young child, and an unpleasant place for everybody else.
If you finish it and make it part of the house, a basement is a great place to watch TV or let the kids play. But if it’s unfinished, I see zero benefits, and lots of disadvantages.
I have heard of one other solution that might work in in rare cases. This is to drill a shaft in the ground near where the water enters the house. If the water is entering because an impervious rock layer forces it to move horizontally rather than vertically, a perforation in that layer could allow the water to flow down into a permeable layer from which it would eventually drain somewhere other than the basement.
Renting the house for extra income would be an option until the OP is ready to retire. Find a good real estate management company to handle the day to day details.
The Mike Holmes show Holmes on Homes tackled quite a few wet basements. The fix required excavating the dirt around the basement walls. Cleaning the surface and inspecting for cracks. Repair as needed. They applied a sealant coat (looks like tar) and over that a dimple board drainage product. It’s a job best left to the pros.
Around here, the ground freezes and heaves so since you have to dig down so deep to get footings below the heave zone, you might as well put in a basement. You’ve already had to dig a huge hole so it isn’t much more expense to dig a little more. And not everyone has the money to finish the basement at the same time but there is always the possibility to do it at a later time.
They make sure its water tight.